11-05-2025
Meet the experts sent overseas to identify human remains after tragedies
There is a specialist team of thick-skinned forensic experts sent overseas when tragedy strikes and Australian victims are involved.
They are known as the disaster victim identification (DVI) team, and they follow in the wake of mass-casualty events, working to reunite human remains with grieving families as quickly as they can.
But their tasks are seldom straightforward, with disaster zones often spanning kilometres, and bodies sometimes buried beneath metres of mud or debris — once boots are on the ground, they also race against the grim clock of bodily decomposition.
The DVI team is made up of 150 Australian Federal Police (AFP) members and has been deployed to the aftermath of mass-casualty events 15 times since it was formed in the early 1990s.
Members were sent to Indonesia after the Bali bombings and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, to east Ukraine where the wreckage of flight MH17 was scattered in 2014, and to New Zealand after the White Island/Whakaari volcano erupted off the northeast coast in 2019.
Just last year, they were sent to Papua New Guinea following a landslide in the Enga Province in May, and to Vanuatu following a devastating earthquake in December.
'Despite the horror and personal toll, it's incredibly powerful to return these victims to their loved ones and help bring even a small amount of solace during their grief,' AFP DVI commanders Rod Anderson and Dr Mark Tahtouh said.
'It can take months or years'
Forensic pathologists, odontologists, anthropologists and archaeologists are all among the DVI team.
Each time they are tasked with a new mission, they move through the same standardised plan to ensure global consistency regardless of the time, place or circumstance.
The first step is a safety risk assesment of the disaster zone.
Then, work begins to recover the bodies. This can take weeks depending on the scope of the disaster.
More than 220,000 people were killed in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami which impacted a number of countries.
Once bodies have been recovered, the next step is the post-mortem phase, during which the remains are examined in a mortuary.
This can involve visual scans for scars and tattoos, dental examinations, fingerprinting, and DNA profiling.
Because the various stages of recovery and identification require a number of different skills, 'some members have expertise as crime scene examiners, fingerprint examiners or biologists, while others have policing and investigations expertise,' the AFP notes.
'The longer human remains are exposed to the elements and decomposing, the harder it is to retrieve viable forensic evidence,' Tahtouh said.
'It can take months or years to identify remains and we understand how painful that can be for families. Our role is also to manage their expectations and provide emotional and physical support.
'Mass-casualty disasters are often accompanied with challenges in accessing the disaster zone, unfavourable weather conditions, and the destruction of information and communication technology (ICT) and basic services.
'The sheer violence of a disaster can also make finding remains challenging. An example is the MH17 wreckage, which lay in a conflict zone and spanned over 125 sq km.
'It took three weeks for the first victim to be identified.'
Samples from loved ones
Next comes the ante-mortem phase, during which family members of victims are interviewed.
Family can bring along DNA samples of their loved ones, or items that belonged to them, like jewellery or clothing — this all helps DVI members to identify the human remains.
This stage can be difficult when entire families have been wiped out by disasters.
That was the case when Tahtouh was deployed to Papua New Guinea in May 2024, after a landslide in the Enga Province buried more than 150 houses — and entire families — in mud and rubble estimated to be up to 8m deep.
In that case, only nine bodies were recovered and visually identified, according to the AFP, due to the challenges of accessing the site and compiling reliable lists of those missing.
Tahtouh said DVI is not a quick or easy process, with potential misidentification the biggest concern.
Once the post-mortem and ante-mortem evidence matches, the DVI team can move onto the reconciliation phase, during which a coroner will decide when a body can be released to the family.
The final step — a debrief — takes places after the operation has finished, with operational and psychological sessions for all team members.
