Family Dentistry - The Loewe and Wright Way - Forensics, Cosmetic Dentistry, Implant Dentistry

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10.01.01
The Columbus Dispatch
Ohio Forensics Teams Helping Out in Tragedy
More than 300 of the dead from the World Trade Center collapse have been identified, but concerns abound that the deaths of thousands of others may never be confirmed.

The U.S. Office of Emergency Preparedness reported that more than 4,000 bodies or parts of bodies - out of just under 6,000 people missing - had been recovered as of Wednesday.

The remains are often fragmentary, and even with DNA matching, forensic experts say the task of identifying the dead could continue well into next summer.

Yet it's important to keep trying, whatever the costs or time involved, said Dr. Larry Tate, an Ohio State University pathologist who's spent the past two weeks helping the New York City medical examiner's office.

"The American public fully expects that there will be identification of loved ones," said Tate, director of OSU's Regional Autopsy Service.

"It's important for the families. A lot of people need to have that positive identification to know that their loved ones are dead."

Tate was among three dozen members of the regional Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team flown to New York by military aircraft less than 24 hours after the attack on the World Trade Center.

The 10 regional teams called in to help included doctors, dentists, funeral directors and anthropologists.

Fifteen members of Ohio's state mortuary-response team were dispatched to New York and the Pennsylvania crash site of United Airlines Flight 93, said Steve Gehlert, director of the Ohio Funeral Directors Association.

"A lot of our people get involved in the family-assistance side of this."

Three members of the Ohio Dental Association's forensic-dental team also went to New York to organize and computerize dental records brought in by families.

Software programs help dentists match tooth or jaw fragments found at the site to prior dental records.

"We've been training since 1989 for exactly this reason," said Cincinnati dentist Frank Wright.

Tate said his job was to retrieve tissue samples for DNA testing and escort the body bags as they were brought in, to make sure nothing was lost as the contents were moved from table to table for analysis.

The work is being done at the medical examiner's office near New York University, away from the Trade Center site.

DMORT members work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. They are usually rotated out at the end of two weeks and replaced by others.

Although these are people used to dealing with death and disaster, the scale of the Trade Center collapse and the forensic investigation are unprecedented in mortuary history.

Tate, who recently moved to OSU after 21 years as a deputy Franklin County coroner, said it's the worst calamity he's been involved in since the Jonestown, Guyana, mass suicide in 1978.

An Air Force major at the time, Tate was assigned to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology when the bodies of more than 900 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones were brought to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

In New York they were isolated, in a sense, Tate said. "And you have to understand that this is something I've done professionally for a long, long time, so it doesn't impact on me the same way."

Forensics requires a degree of detachment, said Dr. Daniel Jolly, an OSU dentistry professor who - as a member of the state dental association's team - expects to be called to New York in the next few weeks.

"It can get to you in much the same way as it does other people," Jolly said. "So you have to develop a thick skin and find a way to distance yourself."

Wright said it's impossible to ignore the immensity of this tragedy, regardless of one's experience.

He won't forget the dental records volunteered by one hopeful family, the set with the note clipped to the cover that read, in a childish scrawl, "Please find my daddy."