Coroner Gets Extra Help as Search Continues

The eight-person Ventura County coroner’s office, stretched by the day-and-night demands of identifying Alaska Airlines crash victims, has received administrative help that frees Coroner and Medical Examiner Ronald O’Halloran to concentrate on his forensic duties.

A flurry of body recoveries over the weekend led county administrators late Sunday to assign four managers to assume a variety of crash-related duties, officials said.

“This is a very, very heavy hit to have this kind of a burden on a relatively small office,” Harry Hufford, interim county chief administrator, said Monday. “The fact is that he needed more logistical support. . . . This was too much for his office to handle.”

Hufford said his office stepped in Sunday after a sheriff’s representative called a Hufford aide to ask for help. Deputies have assisted the coroner since Flight 261 crashed eight days ago, killing 83 passengers and five crew members. Hufford said he knew from the start that more help would eventually be needed in the difficult task of identifying dismembered bodies.

“They were getting more recoveries,” Hufford said. “It was clear they were moving into a much more demanding role.”

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Between 30 and 50 body parts large enough to identify without DNA tests had been recovered by late Monday. Body parts and fragments of human remains floating near Anacapa Island were retrieved in the first few days after the crash, then many more were retrieved during the weekend by three roving robot submarines searching the bottom of 700-foot-deep Santa Barbara Channel. Just four bodies have been recovered, and none has been publicly identified.

Since last Wednesday, O’Halloran’s office has received help from coroner’s assistants from several other counties and a 17-person team of pathologists from the U.S. Department of Health Services. Federal officials set up a portable morgue at Wharf 3 at the Port of Hueneme, helped counsel victims’ families and gathered medical records and other information to help in the identifications.

But by Sunday, it was clear that O’Halloran needed more administrative assistance, Hufford said, so that he could concentrate more on his primary role of examining victims.

“His job is to review the cause of death, to issue the death certificates and to ensure everything is preserved forensically,” the chief administrator said. “I’m sure people were working long hours and their nerves were stretched. . . . Everybody was tired and fatigued and there was some irritability.”

Hufford asked county Health Care Agency Director Pierre Durand, who is O’Halloran’s boss, to assess the situation. By the end of the day, after meeting with federal and local agencies assisting in the identifications, Durand had assigned four county health administrators to help O’Halloran.

Durand said O’Halloran remains in charge of the overall operation, although the newly assigned aides will now do much of the administration and interagency coordination.

“We’re all following his plan,” Durand said, “and making sure we provide the support he needs. I’d been expecting a call at any time to start phasing in administrative support. This is a 24-hour-a-day operation. There are two shifts of 12 hours each. And Ron has been working in excess of 12 hours a day. He’s doing a remarkable job.”

As administrative duties are assumed by others, O’Halloran will provide daily media updates. The Sheriff’s Department assumed that duty last week while O’Halloran oversaw all other aspects of the forensic investigation.

O’Halloran could not be reached for comment.

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Bill Woods, associate administrator at the county hospital, was appointed Sunday as O’Halloran’s executive officer and liaison to the federal disaster team of pathologists. Hospital operations officials Jonnette Duchai and Carrie Glenn will also assist O’Halloran, as will county forensic services administrator Bob Benedetto.

That leaves O’Halloran to function in his specialty.

O’Halloran last week set up a detailed identification process to catalog bodies, body parts and other evidence such as clothing and jewelry. The process has two main elements: the collection of information from the crash site and the assembly of records from victims’ families.

Once the crash evidence is examined, investigators then compare it to photos, X-rays, fingerprints and dental records. DNA tests are not done unless absolutely necessary, because they are expensive and often time-consuming.

The force of the MD-83’s crashing into the Pacific left many Alaska Air victims literally torn apart, but because the bodies are in better condition than previously assumed, DNA tests probably will not be needed on most of them, officials said.

Several hundred human remains had been recovered by late Sunday and as many as 50 of them had readily identifiable markings, including tattoos, dental work, fingerprints, scars, clothing and jewelry, officials said. Recovery continued Monday.

Sources close to the investigation say they are now confident that most of the victims will be identified, and that identifications will not take as long as in some previous crashes.

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For example, identification of all 230 victims in the 1996 TWA ocean crash off New York City took a full year to complete, with the final 15 coming through DNA tests of small bone fragments.

“They believe they are going to be able to provide virtually 100% of [victims’ families] with remains or partial remains,” said a source close to the Flight 261 investigation. “They are going to bring the bodies out before they bring up the [plane’s] structure. They’re focusing on removing as much of the human remains as possible prior to moving on to retrieving the structure.”