DISASTER VICTIM IDENTIFICATION IS AN EMERGING CHALLENGE FOR FORENSIC PRACTITIONERS, DRIVEN BY THE DEADLY UPSURGE IN NATIONAL CATASTROPHES AND THE ONGOING THREAT OF TERRORIST STRIKES.

Teams of forensic experts were among the first responders to help restore order amidst the chaos of the 2001 World Trade Center bombing, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

But disaster management, in the U.S. as elsewhere, is clearly a work in progress. Systemic issues abound, and other aspects of the recovery process – namely the contribution of the forensic sciences – are handicapped by data shortfalls from the field.

In June 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice, in conjunction with the National Center for Forensic Science, took the important first step of issuing guidelines entitled “Mass Fatality Incidents: A Guide for Human Forensic Identification.”

The guide, in considering the full array of post-mortem data collection techniques – visual, anatomical and circumstantial evidence, dentition, fingerprints, and DNA – directed medical examiners to use “all available methods” to confirm victims’ identities.

But of equal if not greater value to the forensic community is input from parties with practical knowledge of the type acquired only by first-hand experience in mass fatality situations.

Mortui Vivis Praecipant, the Latin credo of the mortuary arts, translates as “let the living learn from the dead.” And if a more informed forensic response to future events is to occur, it will, in large measure, emanate from firms like Cross Match Technologies, one of the contractors called in to help identify the dead in a Gulfport, Mississippi mortuary operation after Katrina blew through.

Before Gulfport was inundated by Katrina’s 35-45 foot storm surge, 71,000 lived in the coastal city 60 miles east of New Orleans. The Gulfport morgue – which identified victims found east of the Mississippi River – was one of two post-mortem identification centers hastily erected by Federal authorities.

Catastrophes present their own particular set of victim identification issues. Many World Trade Center victims were vaporized – gone without a trace. After the 2004 tsunami, identification was complicated by the magnitude of the death toll (upwards of several hundred thousand), the mix of nationalities (governments from 26 nations were involved), and climatic conditions which hastened decomposition and led to hasty mass burials.

Factors conspiring against victim identification in Gulfport included its climate; prolonged immersion in water; delays in the arrival of heavy machinery to clear debris and collapsed structures covering victims; property destruction which destroyed collaborating evidence such as dental records and DNA traces; the dispersion of survivors to identify kin and acquaintances; and animals preying on remains.