Rescue workers search for human remains at the World Trade Center in September 2001. Coroners and medical examiners say the attack demonstrates that their work is essential to containing the damage inflicted by a mass-casualty attack (AFP/Getty). U.S. Coroners, Medical Examiners Neglected in WMD Response Planning By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — More than two years after al-Qaeda’s assault on the World Trade Center demonstrated the possibility of mass fatalities resulting from terrorist attacks, U.S. coroners and medical examiners say they are being largely overlooked in attack response spending and planning ― a problem they say could greatly exacerbate the impact of an attack...Full Story

United States Decries IAEA Report on Iranian Nuclear Development The United States lashed out yesterday at an International Atomic Energy Agency report that describes hidden Iranian nuclear activities but concludes that Tehran was not attempting to secretly develop a nuclear weapon (see GSN, Nov. 12)...Full Story

KEDO Will Make Nuclear Reactor Suspension Official Next Week The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization will officially announce next week the suspension of construction of two nuclear power plants in North Korea, the Korea Times reported today (see GSN, Nov. 12)...Full Story

	Thursday, November 13, 2003

Syria Will Try to Work With Washington Despite Sanctions Threat, Official Says Syria will continue a dialogue with the United States despite this week’s Senate passage of a bill that would enact economic sanctions against Damascus if it does not end its alleged WMD efforts, Syrian Information Minister Ahmad al-Hassan said in a statement published today (see GSN, Nov. 12). “Syria will not close the door on dialogue with the American administration, even if the hawks in that administration want to push for escalation in an unjustifiable way,” al-Hassan said. “The threats against Syria are not new, but they have intensified recently,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Nov. 13). Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Arab League chief Amre Moussa have called on U.S. President George W. Bush to “delay” the bill’s eventual implementation, Agence France-Presse reported (Roueida Mabardi, Agence France-Presse/Washington Times, Nov. 13). Back to top       Greece to Form Military WMD Response Unit for 2004 Olympics Greece plans to create a 200-member military unit to counter any potential biological, chemical or nuclear threats that could occur during the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 4). “We are ready to face any threat as a military, especially during the Olympic Games,” Greek Defense Minister Yiannos Papantoniou said.  Papantoniou also denied that other countries such as the United States were considering offering direct military support during the Olympics, saying there is “no official proposal” for outside military assistance (Associated Press/Washington Post, Nov. 12). Back to top       U.S. Senate Authorizes More Than $400 Billion in Defense Spending The U.S. Senate yesterday passed the fiscal 2004 billion defense authorization bill, which included a provision lifting a 10-year-old federal ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 12). The $401 billion bill would authorize $15 million for research into the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, which defense officials hope will be able to destroy deeply buried weapons of mass destruction and underground bunkers. Congressional Republicans have pushed for the new nuclear weapons research as a way to destroy WMD stockpiles but Democrats have said the move could strike a blow against nuclear nonproliferation efforts. The bill passed the House of Representatives on Friday by a vote of 362-40. The Senate voted 95-3 for the bill, which will now go to President George W. Bush for his signature. Democratic Senators Robert Byrd (W.Va) and Daniel Akaka (Hawaii) voted against the bill, along with independent Senator James Jeffords (Vt.). The bill “transfers vast, unchecked powers to the Defense Department while avoiding any break with the business-as-usual approach to increasing defense spending,” Byrd said (Associated Press/USA Today, Nov. 13). Back to top       U.S. Considering Easing Travel Restrictions on Libya The United States is considering whether to extend the current ban on travel to Libya, which is set to expire Nov. 24, for only an additional 90 days instead of for a full year, U.S. officials said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 3). A 90-day extension of the ban would give the Bush administration additional time to reconsider overall U.S. policy toward Libya, which the United States agreed to do after Tripoli formally took responsibility this year for the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, according to Reuters. The Bush administration might choose to end the ban altogether if Libya assures the United States that it is no longer developing weapons of mass destruction or supporting terrorism, the officials said (Reuters/New York Times, Nov. 13). Back to top       Pentagon Plans to Field 12 New WMD Civil Support Teams A senior U.S. defense official said last week that he would make recommendations “within the next month” on where the U.S. Defense Department should create 12 new National Guard WMD Civil Support teams (see GSN, April 12). In an interview with Inside the Pentagon, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul McHale said a major criterion for choosing the next 12 states to receive WMD Civil Support teams would be the states’ population densities. The Pentagon has also considered factors such as defense industrial base sites, “historical sites of national importance” and conference report language in the fiscal 2004 defense appropriations bill that calls for ports and coastal areas to receive “special attention,” he said. There are currently 32 teams certified nationwide, with two based in California, according to Inside the Pentagon. The fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill authorized the creation of an additional 23 teams, about half of which will be the 12 McHale is set to recommend to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (Jeremy Feiler, Inside the Pentagon, Nov. 13). Back to top

