2023-08-17 13:53:41
Getty Images The identification of the deceased could take months or even years, according to experts.
Nearly a week after devastating wildfires ripped through the Hawaiian island of Maui, the exact death toll is still unknown.
the families of about 1,300 missing they anxiously await news of their own, while body-sniffing dogs scour the charred disaster zone.
It is expected that the number of confirmed deaths – there are already more than 100 – will increase gradually.
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green announced Monday that it could take up to 10 days to come up with an accurate figure and that researchers could find “between 10 and 20 people per dayprobably until they’re done” with their work.
The long identification process
As of August 15, only three of the dead had been identified, according to Adam Weintraub, communications director for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.
Victim identification specialists told the BBC to confirm the names of the rest of the deceased on Maui it could take months or even years.
Getty Images Many remains are charred, making their identification difficult.
Both finding and identifying the victims will be a difficult task due to the extent of the destruction and the conditions in which many of the remains are likely to be found.
Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier described the tragic reality of the situation on the ground, telling reporters that “It’s not just ash on the clothes you take off. They are our loved ones“.
“The tricky part is the collection,” said Daniele Podini, an associate professor of forensic molecular biology at George Washington University.
“Finding the right samples, identifying the next of kin, creating a database for all the relatives of the missing, and then comparing the sample results to that database… It’s a combination of everything.”
Chris Milroy, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Ottawa, explained that in the case of Hawaii, many of these scientific methods can be complicated by destruction in the area.
“Because of the fire and the disruption to civil services, they may not be able to get the dental records. Perhaps some of these have also been destroyed in the fire,” said Milroy, who has experience in UK police forensic investigations and crimes. of war in the Balkans.
“So that method may not work for a lot of people,” he said.
Evidence destroyed by fire
Getty Images Images like this attest to the scale of the destruction.
The academic also pointed out that high temperatures may have destroyed fingerprints of some victims.
Evidence may also have been erased that would allow investigators to link a person to a medical device such as a hip replacement or pacemaker, or fragments from which DNA samples can be taken.
“The main thing you look at is DNA,” but “you also need people you can compare it to,” he said.
“You could have something, like siblings that died and confirm that they are related, but you can’t tell which brother is whichunless you have other circumstantial evidence,” he concluded.
Visual identification by family members is considered unreliable, as is the discovery of personal belongings, such as bags or wallets, along with findings of human remains.
“There is a problem of mixing elements and debris that can fragment,” Milroy said.
“And since most of the bodies of the (deceased) people are likely to have been damaged by the fire, it can happen that a family member is so taken aback by the event that they say yes, and then it is not true. That’s why scientific methods are preferred,” he warned.
The key role of dogs
Dogs specially trained to find corpses play a key role in the search.
These dogs can move through the rubble without causing further destruction and use their keen sense of smell to detect human remains, even those reduced to ashes that would be difficult to detect with the naked eye.
An additional 20 dogs from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been deployed to the area, although the amount of time they can work each day is limited by high temperatures and the need for rest periods.
Getty Images High temperatures complicate the search work.
Although in Hawaii the work is complicated, it is not unusual for the identification of deceased to be delayed for a long time in cases of fire and other catastrophes.
For example, in 2017, after a fire destroyed the 24-story Grenfell Tower in London, it took about five months for investigations to conclusively identify all 72 fatalities.
Once visible fragments were removed from the scene, investigators had to use small towels and mesh filters to find smaller, more difficult-to-recognize human remains.
And in the United States, some of the remains recovered from the World Trade Center towers after the attacks of September 11, 2001 are still being identified. In that case, the remains of around 40% of the deceased remain to be identified.
Mike Marciano, a forensic scientist and professor at Syracuse University in New York, is confident that the investigation in Hawaii will receive federal and other state resources.
This could include assistance from the US military’s DNA identification laboratory, which He usually takes on the task of identifying the remains of missing soldiers since World War II.
The lab has a facility at the Pearl Harbor-Hickam base, on the nearby island of Oahu.
Even so, the scientist pointed out, the process will be slow.
“It will be a process that will last much longer than weeks. I would say months, but it all depends on resources,” he predicted.
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