Identification of Bodies Proceeds at Agonizing Pace : Fatalities: Families and relatives of victims await word. Delays can add stress and postpone the grieving process, psychologists say.

In the days after a devastating airplane collision that killed 33 people, recovery and identification of the bodies has proceeded at a painstakingly slow pace, leaving relatives confused and anguished over the wait--which officials say is likely to get longer.

“It’s very difficult to even think about,” said Connie Gilliam, whose husband, Scott, was killed. “My brother-in-law took care of calling the coroner because I just wasn’t up to it.”

Families of victims--some of whom were still arriving in Los Angeles on Sunday--are being forced to cope with an especially drawn-out recovery effort in the wake of Friday’s USAir-SkyWest collision. Identification of some of the bodies is expected to take weeks or even months--delays that experts say will be incredibly wrenching for relatives.

While resigning themselves to the inevitable, some families are nonetheless grasping for concrete evidence, a final word that the victim is truly dead. Meanwhile, psychologists say that the delays prompt some people to postpone the grieving process, trying instead to persuade themselves that perhaps it was all a mistake.

“It just raises your stress and anxiety level to tremendous heights,” said Robert Scott, an Encino psychologist who is coordinating the Red Cross’ volunteer effort to counsel the families of victims. “It’s very difficult. During all that time you’re going through scenarios: Are they alive? Maybe there is a chance. So the process of acceptance is delayed.”

Bob Dambacher, spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, said his colleagues have been fielding hundreds of calls from anxious relatives and friends of the victims.

“It’s a very trying time for the families,” Dambacher said. “They feel helpless.”

It took workers 36 hours before they could begin removing most of the bodies from the wreckage. By Sunday night, the coroner had received the remains of all 33 bodies.

None of the victims has been officially identified by the coroner, although airlines and other authorities did release the names of the 12 SkyWest victims, as well as USAir pilot Colin F. Shaw.

“The families should know this is going to take time,” said Samuel Douglass, a Los Angeles mortician who serves as liaison among the coroner, airlines and families. “It’s a very complicated process.”

The job of determining the number of dead, and then recovering and identifying the bodies, has been fraught with difficulties from the outset of Friday night’s crash.

According to SkyWest officials, it was not until midnight--nearly six hours after the crash--that families of the 10 passengers and two crew members aboard the SkyWest plane were notified that there probably were no survivors. SkyWest spokesman Ron Reber said it took the airline nearly an hour after the crash to learn that its plane, flattened under the belly of the much larger USAir Boeing 737, was involved.

“The thing that made it the most difficult is we knew there were (crash) survivors, we knew people had been taken to area hospitals, but nobody had a survivors’ list,” Reber said. “We only could tell families there are survivors, and we only hope and pray” that their relatives were among them.

To make matters worse, emergency operations had to be suspended Friday night so that volatile fuel could be removed from the USAir jet. The recovery of bodies did not resume until about noon Sunday, after mechanics had drained most of the fuel from the aircraft. The airlines encountered further delays in obtaining a crane to lift the tail of the USAir jet off the wreckage of the SkyWest plane, but the recovery operation proceeded more smoothly Sunday afternoon and the remainder of the bodies were recovered.

Connie Gilliam knows better than most the difficulties of such operations. Her husband, who was a passenger on the SkyWest plane, worked as an air traffic controller. She said she is trying her best to be patient with the slow pace of the recovery effort.

“I understand the circumstances, with the USAir plane and its position on top of the aircraft my husband was on,” she said. “I know that they have to be careful in moving aircraft. I don’t like it, but I know all the formalities.”

Others found it too painful to comment. A man who answered the telephone at the home of crash victim Bryan Martin said: “Until they pull his body out we have no comment to make.”

The slow process can be as stressful for the emergency workers as it is for the families. Fire officials said they had their own psychologists on the scene to counsel workers, among them civilian mechanics, who are not accustomed to handling such disasters.

“It’s painful for us,” said Battalion Chief John D. Badgett of the Los Angeles Fire Department, who has been on the scene almost continually since the crash. “We know there are family members on the other end, waiting and hoping and it’s difficult, it’s difficult on the emergency workers.”

Experts say it is especially hard for relatives to cope with the grim facts of death in an airplane crash. Alan Davidson, a San Diego psychologist who counseled families in the Cerritos air crash in 1986 and the PSA jetliner crash in 1978, said relatives were haunted by what had happened to their loved ones.

“It’s not a pretty death,” he said. “It’s not clean. It’s not grandma dying in her sleep. It’s a situation where the body integrity is lost, so that you have body parts and dismemberment and such around the site of the aircraft, and that seems to add a different perspective to people’s emotions. It seems to be much more stressful than what we might call normal death. This is unpredicted death, chaotic death.”

Officials at USAir and SkyWest said they are doing what they can to help relatives cope. Both airlines are following what seems to be a standard industry procedure: They have brought in a group of executives and assigned each one to work with a specific group of families.

Each executive acts as a liaison with the coroner, telling the family what details are needed for identification. In addition, the families are being referred to grief counselors, if they request, and will be aided in making funeral arrangements.

“Basically, we have done whatever we can to make a very difficult situation be OK,” said USAir spokeswoman Agnes Huff. “We want to cause as little additional grief as possible.”

Identification of the dead may come from the unlikeliest of clues--tiny scars, pieces of jewelry, old bone fractures and moles--as well as more traditional methods, such as dental and medical records.

In the Cerritos crash, one woman was identified solely because of a token found in her pants pocket. The token was from a video game in a bowling alley where the woman was an avid bowler.

“We want to know age, sex, race, height, weight, hair, eyes, teeth, jewelry they could be wearing, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, lapel pins, tie tacs, type of clothing they may be wearing, color of clothing, scars, tattoos, deformities, moles,” said Dambacher, the coroner’s spokesman. “We ask about operations. Does this man have an appendix? Has this lady had a hysterectomy?”

It will be up to the families to describe these minute details to the coroner’s investigators, a process that can be traumatic in and of itself. There is one thing that the coroner is not asking families to do--identify the bodies.

Most of them were burned beyond recognition.

SKY WEST PASSENGERS, CREW

SkyWest commuter airline passengers and crew who are presumed dead in Friday night’s collision at Los Angeles International Airport:

1. Michael Fuller, Palmdale

2. Scott Gilliam, Palmdale

3. Judy Janisse, California City

4. Capt. Andrew Lucas, Pismo Beach

5. Bryan Martin, Palmdale

6. First Officer Frank Charles Prentice III, San Luis Obispo

7. Ed Reid, Palmdale

8. Ed Riddle, Lancaster

9. Debbie Roberts, Azores Island, Portugal

10. Krishani Srijaerajah, Palmdale

11. Jeff Steen, Palmdale

12. Randy Wilburn, Palmdale

Note: Positive identification by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office has not yet been completed. However, confirmation through ticket list, in-flight manifest and next of kin contacts provide reasonable assurance that the list is accurate and complete, according to airline officials.