'Just a mess': Why Floridians can't obtain recent birth or death certificates

Thousands of Floridians are waiting for birth and death certificates after the Florida Department of Health (DOH) said it's online vital statistics system is dealing with a "temporary outage" in a written statement.

Various reports indicate the Florida Department of Health was the victim of a ransomware attack by a group called RansomHub. The attack is delaying the department from issuing birth certificates on and after June 28, 2024.

Robert Bucchere, who lost his wife Camille 10 days ago, said he still hasn't received her death certificate. He said the delay is stopping his family from having a funeral while his wife sits in a freezer before being cremated.

"It's just scary, it's just a nightmare," Bucchere said. "It sounds silly, but there are so many things you need to do. You can't take her name off a bank account because they don't have a death certificate, you can't do life insurance, you can't go to the DMV to surrender her driver's license because they need a death certificate. You can't call social security because you can't do anything with that because you need a death certificate."

He described his situation to WPTV's Ethan Stein as totally helpless, and doesn't know when to tell family from out of town to come for a funeral.

"It's just like you're so devastated from losing a loved one and then you can't give them a burial in the proper amount of time," Bucchere said.

He's surrounded with photos and artwork of his wife, Camille. Bucchere also has his wife's jigsaw puzzles spread across a table in his apartment. He said he doesn't have the heart to clean it up.

Various cybersecurity blogs reported the Florida DOH was hit with a ransomware attack, which exfiltrated 100 gigabytes of files from the state agency and asked for an undisclosed sum earlier this month. The Tampa Bay Times reported RansomHub was involved with HIV diagnosis and patient data was leakso on Friday .

State laws don't allow the health department to pay to solve ransomware attacks.

Jae Williams, deputy communications director for the Florida DOH, said it sent resources to funeral directors and county health departments to issue death certificates offline. He also said its requesting the support from healthcare facilities and physicians to expedite hand-signed death certificates.

“We are working around the clock to restore the online Vital Statistics system,” State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said in a written statement. “The majority of Department operations and services remain operational and unchanged.”

Bucchere said the funeral home told him it was a cyberattack and is shocked that he has become a victim of this situation.

“I mean you hear so many stories about getting hacked and this and that," he said. "But, I never thought it would do like screw up death certificates and birth certificates.”