Natural Hazards Observer
| May 2006 | Volume XXX | Number 5 |
Dealing with Foreign Dead: An Evolution of Mass-Casualty Identification
An estimated 250-300,000 people were killed by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but only 5-6,000 of the bodies have been formally identified, most of which were foreigners. The remaining bodies were buried in mass graves. This was especially true in Indonesia, where neither the resources nor the facilities were available to formally identify the overwhelming number of victims. Using the tsunami tragedy as a backdrop, this article briefly examines how countries deal with mass casualties among which there are significant numbers of foreigners.
Existing Guidelines and Beliefs
Guidelines for handling mass-death situations developed by the International Police Criminal Organization (Interpol) state that sites must be tightly controlled, bodies should not be moved until marked and photographed, and all bodies should be identified. These guidelines may be suitable following an air crash or a terrorist attack on a building, but they have little relevance to a widespread destructive incident like the tsunami.(1) After the tsunami, the bodies were taken to public buildings, such as temples and hospital emergency wards, where there were no records identifying the dead or where they came from.
Despite this general approach, there were massive efforts in Thailand and Sri Lanka to identify the many foreign dead, showing respect for the Western belief that the dead have a right to be identified: “The State has a duty to protect those fundamental human rights . . . such as the rights to physical and moral integrity of individuals, religious freedom, and respect for the customs of indigenous peoples. These rights can be violated if the authorities . . . refuse to recover the corpses; remove it improperly; if they are careless when identifying them; or if they disregard religious rituals and cultural beliefs when burying the remains.”(2)
A History of Mass-Casualty Identification
In the past, countries that have suffered disaster-related mass fatalities have normally dealt with the dead themselves. They may have asked for help with next of kin and collection of predeath data, such as medical records, but they retained control. Examples include Canada’s response to the 1998 crash of Swissair 111, the United States’ response to 9/11, and the United Kingdom’s response to the recent terrorist attacks on London transport.
Exceptions to this norm have included incidents that involved Israelis, where exceptional efforts were made to satisfy the strict requirements of a rabbinic court: after an air crash in Sudan, an Israeli police forensic anthropologist hired human trackers to find the bones of the Israeli pilot. Also, there have been disasters in which a large number of the fatalities were not nationals of the country of incident. In some of these instances, removal of the bodies to their home countries was allowed. In 1985, after an air crash involving U.S. soldiers in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada relinquished the bodies to the United States. Following the 1990 fire aboard the Scandinavian Star, the ferry was towed into the Swedish port of Lysekil; the bodies were removed and taken to Oslo, Norway, the point of origin for the ill-fated voyage. Similarly, the bodies of the victims in the 1977 KLM-Pan Am collision in Tenerife (Canary Islands) were flown to the originating countries, the Netherlands and the United States, respectively.
Despite these exceptions, the first major change to the handling of mass casualties is considered to be the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali. So many of the dead were Australian that Indonesia agreed to let the Australian Federal Police serve as the lead agency in support of the Indonesian police. The two countries worked together to identify the dead and investigate the bombings. The formal agreement between the two countries and the informal assistance received from other countries marked the beginning of truly multinational mass-casualty efforts.
Efforts in Sri Lanka and Thailand
The response to the tsunami demonstrated similar efforts. In Thailand and Sri Lanka, an unprecedented agreement allowed hundreds of foreign police and forensic scientists from dozens of countries to work cooperatively to identify the bodies. It was agreed that everyone would follow strict Interpol Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) procedures and only fingerprints, dental records, or DNA would suffice as proof of identify. Final procedural approval rested with the host government: the Thai police in Thailand and the chief coroner in Sri Lanka.
In Thailand, bodies were laid on the ground in temple courtyards. Only those who had been visually identified were buried or cremated. But in Sri Lanka, many of the dead had been buried, forcing Austrian, German, and British police to locate foreign graves and request exhumation orders. DVI was performed on all of the dead in Thailand, including the Thais, which was initially less successful because of the lack of predeath data, such as fingerprints and dental records. In Sri Lanka, most of those identified were foreigners because the government had ordered foreign bodies to be shipped to the morgue in Colombo. They placed no restraints on the burial of indigenous dead. Sri Lankans were only formally identified if they were buried with foreigners and their bodies were among those exhumed.
As recently as the 2002 Bali bombings, matching up predeath and postdeath Interpol forms involved sorting through paper. The tsunami response was much more sophisticated. Data was entered into two computer systems, DVI System International (everything but fingerprints), which is based on Interpol’s standards, and SAGEM, the French version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Both generated possible matches.
