“Let’s keep walking,” he said. Emilio Donat before ending the call. This forensic doctor moved to Valencia on November 1, as part of the team of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (IMLCF) of the Community of Madrid which works in the area affected by DANA.
As he himself assures, he is “a little older”. This is not the first time that he has been confronted with an event causing several victims: participated in the identification work of the 11-M and in the Spanair accident. He nevertheless admits to EL ESPAÑOL that it is the first time he has visited “a setting like this”: “It is very impressive to see people alive”.
It’s about “a disaster different from the one you may have experienced before“. Both during 11-M and during the Spanair accident, he encountered “a very large flow of corpses”, but this happened “at the same time”. That is why, from the very beginning, he felt “a lot of intensity” about the accident removing the bodies and performing autopsies.
These tasks then decrease, unlike what happens in Valencia, where the scenarios “change”: “Today may not be the same as tomorrow”. This also influences the fact that the identification of bodies takes place, unlike on previous occasions, in less confined spaces: “Here we are talking about entire populations“.
No room for ambiguity
Another of the difficulties he recognizes is the duration of the removal of corpses. In this case, they take “more time” than necessary, because accessibility to the areas concerned is “very complicated”. “AND what must always come first is the safety of the teamwho does very laborious work.
The work of forensic experts from different regions of Spain was coordinated by the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Valencia. As Donat explains, his job included “attending body removal procedures, performing forensic autopsies, and working at the Data Integration Center (DIC).” “Fortunately, activity decreases more and more during the first two“.
The CDC is where victim identification is carried out. According to him, there is no delay in this regard. But they are carried out in a very exhaustive manner: “We cannot to make a mistakeand even less so in an event causing several victims.
Believe that if you make a mistake like this It would be “terrifying” for those who have “the obligation, both from a legal and social point of view, to hand over the bodies to all relatives”.
Exhaust all possibilities
The fingerprint is an element key to identifying a victim for forensic medicine. But, as Donat points out, they place “a lot of importance” on data. ante mortemthose that families present through the report of disappearance. The information obtained during the removal of the corpse, during the external examination of the body, is also essential.
Forensic scientists use the term “submerged” to recover a body from a liquid medium. Although, on this occasion, there do not appear to have been any deaths due to submersion: “We recover bodies from muddy environmentit is therefore probable that they died by asphyxiation, due to the occupation of the respiratory tract by a pasty material.
There are also deaths due to trauma. Even if in a disaster like the one that occurred by DANA, the first days must be oriented towards identification. “Knowing the cause of death is secondarybut no less important.” Identification is essential because over the hours, “the corpse will deteriorate, transform into organic matter”.
If this happens, other techniques will need to be used, such as a dental study or DNA samples. “It will be a long time before we run out of options. to not achieve an identification”, presumes Donat. Currently, according to the latest data from the CID, the autopsy has been carried out on a total of 208 bodies. Among them, 167 are fully identified (140, by fingerprints foxgloves; and the rest, by DNA).
They are missing 41 still unidentified. The vice-president of the IMLCF of the Community of Madrid hopes that “shortly” they will carry out practically all possible identifications. “From there, it’s a question of catching up, because we’re not talking about an event in which we find a lot of victims at the beginning. It’s different, it’s different,” he says.
It is for this reason that he believes that, from a technical point of view, he is ready -either at least, “you adapt“—. From a human point of view, however, you can “never” be. Donat returned to Madrid on the afternoon of November 6. It is not excluded that he will have to return to Madrid again. Valencia In the meantime, he continues walking.
