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58 Medico-Legal J. 3 (1990)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr58 and id is 1 raw text is: MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL Founded 1901 1990 Vol. 58 Part One EDITORIAL Planning for Disasters In the immediate aftermath of a major disaster there is a period of confusion. This period of confusion is to be expected but it may be considerably shortened by forward planning, by the previous practice of the procedures to be used and by the application of the lessons learned during earlier incidents. Following a disaster in which lives have been lost and many people are injured primary consideration should and must be given to the rescue of those who have survived. Once this has been completed then the removal and identification of the dead and determining the cause of the incident may proceed. These may be regarded as the secondary and tertiary components of the management of a disaster. Speed is, in a great part, the essence of the first part of the response to a disaster but there is seldom any great need for the utmost speed in performing the secondary or tertiary tasks. Indeed it is quite possible that more haste at this stage may result in less speed in the overall process. In a recent incident the well intentioned desire to help by personnel at the scene resulted in the separation of personal artefacts from the bodies. This separation resulted in a much greater work load for those involved in the identification process. A similar mistake was only narrowly avoided in the Marchioness disaster by the timely arrival of an individual with experience gained at the earlier incident. Identification of the deceased is a prime goal in the secondary phase of the investigation of the incident. Not only does it have significance for the coroner and the police but more importantly it is of crucial significance for those relatives who think that one or more members of their family may have been involved. This group of distressed relatives and friends, it must be remembered, will be many times larger than the total of those injured or killed. Following the recent sinking of the Marchioness, which resulted in the loss of 51 lives, over 3000 separate phone calls were received by the incident room notifying the police of a possible casualty. These distressed relatives need an accurate and rapid identification of both the injured and the dead so that either their fears can be allayed or they can begin the grieving process. The state of uncertainty is in many ways worse than the certain knowledge that a relative or friend is injured or dead and delays in identification, or worse misidenti- fication, can cause untold distress to these relatives. There have now been a number of a major disasters in the United Kingdom in recent months. Many lessons have been learned individually by the pathologists involved in these incidents and but as yet there has been no concerted attempt to learn from