United States Decries IAEA Report on Iranian Nuclear Development The United States lashed out yesterday at an International Atomic Energy Agency report that describes hidden Iranian nuclear activities but concludes that Tehran was not attempting to secretly develop a nuclear weapon (see GSN, Nov. 12). The IAEA findings are “simply impossible to believe,” said U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton. “The massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities makes sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program,” he added. Bolton said that Iran’s attempts to develop an extensive domestic fuel cycle — from mining uranium to reprocessing plutonium — point to a military effort. “In what can only be an attempt to build a capacity to develop nuclear materials for nuclear weapons, Iran has enriched uranium with both centrifuges and lasers, and produced and reprocessed plutonium,” he said. “It attempted to cover its tracks by repeatedly and over many years neglecting to report its activities, and in many instances providing false declarations to the International Atomic Energy Agency,” according to Bolton. If Iran discloses all of its nuclear activities and allows unannounced IAEA inspections, it will “mark a major advance toward its integration into civilized society,” Bolton said. He added, however, that if Iran were to conceal its efforts and attempts to “lie to the IAEA, the international community must be prepared to declare Iran in noncompliance with its IAEA safeguards obligations” (Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13). Bolton said the international community “now has to determine whether Iran has come clean on this program and how to react to the large number of serious violations to which Iran has admitted” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Nov. 13). During a speech in Washington yesterday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Iran could develop a nuclear capability in one year. “We believe Iran can reach the point of no return in one year from now,” said Mofaz, who is in Washington to meet with senior U.S. officials. “From my perspective, the way that the U.S. (is) leading the effort to prevent this nuclear power in the hands of an extreme regime with long-range missiles has started to bear fruit. It’s necessary to continue with this effort,” he added (Janine Zacharia, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 13). The IAEA said the U.S. protests would not alter the report’s conclusions. “We stand by the report. But it’s confidential and will be considered at next week’s Board [of Governors] meeting,” said agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky (BBC News, Nov. 13). Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday that he supports the findings of the IAEA report and that he doubts the U.S. allegations of Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions. “I haven’t seen any evidence of that,” he said. “I don’t think these two reactors or a civilian nuclear program are a danger per se,” he added (Patrick McLoughlin, Reuters, Nov. 12). Russian Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Valery Govorukhin also rejected Bolton’s comments. “There are no reasons to affirm that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and, by so doing, violating its commitments within the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” Govorukhin said (Vasili Byelousov, ITAR-Tass, Nov. 13). IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said yesterday that Iran’s hidden nuclear development was an “eye-opener.” Sanctions, ElBaradei said, had slowed Iran’s efforts but had not succeeded in stopping them. “In the last five weeks (Tehran has shown) a complete change of heart,” he added. Pakistan Named Iran has told IAEA officials that it received expertise and equipment from Pakistan and several other countries in its effort to build centrifuges to enrich uranium, the London Times reported today. Iran now has the necessary knowledge to enrich uranium but the necessary facilities are still “probably a few years” from being finished, ElBaradei said (Bronwen Maddox, London Times, Nov. 13). Some experts are concerned about safety levels at Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Secrecy is the biggest enemy of nuclear safety,” said Najmedin Meshkati, a professor at the University of Southern California who has studied nuclear power plant accidents. Even if Iran were to cooperate fully with the IAEA, diplomatic tensions could keep Western technology and experts at bay, Meshkati said. In time, this could “result in a piecemeal assemblage of potentially incompatible parts of dubious reliability in an untested reactor of questionable Soviet-designed technology with no operational track record and obsolete safety systems,” Meshkati said. Iran had to ask the