History
In the 1980s, the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) formed a committee to address the need for a way of dealing with mass casualty situations. The group had the goal of formulating a plan for funeral directors to deal with the situation. As the committee worked on the plan, it was revealed that such a situation would call for multiple forensic specialties. The committee created the first portable morgue unit in the country.
The committee's work came to the attention of the Federal Government following the complaints of families whose family members had been lost in airline incidents. The families felt that the remains hadn't received adequate treatment. The United States Congress passed the Family Assistance Act in 1996. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was assigned the role managing the Federal response to aviation disaster victims and their families. The division responsible for this response was the Office of Family Affairs, later renamed the Office of Transportation Disaster Assistance. The NTSB made use of DMORTs to handle large scale transportation disasters.
Following the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, the DMORTs were moved into the Emergency Preparedness and Response directorate as part of the National Disaster Medical System. In 2007 the National Disaster Medical System was removed from DHS and returned to the Department of Health and Human Services under the control of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. April 8, 2011 http://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/responders/ndms/teams/Pages/dmort.aspx
Read more about this topic: Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team
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