John Scardena Week 12 Tsunami Graves

 

Reference:  Morgan, O. W.(2006). "Mass Fatality Management following the South Asian Tsunami Disaster. Retrieved online December 10, 2013 from: Academic Search Premier

 

Theme:  Mass Casualty: taking care of the dead

 

Summary: 

·      The Tsunami that rocked Indonesia caused the death toll that rose quickly and beyond the thousands.

·      This terrible scenario caused many bodies to decompose before survivors could properly identify most of them.  

·      24–48 hours was the timeframe of identifying bodies.

·      This obviously created a situation where friends and family could not identify many bodies.

·       The largest mass grave site contained nearly 70,000 deceased persons.

·      We try to learn from the past and this example we learned a lot.

·      If we cannot preserve the bodies in refrigerators we can dig holes to keep the bodies there temporarily.

·      If you do have to use a mass grave site, only bury in one layer as to keep the smell minimal.

 

Application for lesson: 

If Homeland Security is all about keeping disasters from happening long term, certainly crisis managers can prepare for major natural disasters and learn from the experiences that have already come to pass.

 

Application for Career:

This is a terrible, awful scene and I hope that no one has to deal with it, but that being said… we should prepare for these experiences as they are bound to happen in a ever shifting world.