------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Science '70 Classmates,
I may never catch up onasdf your postings now.
Last Monday I got the call from the Medical Examiner's Office.
I did three midnight to 7 am shifts this past week. It is hideous. I do not know how the workers downtown can do it. I would wretch and run away were I not committed to doing what I can to help provide some closure to the victims' families, knowing that it could have been any one of us. No amount of hot bath water can take the chill of the morgue from my bones. No amount of perfume can erase the knowledge of the smell. You don't want to know. The victims have died unbelievably violent deaths, the trauma is evidenced in the teeth by massive release of hemoglobin -> not one white tooth has been found. I was told not to think about it. It's like being told not to think of elephants. We have mostly just fragments left of these people. We did one positive ID based on only a two tooth fragment. You can't help but wonder where the rest of them are, how the rescue workers could find one small piece and nothing else. After two weeks of exposure to the elements, severe decomposition and maggots complicate the task.
I have the priviledge of working with the DMORT Team, it is the "Disaster Mortuary Services Team" of the National Health Service. These are kind strong people who have been mobilized from all around the country, most of whom have experience with other disasters, of course none like this one. They are from all walks of life with specialities that dovetail into disaster situations like - dentists, psychologists, EMTs, morticians, forensic specialists etc. They are mobilized for two weeks, coming from as far as Hawaii. My team is from Hawaii, Oregon, Illinois, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Texas - all Americans who will take the story of their experiences with this disaster home to share. The NYC Medical Examiner told me to "hang around with them" to learn all that I could before they are shipped out. There may yet be other teams mobilized to come here, but there is concern that if there aren't enough, NYC will have to rely on volunteers like me in the months ahead, since victim ID will take months and months. The rescue workers just aren't finding that much, and what they do find, often is nearly useless - one bag of "co-mingled remains" was thrown out by the pathologist who claimed "intestines are not an identifiable person". The DNA testing will be slow at best, maybe taking eight months to run the tests before comparisons can be made. The "Members of Service" ie police and firemen have the best chance at ID with multiple records - fingerprint, dental records, medical records - already on file with their department- plus they were usually wearing a badge. Still we have to confirm that they didn't just grab someone else's jacket when they ran to help, so dental records are the definitive identifier, especially if other parts are missing. It is frustrating to have identifiable jaw fragments and not all the dental records for comparison for the other victims.
There is much speculation on the recovery efforts, progress and plans. I deferred a chance to visit ground zero, the smell at the morgue was bad enough that I lost all curiosity to visit what is essentially a mass open gravesite. We all signed "rules" governing what we can share, ie I can't speculate or give opinions that might be interpreted as official policy. I'm grateful for hot coffee and cocoa from the Salvation Army who provide it and hot food to the workers at the morgue where there are shifts round the clock. Think about it - over a million boxes of medical gloves have been used so far. We not only double glove, but use regular rubber gloves over the medical gloves because of sharp fragments. Some nice woman upstate got people to make care packages- shoe boxes with snacks, candy, tissues, soap etc and that was a really nice. She wanted to drive down 50, but ended up having to rent a truck as her community put together 2,500.
Tomorrow I'm doing additional Navy duty as well as the volunteer WTC Forensic Team. At least the Navy patients are alive. I've got this overwhelming sense whenever I see one of my patients now, that I just want to thank them for being alive.
Aviva