IAEA for assistance after incidents in 2001 and earlier this year in which control rods at its five-megawatt research reactor in Tehran became stuck. The IAEA urged Iran to modernize the facility but foreign companies were unwilling to help. The agency also attempted to organize a conference this year with Iranian nuclear officials and representatives from foreign regulatory bodies but the event was cancelled after 15 nations refused to participate (Dan De Luce, London Guardian, Nov. 10). Back to top       KEDO Will Make Nuclear Reactor Suspension Official Next Week The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization will officially announce next week the suspension of construction of two nuclear power plants in North Korea, the Korea Times reported today (see GSN, Nov. 12). The decision — made by KEDO members South Korea, the United States, Japan and the European Union — will take effect early next year. Chang Sun-sup, chairman of the KEDO executive board, denied reports that the suspension is actually the end of the project. The United States has said that it wants to end the project in response to North Korean nuclear weapons development. “Suspension doesn’t mean termination. It means we are bound to restart the project sometime,” said Chang, who is also the South Korean representative to the board. He said he expects work to resume after the nuclear standoff is defused. “Even if we suspend the project, it doesn’t mean work stops 100 percent,” Chang said. Dozens of workers are expected to remain at the site to maintain the site, according to the Times. KEDO Executive Director Charles Kartman is scheduled to travel to Pyongyang Saturday to explain the board’s decision to North Korea (Korea Times, Nov. 13). Six-nation talks on the nuclear crisis are expected to resume in mid-December, according to a senior Bush administration official. The official said that Washington expects an announcement after Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with North Korean leaders. Wang was in Washington for meetings last week (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Nov. 12). Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo met with Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Yukio Takeuchi in Tokyo today to discuss the next round of nuclear talks. Dai also met with Japanese Senior Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Ichiro Aisawa yesterday and told him that North Korea was ready to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs. “North Korea has the intention of abandoning nuclear (programs) and is pushing with economic reforms,” Dai said (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 13). Back to top

Officials Tour Decontaminated Brentwood Mail Facility Washington officials and two members of Congress yesterday conducted a tour of the decontaminated Brentwood Road postal facility, which was tainted with anthrax during the 2001 anthrax attacks, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, June 23). The facility is set to be returned to the U.S. Postal Service Nov. 28, AP reported. It could then resume initial operations by mid-December and return to full operation by the beginning of next year. “Every cent has been well spent, and we’ve got to make people understand that it’s safe to come in here and buy stamps, get mail and, yes, even work here eight hours a day,” said Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). “The building is safe as it can humanly be made, but we’d feel a whole lot safer if we caught the anthrax terrorist,” she said. Yesterday’s tour also included representatives from four postal unions that represent Brentwood employees, according to AP. While the Postal Service has given facility employees the right to transfer to other sites, union officials have said that many are willing to return to Brentwood. “My presence here today is a signal to the letter carriers that it’s OK to come back now,” National Association of Letter Carriers President Bill Young said (Derrill Holly, Associated Press/Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star, Nov. 13). Back to top

Russia to Begin Destroying Lewisite Stockpiles by End of This Month Sergei Kiriyenko, chairman of the Russian state commission for chemical disarmament, said Tuesday that Russia would begin destroying lewisite stockpiles on Nov. 25, according to ITAR-Tass (see GSN, May 14).  Kiriyenko also said the destruction of stockpiles of msutard at the Gorny chemical weapons disposal facility would be completed before a Nov. 20 deadline (ITAR-Tass, Nov. 11 in FBIS-SOV, Nov. 11). Russia has increased funding for the safeguarding and destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles three times so far this year, Russian Munitions Agency Deputy Director General Vyacheslav Kulebyakin said today. The additional funding has gone toward improving the “engineering safeguarding of facilities” and enhanced security measures, Kulebyakin said (Anatoly Yurkin, ITAR-Tass, Nov. 12). Back to top       Employee Error to Blame for Anniston Incinerator Evacuation An employee error is believed to be responsible for last week’s evacuation of a laboratory at the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator in Alabama. The evacuation was initiated after sensors detected the presence of sarin gas, officials said Monday (see GSN, Nov. 10). Officials said that a worker accidentally tested a live nerve-gas monitor, instead of one that had been set aside for maintenance. Investigators suspected an employee error because both the initial detection and a subsequent test detected the same level of sarin, said Donavan Mager, a spokesman for the U.S. Army contractor that is operating the incinerator. Mager said that slight variations in sarin levels would occur in two tests under normal conditions. All laboratory workers, however, denied making any errors until Monday morning, Mager said. “Management is looking at the appropriate disciplinary actions for the employee who was involved,” the Army said in a statement (Katherine Bouma, Birmingham News, Nov. 11). Back to top

