ABSTRACT
Disaster Victim Identification is the internationally accepted term to describe the processes and procedures for recovering and identifying the deceased in a disaster. A (major) disaster has been commonly defined as ‘an episode in which the number of fatalities is in excess of that which can be dealt with using the normal mortuary facilities’ (Busuttil et al., 2000) and as such is dependent on the local infrastructure and mass fatality protocols in place. Other authors have based the operational definition of a disaster on a subjective number of fatalities ranging from 12 or more (Knight, 1991) to 50 (Gilliland et al., 1986) in a single event. Indeed, the latter definitions ignore the impact of the event on the (local) community and relatives of the victims involved. The use of a subjective number is often justified by policy makers as the minimum number of fatalities after which a mass fatality response protocol must be activated.
