ABSTRACT
It is recognised that each disaster is unique in scale, causation and long-term effects, and as such different definitions have been published. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) classification of a disaster is focused on the humanitarian effort by declaring it ‘a sudden ecological phenomenon of sufficient magnitude to require external assistance’ (Noji, 1997). The ‘ologists’ literature adopts a flexible definition in terms of the number of individuals killed and commonly refers to a disaster as an episode in which the number of fatalities is in excess of that which can be dealt with using the normal mortuary facilities (Royal College of Pathologists, 2000). Another distinction is made between the causation of a large-scale incident, either man-made or natural, the latter being further divided in mitigable and unmitigable events (Udayakumar, 2009). Indeed, a disaster creates many challenges whether it is man-made or natural, including the identification of potentially large numbers of deceased and the humanitarian response to identify the deceased and restore family links and social interactions within local communities.