U.S. Coroners, Medical Examiners Neglected in WMD Response Planning By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — More than two years after al-Qaeda’s assault on the World Trade Center demonstrated the possibility of mass fatalities resulting from terrorist attacks, U.S. coroners and medical examiners say they are being largely overlooked in attack response spending and planning ― a problem they say could greatly exacerbate the impact of an attack. Although a biological weapons attack, in particular, could present an urgent need to process large numbers of bodies while guarding against the spread of infection, coroners’ and medical examiners’ offices are rarely involved in disaster planning, are often not placed on priority lists for vaccinations and appear to have received next to no funding from the new Department of Homeland Security, according to experts in the field. Hard numbers on the phenomenon are scarce ― the department offered no response to repeated Global Security Newswire requests for data on federal grants to coroners and medical examiners ― but experts such as Frank DePaolo of the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner agreed that there appears to be a nationwide problem. “I bet, if you go around the country today, rarely do the coroners and medical examiners get involved in the planning. … As far as I know, the only money that’s come to any medical examiners or coroners on the planning side of this is through the health departments,” said DePaolo, who serves as mass fatality and WMD coordinator in his office. Faruk Presswalla, New Jersey’s medical examiner at the time of the 2001 attack, cited frequent complaints that DHS grants “never make it to the medical examiner.” The New York office sprang into action after the World Trade Center attack, creating a special mass fatalities team and training most staff to at least some degree. “We considered it urgent enough to have a team up and running in less than a year,” said Barbara Butcher, the office’s director of investigations. New York, though, is a rare exception to the worrying state of affairs described by DePaolo and others. Concern Growing about Staff Preparation, Handling of Bodies Coroners and medical examiners could become key players in responding to a WMD attack in several ways, including by helping to sniff out an incipient attack. Indeed, Presswalla described how he was able to recognize an anthrax infection in a New Jersey patient during the 2001 anthrax mail attacks because he had seen cases in his native India. Perhaps more likely to become central in response efforts, though, are coroners’ and medical examiners’ efforts to safely handle and dispose of contaminated remains. Improper handling and disposition of bodies could lead to “devastating” results, said Butcher, but with proper training and equipment, a coroner’s or medical examiner’s office could bring about “a miracle ― you could turn a horrible attack into a small, manageable event.” “What it all boils down to,” she said, “is public health. Mass fatality disposition is now, to my mind, a new discipline in public health.” In New York, the 2001 attack led medical examiner staff to a new understanding of what would be involved in responding to a biological or chemical attack. “The World Trade Center taught us that we’re on a new millennium now. … Mass fatality management became a new science. It always existed before, but now it was more of a science,” Butcher said. Butcher said unprepared medical examiner staff could exacerbate a biological attack primarily in two ways: by inadvertently spreading infection and by staying home because of an unfounded fear of getting infected. In the first case, workers using only ordinary precautions might transmit a viral hemorrhagic fever such as Ebola; in the second case, a medical examiner’s office could find itself with a growing pile of bodies but without the services of workers who do not know, as Butcher said, that “there is nothing to fear if you have the appropriate training and personnel protection.” “It’s either too much confidence or not enough confidence,” she said, summing up the dual threat. Traditionally, medical examiners investigate the cause and manner of death, identify bodies and, to a lesser extent, aid in disposition of remains. Remains processed by a medical examiner are subsequently turned over to relatives of the dead; a mass fatality event, though, could quickly overwhelm medical examiners’ resources in processing remains and, more importantly, make it dangerous to return remains to families. The World Trade Center attack left the New York office with about 20,000 pieces from roughly 3,000 bodies. About half of the 3,000 victims have been identified, but about two-thirds of the 20,000 pieces remain unidentified ― a potentially thorny situation for city officials and, according to Butcher, a cautionary tale about how important a coroner’s or medical examiner’s office could become in a WMD attack. At the World Trade Center, an ad hoc forensic setup emerged with impressive speed but was characterized by a