Indentifying Persons and Victims
Katrina: Hope Amidst Chaos
Louisiana Chronicle (from Newswire Services), August 15, 2007—When no one knew how to begin identifying recovered human remains after the storm struck the Mississippi coastline two years ago, the [National Institute of Justice-funded] UNT Center for Human Identification stepped in to help....Read the full article
If you ask most Americans about a mass disaster, they're likely to think of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, or the Southeast Asian tsunami. Very few people—including law enforcement officials—would think of the number of missing persons and unidentified human remains in our Nation as a crisis. It is, however, what experts call "a mass disaster over time." [1]
Families of missing persons who are presumed dead face tremendous emotional turmoil when they are unable to learn about the fates of their loved ones. Despite tremendous scientific advancements, DNA technology is not routinely used in missing persons cases.
Notes
[1] Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains: The Nation's Silent Mass Disaster , NIJ Journal No. 256, January 2007
