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Whether you’ve ever thought about it or not, properly caring for and identifying remains is a critical element of emergency preparedness. Penn Care Vice President, Don Bloom, specializes in developing mass fatality plans. Don is the author of the Victim Identification Profile (VIP Program) used by the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS)/Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT); the program collects data and helps identify remains in mass fatality responses. He has also personally responded to disasters including US AIR Flight 427, Delta Comair Crash, Korean Air Crash, Hurricane Floyd, Egypt Air Flight 990, Alaska Air Crash, Shanksville Flight 93, World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, and Comair Flight 5191.
After Hurricane Katrina, the federal government realized that in order to properly handle such a catastrophic disaster, planning and preparedness needed to move to the state level. Â In the past several years, Don and the other members of Penn Care’s Disaster Response division have helped states acquire the equipment and supplies they need to do this leveraging their first-hand experience. They have built complete mobile morgue systems for Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Minnesota and are currently working on disaster mortuary solutions for Oregon and Alabama.
While planning can be overwhelming, Don has determined disaster mortuary surge systems can meet one of two needs: 1.) Body Storage vs. 2) Body/Remains Identification Systems. Generally, organizations want to either temporarily keep things in a cold storage system or obtain a mobile morgue unit to help identify remains. Since the federal government now provides funding for this type of equipment in increments, often packages are purchased one at a time to meet these needs.
If you are an organization looking for body storage, you need to acquire body bags and a cold storage system. For body bags, the product offerings are endless. There are adult body bags, pediatric body bags, body bags with handles, body bags without handles, high-end body bags, and low-end body bags. You will want to choose the right body bags based on the type of disaster you’re preparing for and your budget. For a portable cold storage system, we highly recommend the MERC (Mortuary Enhanced Remains Cooling) System. The MERC System uses liquid cooling technology to cool up to 48 body bags at a time, and can be deployed anywhere.
For complete remains identification systems, we have several types of mobile morgue units. Our most popular are our DPMUs (Disaster Portable Morgue Units); they are fully-equipped mobile morgues. These portable morgues include equipment for search and recovery, victim identification, DNA, fingerprints, photography, full body x-ray, digital dental exam, and pathology.
Has your organization been tasked with planning for a mass fatality event? What types of other considerations do you think are important? Do you have any questions? Ask us! Or, contact us at 1.877.287.9715.