lack of standard protection against infection for staff and an assembly line for processing that saw remains pass through many hands. “Picture it if all those remains were contaminated. … Each and every one of those remains would have to be decontaminated prior to being brought into the medical examiner’s office,” Butcher said. Adding to the problem, she said, is that “nobody has yet defined what clean or safe really is.” New York medical examiner staff have determined that a chemical agent “could be decontaminated” in “rather an arduous process,” Butcher said, but a biological agent such as smallpox would present a completely different set of problems. “There is no effective decontamination. Smallpox cannot be decontaminated, but we have to look, then, scientifically at the handling and disposition issues,” Butcher said. The latter are generating “a huge controversy right now,” according to Butcher, with some medical examiners advocating cremation as the only option in a biological event, others advocating double-sealed body bags and ― with appropriate body bags priced at several thousand dollars each and crematoriums few and far between ― seemingly everyone worried about a dearth of resources to implement whatever decision is made. Yet even in this price-constrained environment, the political element of deciding how to dispose of remains is likely to be predominant. “If we recommended cremation, which many people at the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] say is the way to go for anthrax, smallpox and the viral hemorrhagic fevers, then what of the families who say, ‘No, it’s against our religious beliefs?’ What cemetery owner would accept smallpox victims?” Butcher asked. “It’s the classic not-in-my-backyard syndrome,” she said, but “what are we going to do about it?” Even using an emergency declaration to make cremation mandatory ― theoretically possible in an emergency ― would not solve the problem, said Butcher, because of the small number of crematoriums available and the hours required to cremate even one body. “There are plans in the back of my mind for some things that we’d have to do, but they’re not pleasant,” Butcher said. Said Presswalla, who has handled smallpox outbreaks in cremation-friendly India, “The ideal would be a mass cremation, but in [the United States], where that would be looked at as an anathema, that would be a political decision. … I don’t think that individual burials, as is the normal standard, should be the procedure to be used, because then, bodies are being transported to different places. You are in great danger of having contamination.” In Virginia, where a state-level Office of the Chief Medical Examiner dealt with the aftermath of the Pentagon attack on Sept. 11, 2001, a decision about how to dispose of remains in a biological attack would be “based on the facts at the time,” according to Rochelle Altholz, state administrator in the examiner’s office. “Depending on what the biological agent was, there would need to be a decision made in conjunction with the state health commissioner and maybe even other political figures … as to whether people would need to be cremated or would there be a mass burial,” Altholz said. Altholz said the state has made no specific decisions, such as the identification of burial locations, on how to handle such an event. “It would need to be a political decision higher than us,” she said. Funds, Training, Integration Seen Lacking Despite the centrality of their services to WMD response, coroners and medical examiners tend not to train extensively for an attack, to be well-integrated into local emergency response systems or to possess equipment and other resources they would need in an attack. Butcher said most offices are “just becoming aware” of their importance in terrorism response and must join her office in becoming “proactive.” Meanwhile, even forward-thinking medical examiners find it next to impossible to secure outside funds for attack planning: The New York office has received “zero outside funding” for its post-Sept. 11 efforts, said DePaolo, despite submitting at least four grant applications in the past six months alone to DHS Office for Domestic Preparedness. “Historically, the medical examiners and coroners have not been considered part of the first response community,” DePaolo said, “and, as a result, it’s very difficult to see funding come our way, because it results in, typically, funding being taken away from what is otherwise recognized as the first response community.” Unsuccessful in obtaining direct federal funding, the New York office has created a small special operations squad, the core of which is 30 workers with high-level hazardous materials training. The office also tries to provide all its staff with at least some “awareness” training about mass fatality events and has had personnel trained around the country in federal programs. But even in New York, the country’s biggest city and the site of the main attack on Sept. 11, the medical examiner’s office is far from satisfied with the resources that have been accorded it. “So far, so good ― we’ve got the plans, we’ve got the people, we’ve got the training,” said Butcher. “The only thing we don’t have right now is the equipment. Budgetary restraints have made it difficult for us to obtain the equipment for those 30 people to work in Level A,” she said, referring to the highest level of contamination in which her team is trained to work. Under current planning, New York Police Department equipment would be made available to the examiner’s office. Nevertheless, Butcher