Despite the cooperative efforts and the technological advances, not everything worked. Some European investigators used methods others objected to. Errors were made in entering data, sometimes because of illegible handwriting. And initial DNA samples were often inadequate and contaminated, which ultimately led to a change in the way samples were taken.
Contributions to Mass-Casualty Identification
Among the tsunami’s many legacies are the establishment of DVI System International as the international software standard for victim identification and the familiarity of Interpol’s pre- and postdeath forms to police everywhere. Another development is the acceptance of an FBI technique for obtaining fingerprints from the second layer of skin by boiling hands. And because of the problems with DNA, it is no longer seen as the solution to all problems of identification. Most important, however, is the fact that there is increased solidarity among the international mass-death network of police and forensic scientists. Despite these advances, it seems unlikely that the full extent of these improvements and relationships will be called on in the near future for it is hard to imagine an event similar to the tsunami, one that kills people from every continent but Antarctica and is as welcoming to foreign assistance and involvement as Thailand and Sri Lanka.
The tsunami response raises questions:
- Is it appropriate to spend so much money identifying victims of a mass-death incident?
- Is it appropriate that individuals from some countries are identified while others are buried in mass graves?
- Would wealthy countries (e.g., those in Europe or North America) commit sufficient resources to identify all the dead if thousands or tens of thousands died in an incident within their boundaries?
Cultural, religious, and legal matters affect the emphasis on recovery and identification of the dead. Some view bodies as empty husks. Westerners believe a body should be identified for emotional reasons—closure—and to eliminate legal complications. Yet the question remains: How many dead is too many to justify processing all who died?
Past disaster research about handling of the dead comes from developed countries—the United States, Canada, Italy, and Japan.(3,4,5,6) The tsunami findings, part of a study funded by the National Science Foundation and headed by Henry Fischer of Millersville University of Pennsylvania, come from a cross-cultural study involving scores of countries. The results, which could have relevance for future mass-death situations, whether caused by a natural hazard, a terrorist attack, or, perhaps, even a pandemic, were shared with Interpol, discussed at the 2005 Hazards Research and Applications Workshop in Boulder, Colorado, and will be the subject of a full session at the World Congress on Sociology’s International Research Committee on Disasters meeting in Durban, South Africa, in July. For years, E.L. Quarantelli and others have been calling for cross-cultural research.(7) Perhaps the study of the handling of the tsunami dead will be the start of a long-desired trend.
Joseph Scanlon
Emergency Communications Research Unit
Carleton University, Canada
(1) Scanlon, Joseph. 1998. Dealing with mass death after a community catastrophe: Handling bodies after the 1917 Halifax explosion. Disaster Prevention and Management 7 (4): 288-304.
(2) Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). 2004. Management of dead bodies in disaster situations. Washington, DC: PAHO.
(3) Blanshan, Sue. 1977. Disaster body handling. Mass Emergencies 2:249-58.
(4) Pine, Vanderlyn. 1974. Grief work and dirty work: The aftermath of an air crash. OMEGA 5 (4): 281-86.
(5) Quarantelli, E.L. 1979. The Vaiont Dam overflow: A case study of extra-community responses in massive disasters. Disasters 3 (2): 199-212.
(6) Nishimura, Akiyoshi. 1997. Medical examination report on the Great Hanshai earthquake. In Proceedings of the Third International Symposium of the International Advances in Legal Medicine, ed. Choei Wakasugi, 234-38.
(7) Quarantelli, E.L., and Verta Taylor. 1976. Some needed cross-cultural studies of disaster behavior. Paper presented at the Natural Hazards Symposium, Canberra, Australia.
Seismopolis: New Center Educates Public about Earthquakes and Earthquake Safety
The Seismopolis center is the result of a collaboration between academia, industry, and government to inform and educate the public about earthquakes and earthquake safety. Partially funded by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology of Greece, the new center uses state-of-the-art technologies, including a shake table and a virtual reality unit, to provide visitors with a variety of educational experiences. Visitors (both children and adults) can learn about earthquakes and their impact on the ground, buildings, people, and society; develop skills to protect themselves and others before, during, and after an earthquake as well as during restoration and reconstruction; experience a simulated earthquake and test self-protection skills; learn how to make the right decisions in recovering from earthquake losses; and develop an interest in setting up and participating in information networks and volunteer groups that inform others about protection from earthquakes and other natural disasters.
The center is located in Rentis, Greece, a municipality of Athens. For more information about the center, including how to make an appointment to visit, contact Issaak Parcharidis, Harokopio University of Athens, Department of Geography at parchar@hua.gr; www.seismopolis.org/.