Thread by @LucyGoBag

There can be a lot of snobbery in Disaster Victim Identification with incorrect assumptions abounding that India will struggle this scale of tragedy - but U.K., Europe and USA would be ready. Trust me - this would challenge the U.K. just as much…. news.sky.com/story/india-tr…

Wherever the incident is in the world, affected relatives respond in the same way. Desperate for information and then desperate for access to their loved ones’s body or to visit a survivor in the hospital. The response can never be quick enough and if authorities try to use….

..the Interpol standards and science such as DNA they will take too long in the eyes of both the relatives and the communities and often the uniformed politicians and media.

Last time we activated a bespoke mortuary for an incident that gov thought would be on this scale was 7/7 2005. Initial casualty figures were in hundreds and as a new plan had been signed off 1 week before it gave responders chance to bring both resources and responders together

For tragedies like Manchester and Grenfell, planning and resources had been reduced, so additional facilities were added on to existing spaces. This can make the work much more challenging for responders with substantially less space to work and areas for rest

These plans in the U.K. do get regularly reviewed but as I discuss in #WhenTheDustSettles they are often initially drafted by Civil Servants who have never seen the realities of a mass fatality mortuary and the challenges within one - regardless of where there are in the world

Families and local responders will often try and rely on visual identification and items of clothing, as we see in the testimonies from India but this is scarily unreliable.

We do have small but excellent teams in policing across England and all of Devolved Assemblies who prep for this scenario alongside strong teams at @BTP who would work with an incident-appointed Senior Coroner. Would also partner with Train Operating Companies and Network Rail

Train operators some of my bigger worries - when an incident occurs at time of low morale, low goodwill and low resources at operational level. Not sure there is always the will to resource the vital incident response personnel who support passengers and was a lesson from 1990s

Rail, plane and explosion injuries are often very similar leading to analogous challenges in identification

For further reading on the logistics of the July 7th Disaster Victim Identification response but also crucially the experience of it from a mother’s perspective see these two books:

For the scientists’ perspectives on the challenges of Disaster Victim Identification

For an insight into the campaigns by survivors and bereaved for better care after U.K. disasters, especially rail tragedies, see this book and the website Disaster Action

Identification and confirmation of involvement in the incident is also a legal and financial process so the Coroner/ similar has substantial challenge to balance both the needs of family and needs of state - again true almost universally in the 🌎

After 9/11 the response in the USA relied heavily on DNA science:

For advice when writing your mass fatality plan and working with both families and responders always have @brataas to hand

And for the most powerful critique of how the state uses Disaster Victim Identification, often inflicting further harms on families, alway spend some time with the work of @jenny_edkins

I write about Manchester here: amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

I write about Grenfell here: amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/…