is seeking about $200,000 to purchase protective equipment for her office. “My fear,” she said, “is that, should we face another incident of the magnitude of the World Trade Center, there may not be enough equipment for the Police Department and the medical examiner.” The office has also focused on cooperation with other city agencies and has been integrated into the city’s new mass fatality response plan. Some workers in the medical examiner’s office received smallpox vaccinations after traditional first responders were given the opportunity, and the office has been compiling research from various federal, state and local agencies into a constantly updated list of mass fatality recommendations. Overall, budget constraints have kept the office from doing everything it would like to do in planning for an attack. If New York has failed to obtain everything it wants, though, it still appears well ahead of most other offices around the country. “We’ve been told that we’re so far ahead of the curve here,” Butcher said. The Virginia office works with the state Health Department to drill for emergencies, plan and acquire equipment. The medical examiner’s office employs investigators who would track deaths in an attack and oversee identification of remains, and district medical examiners’ offices have special plans and some protective equipment. Staff have been offered precautionary vaccinations and are on the state’s priority list for emergency immunization in an attack ― “But it did require some work to get us on that list,” Altholz said. “We have enough supplies to get started,” she said, “but there would definitely have to be supplies brought in or acquired quickly if an event happened.” She said her office is “always” seeking more funding ― just now, for example, the office wants to buy a medical examiner response vehicle. Overall, Altholz said, “We do feel that there needs to be more concentration on death events.” Resources for disaster planning have increased since 2001, she said, but “it’s been a lot more on the whole system.” “We would love to have more resources. We obviously feel our work is very important to public safety and public health,” Altholz said. As DePaolo pointed out, though, a lack of resources does not exempt medical examiners from the need to plan, and some important steps require little money. DePaolo said most coroner’s and medical examiner’s offices are “underfunded, undersupported and have not put in the time to understand what is going to be required” when mass fatalities occur. He said the offices should at least know “what it would take,” however, and can draw on DHS programs such as the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams, which respond to calls for help in disaster areas, and the Center for Domestic Preparedness in Alabama, which provides free WMD training for first responders. New York medical examiner personnel train regularly at federal sites, but few coroners’ and medical examiners’ offices are represented at the sessions, said Butcher. “Mostly,” she said, “the traditional first responders are going. … I never saw another medical examiner staff person there from any other part of the country.” Officials at the Center for Domestic Preparedness and at neighboring Noble Training Center, whose training programs focus on medical workers, indicated there is little if any medical examiner or coroner participation in their training courses.   John Hoyle, program manager at Noble, said he has space, expertise and equipment to train coroners and medical examiners for mass fatalities but that DHS’ Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate would have to develop the necessary curriculum. Whatever training or resources a medical examiner’s or coroner’s office may have, though, the most important step in terrorism preparedness is simply to have a plan, sources agreed. Presswalla said having “plans to get the material that we need” is more important than having the material itself. Butcher said offices should develop at least a “template,” and DePaolo said other offices should look to New York for information, which it is “happy to share.” Meanwhile, there appears to be little national coordination of efforts to educate and train coroners and medical examiners and to secure more funding for their terrorism preparedness. The U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command’s Improved Response Program has released a draft document on mass fatality management in WMD events, and the National Mass Fatalities Institute is another oft-cited resource for training and documentation. The institute is fairly small, though, and medical examiners and coroners are only one of many groups it serves. The National Association of Medical Examiners has published a mass fatality plan for its members, but its president, Michael Bell, appears resigned to the status quo when it comes to medical examiner involvement in terrorism planning. “The reality,” said Bell, “is how can you prepare for something which really can come in any type of form? … Let’s face it, most medical examiners’ offices don’t get a lot of money. We’re lucky to get what we have, and a lot of times, that’s not enough.” “Unless you have the funds for [equipment], and to train [for] how to use it, then I’m not sure” it is useful, said Bell. He added that “you also have to kind of weigh … what kind of agent would be involved. I mean, I’m not about to jeopardize the lives of my people just because everybody’s rushing around to get to ground zero.”   Back to top

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