Recovering bodies: The work mine rescuers dread

[RamboLiberal]

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The teams can get a reading of where to look for the victims because miners wear barcodes on their caps or attached to their belts. Scanners register when they are in a portion of the mine. So mine officials "got a snapshot picture of where they were when the explosion happened," he said. "Before you go in," the mine officials will tell the teams, "We think we have nine people in this area, four in this area, five in that area." Mr. Spratt said they never tell you which specific miners they think are where, just generally where they think the workers were located.

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When a team found a victim, they informed a federal or state mine official who reported the location and mapped out the position and circumstances in which the body was found, not unlike what police do to process a crime scene, although the feeling is very different in a mine. Miners do not leave the victim alone until the remains are brought to the temporary morgue.

After the location is recorded, the team then "very, very respectfully placed and loaded him onto a stretcher, and transported him to the surface."

Because the rail lines were obstructed, the teams knew they'd have to carry bodies great distances on foot, "they did a lot of work to make it so they could be removed without a breathing apparatus." Between midnight and about 3:45 a.m. Tuesday, a chain of rescue teams lined up along a couple miles of underground walkways and passed the last nine miners' remains out in a slow moving relay. Teams gathered along the tunnels and walked each body out of the mine, he said.

Outside the Upper Big Branch mine, bodies were taken to a temporary morgue that had been set up, where the medical examiner tried to make an identification. The victim's families were not permitted in this area. It was not apparent looking at the bodies, how the individuals had died. Their external injuries varied a great deal, Mr. Spratt said. The morgue identification, in the case of the last nine victims, didn't take very long.

The medical examiner's staff then placed the bodies in an ambulance and the West Virginia state police escorted the ambulances off the site to the medical examiners office in Charleston. From there, the families were able to be in contact with their relative's remains and express their wishes about funeral arrangements.



Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10104/1050339-455.stm#ixzz0l7F6twXt

[blue neen]

1. It's such a sad story.

I wonder how Don Blankenship sleeps at night.

[Warpy]

2. Psychopaths sleep like babies

no matter how much horror they cause.