Last March, the United Kingdom contracted with the software company Gene Codes to use its Mass Fatality Identification System (M-FISys) for disaster recovery efforts and as a missing persons database.
But the Britons weren’t banking on needing it so soon.
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Missing posters line the walls
at Kings Cross for victims of
London's terrorist bombing.
Photo by ZUMA Press | |
In the wake of the worst terrorist strike in British history in London last week, Chris Maguire, a senior scientist at
Forensic Science Services (FSS) in London, placed a call to Gene Codes CEO Howard Cash at 5:30 a.m. on July 7. On July 12, Cash and one of his colleagues flew to London to set up the database.
Gene Codes, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., developed the M-FISys database after 9/11 to identify victims of the World Trade Center attacks through DNA analysis (see Soul Searching, Bio-IT World, September 2003). M-FISys was also used in the tsunami disaster of South Asia (see Tsunami Investigators Tap Gene Codes Database, Bio-IT World, April 2005).
Still, none of this is second nature to the Gene Codes team. Each disaster is accompanied by unique circumstances and complications, some of which call for last-minute upgrades.
“One of the things we’re working on right now are location markers,” said Cash, who spoke to Bio-IT World just hours before flying to London. “With the four sites in England, you don’t expect the remains of someone found at King’s Cross to also match with someone who was in the bus that exploded. We need meta data for what should and should not logically go together.”
File formats have also had to be changed since British formats differ from those in the U.S. “We had to make those changes very quickly,” Cash said.
FSS, which serves police forces in England and Wales, will be using M-FISys to match DNA samples provided by victims’ family members with remains found at the four disaster sites. So far, ten of the more than 50 bombing victims have been identified by traditional means. DNA analysis will only be needed to identify victims closest to the blasts.
“Forensic Science Services is one of the most respected forensic labs in the
world,” said Cash. “They don’t need our advice on how to collect samples or process materials. What we provide is bioinformatics and data handling.”
Unlike the tsunami and 9/11 disasters, the London bombings were confined to four relatively confined areas, which aids the recovery efforts. “This should not be a terribly long identification process,” Cash said. “The remains are not badly compromised like they were in the World Trade Center. These are not huge numbers or a wide geographical dispersion as with the tsunami.”
However, all of the recovered bodies and body parts in London must be X-rayed to determine whether debris or pieces of other bodies have been embedded into specimens by the force of the blasts. “Because it was an explosive device, more investigating has to be done on the site,” Cash said. “Bodies and pieces of bodies have to be X-rayed. That slows things down.”
Also slowing the effort are the conditions in the deep tunnels of the London Underground (subway) system. Temperatures have reached a stifling 140 degrees F, and progress has also been hampered by the need for isolation suits (to counter asbestos contamination) as well as myriad rats that have scampered onto the scene.
British authorities currently suspect that the terrorists traveled to London from West Yorkshire, and some, maybe all, of the suspects died in the blasts. If the remains of the terrorists are identified, they will promptly be escorted away from those of the victims.
“That’s been the tradition in the past,” Cash said. “I’m sure that will be the same in London. I think that’s just compassion on behalf of the families.”