'It's important not to make it worse': the story of a person identifying bodies and things after disasters
'08.08.2020'
Source: Big Picture
Robert Jensen has dedicated his career to cleaning up after fatal disasters. Every little thing is important in his work, because even an ordinary object, such as keys or shoes, can become an invaluable memory of a dear person for the loved ones of the dead, writes Big Picture.
Identifying the remains, caring for the relatives of the dead and restoring personal property - Jensen managed to become the best in the worst profession in the world.
For him, the darkest headlines in recent history are not just words. He worked with the bodies of victims after the 1995 terrorist attack in Oklahoma, was in the Pentagon after one of the planes fell on him in September 2001, and helped to find the missing after Hurricane Katrina.
He personally worked on many sites of incidents, looking for the remains of the victims and any objects left by them - documents, personal belongings, clothes, shoes. Everything that can be found is returned to the relatives. From personal experience, Jensen knows that when a human life ends, even the smallest fragments from it can bring comfort to loved ones.
Jensen's firm, Kenyon International Emergency, takes on dozens of accidents every year. In total, the company employs 27 people, but during a call, sometimes you have to hire freelancers - in the event of major disasters, the headquarters can grow to several hundred people. These are mostly people with experience in security or forensics.
On the subject: The explosion in Beirut hit the wedding video: the bride told how her happy day became a nightmare
Often a real investigation is needed to establish a link between a found item and its owner. Security cameras at the airport and even recordings of conversations are being monitored - everything that will help find a clue. One day Jensen turned to the carmaker for help to find out the origin of the car keys found among the wreckage of the plane. Experts identified the production series by keys, and it turned out that the car was sold in Spain - so Jensen managed to narrow the search base and find the owner on the list of the dead.
It is sometimes much more difficult to identify personal items than the bodies of the victims.
“When you study human remains, this is a physical examination, but when you are dealing with personal objects, you learn details from a person's life, and it is very difficult for you not to become attached to him. What kind of music did he listen to? What's in his playlist? You should not be interested in this, your task is to see if you can find something on the computer that will help determine the owner. But the human body is just a body, and personal objects are his life. "
The most difficult thing in this work is communication with relatives and friends of the victims. It is often necessary to be very clear in order not to give people the false hope that their loved ones could survive. At other stages of the work, you need to be more delicate.
When airlines hire Kenyon to organize work on the crash site, Jensen first contacts a nearby hotel to arrange accommodation for relatives: loved ones always fly anywhere in the world to attend the identification and first briefings in the hope of quickly getting information about the victims.
On the subject: 'Our youth was destroyed': a former schoolgirl on how the 9/11 attack broke the lives of New York children
“You cannot undo what happened. So all that remains is not to make things worse. "
While he wants to give people hope, Jensen is forced to speak the hard truth. First, he warns the audience that they are about to hear very unpleasant information - so people can get ready and take the children out of the room.
“You must understand that there was a high-speed collision - your loved ones do not look like you and me” - this is the first step, the most difficult realization, and it must be taken immediately. This is followed by a discussion of assistance in identifying bodies and property.
At the stage of processing the remains and property of the deceased, the most important thing is to give the right to choose to relatives. Would they like to have the items cleaned, which shipping method suits them best?
Delicacy is extremely important here: when people experience a tragedy, they experience despair and absolute helplessness before fate. And even a small amount of control over the circumstances (deciding how to deal with objects, specifying preferences, choosing a convenient time and method of communication) can help to more easily cope with what happened.
At the crash site, the team is working to clear the items of fuel and anything that could cause further damage. The items are then packaged and sent to the company's office in Bracknell, a small town in England near Heathrow Airport.
From the inside, this is the most ordinary office - but everything here serves to deal with the consequences of mass disasters as efficiently and quickly as possible. There is a hangar adjoining the office, in which there is a warehouse for personal items and a room for the analysis of arrived items.
Among the professional "gear" in the corner are sets of body armor - in case you have to go to the combat zone. In the office, the interns work in Photoshop to cut out a personal item from a photo and add a white background - this will make it easier for relatives to identify it in a special online catalog.
On the subject: Unsinkable c 'Titanic': the story of Violet Jessop, who survived the crash of three ships
All things are digitized in this way. In physical form, they are stored in the warehouse for two years. Some of their relatives prefer not to take their personal belongings at all - they do not want anything to remind them of the tragedy. Others want things to be delivered in the form in which they were found.
“In such cases, it is important to respect the preferences of the relatives. Otherwise, a situation may arise in which the mother of the deceased will tell you: “I have washed my son's clothes for the last 15 years, and I want to be the person who washes his shirt for the last time,” says the expert.
Jensen himself has not worried about travel for a long time - it makes no sense to waste his life worrying about death, because it's all the fault of the case. Every time, thinking about the danger in public places or transport, he realizes that nothing can be predicted, no matter how correctly you behave.
Jensen remembers one woman who died in the bombing of a building in Oklahoma. When they found her, she had a heeled shoe on one leg and a sneaker on the other. Jensen realizes that she must have been wearing a pair of shoes when the explosion occurs. Had she been 5 minutes late, she would have survived.
