Disaster Victim Identification

2.1 - Introduction

An attempt has been made to list the procedures in a logical sequence. It should be under-stood, however, that many activities will be initiated and carried out simultaneously by dif-ferent offices and people. The circumstances of each disaster may also justify changes in the sequence described.

The titles of officials used in this Guide have been chosen to describe their functions. Mem-ber countries will naturally use their own terms where appropriate and, naturally, masculine terms are equally applicable to women.

2.2 - Chain of Command see Chart No. 1

A firm chain of command is essential. If plans do not provide for a senior official (e.g. Commissioner of Police or Supervising Coroner) to take immediate control, an Investigator in Charge must be appointed to assume overall responsibility for the whole operation. Until suf-ficient additional officers become available he may need to direct and supervise many, if not all, of the initial aspects of the response.

The Investigator in Charge will normally be responsible for co-ordinating efforts to save life and property, to identify the dead and to investigate the cause or causes of the disaster.

The activities for which he will be responsible are so many and varied that he will need sev-eral senior police officers to assist him. Apart from supervising the combined operations from beginning to end, he may be required to handle the investigation into the disaster causes himself. However, as all the evidence upon which to base his conclusions will not be avail-able until the rescue and recovery operations have been terminated, all material evidence must eventually be made available to him for evaluation.

The final report will present conclusions regarding the cause or causes but will also, when-ever possible include proposals to avoid or minimize the effects of future similar disasters, and may suggest improvements in the response procedures and in ways of managing disaster operations.

For effective control and co-ordination of the various activities the Investigator-in-Charge will need at least three assistants, each responsible for a major aspect of the overall operation:

• a Director of Communications
  
• a Director of Rescue Operations
  
• a Director of Victim Identification

Victim identification being the subject of this Guide, the responsibilities of the Director of Victim Identification are described in detail in Chapter 4.

Each Director should be given the authority to obtain and deploy the equipment and staff he needs.

He must also be able to delegate the control of various activities and branches to Co-ordinators who will remain under his command and supervision.

Co-ordinators will need to appoint unit chiefs and team leaders, as appropriate, to handle spe-cific aspects of the response.

2.3 - Communications see Chart No. 2

The communications centre should also provide services such as document copying, transla-tion and message transmission for the operations at other locations. If it is difficult to set up communications equipment, or if technical breakdowns are liable to occur, provision should be made for a permanently available personal dispatch system.

In many cases it will be expedient to set up the Missing Persons Unit at or near the communi-cations centre, and all enquiries and information concerning potential victims should be di-rected to that Unit.

A substantial number of public and media enquiries, not all relating to missing persons, must be anticipated. These are best dealt with by a public relations officer, but the Director of Communications, in liaison with the Investigator in Charge should always be ultimately re-sponsible for the release of information to the media; only they can fully assess what has been achieved at any given time and what information can be made public without compro-mising the operations or investigations

For example, no victim details should be released to the media before families (or perhaps embassies) have been informed in order that relatives do not learn through the press that a family member has been involved.

2.4 Rescue Operations see Chart No. 3

It is emphasized that the first police personnel to arrive must resist the temptation to become personally involved in the rescue operations. Their primary function at this stage is to obtain and pass on accurate information so that response measures can be assessed and taken. Per-sonal involvement, which could put them out of contact at this critical time, might sever the only vital communications link with the scene. In areas that may not be accessible by vehi-cle, e.g. in deserts, mountain ranges or woodlands or on snow-covered ground or water, ac-curate information will be even more difficult to obtain. Helicopters or other aircraft (police, military or civilian) could be used to reconnoitre and report. In aircraft disasters early tele-phone contact should be made and maintained with the nearest air traffic control centre and with the airline company involved to obtain important information regarding, for example, the aircraft’s destination, and details of distress calls and hazardous cargo.

The Director of Rescue Operations must be primarily concerned with rescuing all survivors and with their immediate medical care. He must ensure that hospitals in the area have been alerted, to enable them to begin implementing their emergency plans. For each hospital he must find out its proximity to the incident, how many injured people it can handle, and when it is unable to accept any more casualties.

This information will have a direct bearing on route planning, the type and number of ambu-lances required, and decisions on where to send different types of casualties. It may be nec-essary to set up temporary hospital facilities close to the scene, which will involve transport-ing medical personnel and equipment to the site. Dealing with such problems can often be made easier by prior contingency planning and risk assessment.

Difficulties in locating survivors should be anticipated. It is not unusual for some survivors to flee from a disaster site if they have not been badly injured. They could also have been among the first evacuated before the organized response began and have gone home, or to a hospital, a doctor, or a place of safety, or they could be wandering around in a state of com-plete confusion.

2.4.1 - Scene Co-ordinator

Many people may already be engaged in rescue attempts at the disaster scene; these attempts must be co-ordinated and intensified if the scale of the disaster requires it. A Scene Co-ordinator should be appointed to establish effective control and co-ordination at the scene (see Chart No. 3). He should go to the disaster site immediately and set up a command post at premises likely to provide the best lines of communication with the communications centre.

It may be preferable, or indeed the only option, to establish a command post at the scene, in a tent, suitable building or police command vehicle which has the necessary communications systems or can rapidly be equipped with them. In such cases the post should be sited at the most convenient entry or exit point on the perimeter of the scene.

Total site security is essential to allow the rescue operations to proceed without interruption, to protect evidence and to protect the public from danger. It may be necessary to fence the site or otherwise clearly demarcate it, and there will be a need for round-the-clock uniformed guards. From the moment a perimeter and entry/exit point have been established, the Scene Co-ordinator must ensure that a personnel check point is also established to log details (name, organization, date and time) of all persons entering and leaving the site. Civilian volunteers and other unofficial personnel present, if of value to the operation, should be listed, organized and given specific tasks under the control and direction of one of the emergency services. Any unauthorized persons not required should be asked to leave the site although, as potential witnesses, their names and addresses should be recorded.

Organized rescue operations generally start with the formation of rescue teams. If possible, each team should consist of a leader and at least two stretcher-bearers. It would be advanta-geous for a team member to be medically qualified, i.e. a doctor or nurse, or a member of a Red Cross or ambulance team. It is important that team leaders and medical personnel be identifiable by badges, armbands or items of clothing.

Detailed instructions must be given on the area to be searched and how survivors are to be handled. All property, wreckage, bodies, etc. must remain in situ if at all possible.

By this time the Scene Co-ordinator should have received information from the Director of Rescue Operations about casualty collection points, hospitals, and ambulances or other means of transport.

A traffic control unit, parking places, routes in and out, a helicopter pad, etc., may have to be established to facilitate the loading and removal of victims. Traffic management between the scene and the hospitals may be necessary.

A suitably equipped advance first-aid station, staffed by doctors and nurses and through which all survivors must pass, should be set up at the entry/exit point to the incident site. The primary role of this station is to save life and prepare survivors for transportation. In dif-ficult circumstances this station may have to be expanded into a field hospital, in which case there must be liaison with the Mortuary Branch for dealing with fatalities.

Some of the victims brought to the first-aid point or field hospital may be dead or may die after arrival, in which case they must be transferred to the morgue station (see Chapter 4) and not merely turned away. Consideration may be given to the use of refrigerated trucks which can be used to hold bodies temporarily and transport them, providing the bodies do not be-come frozen.

It is important to record particulars of all survivors and injured persons at a victim check point set up at this location.

Once survivors have been removed from the site, the responsibilities of the Scene Co-ordinator will change. Fire fighting and debris clearance may still be going on, but technical investigators (e.g. aircraft accident investigators) and victim identification personnel can now start their respective operations under their own commands. The Scene Co-ordinator should continue to provide whatever support is needed by these specialist groups.

2.4.2 - The Grid (see Figure 1)

The investigators, site clearance personnel and victim recovery and identification teams will all need accurate mapping of the disaster area to enable them to search properly and record their findings accurately. For a wide disaster area, aerial photographs can greatly assist in preparing maps or plans, while for buildings, consecutively numbered floor plans may suf-fice.

For locations such as airport runways, fields and other areas where the site is relatively con-tained, a grid is recommended. This, briefly, consists of a base line selected from or between fixed and recognizable points on the ground, and parallel lines marked out with tape at 10-metre intervals to form squares in which to search methodically; the grid must cover the whole of the disaster site.

If the incident occurs in rough terrain, experience has shown that a grid, with its regular squares, is often not the most useful system. The better option in such cases is to obtain aer-ial photographs and maps, or accurately sketch the ground to be covered, and then divide it into sectors based on natural or man-made features such as river banks, hedgerows, fields, roads, cliffs or buildings. These sectors may then have to be further subdivided into smaller, more manageable areas.

A chart corresponding to each sector is then prepared, clearly indicating the grid or the major fixed points, and an appropriate number of copies is made. The other search and recovery operations will be conducted in a similar methodical way, following the body recovery pro-cedures, to ensure that every part of the site is properly searched and that all relevant finds are precisely recorded.

Whatever the system used, the first personnel to enter the search area should be the physical searchers working in a line abreast, followed by the plotters who record any finds on their plans, and then the specialists forming the body, property and evidence recovery teams, the technical investigators and, in appropriate cases, the medical personnel.

Disaster Victim Identification