Death Certificate Delays Add to Grief in Air Crashes

The scenario is almost routine: A plane crashes and rescuers fan out in a frantic search for survivors. Soon, somber investigators confirm the obvious: No one is alive.

Yet, officially, no one is dead until a coroner issues a death certificate, or the courts a ruling.

For those left behind, the process often spells a long, torturous wait: More than three months for James Hurd, whose son, Jamie, died in the 1996 TWA crash off Long Island, N.Y. Close to six months for William Burke of Ponce Inlet, Fla., who lost his son, Sean, in the 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam.

“You can’t have any closure when it keeps going,” said Jeri Crow of Edmonds, Wash., who lost her uncle and cousin in the Egypt-Air crash off Rhode Island last October. “When the world knows 217 people are dead and that there are no survivors, why should their families have to wait” for them to be pronounced?

In the case of Alaska Airlines, that pronouncement could come in the next few weeks. The Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to petition Superior Court to issue a declaration that victims are dead.

The need for a death certificate is more than an emotional one. Without it, next of kin are powerless to get into victims’ checking accounts, transfer title on property, collect insurance or execute wills.

At the same time, the bills keep coming. For some relatives, financial devastation is added to psychological trauma.

“It seems like another unnecessary assault, to not be able to have their hands around that piece of paper,” said Carolyn Coarsey-Rader, a University of Georgia professor and private consultant who trains airlines in helping families during plane disasters. In her interviews with family members, concern over death certificates often comes up, she said.

“People can’t get even settled in their mind as to what to do until they can get remains of their loved ones or at least have some kind of burial or death certificate,” said Los Angeles attorney Paul Hedlund, who estimates that half of his airline cases involve complaints involving death certificates or recovery of remains.

But without positively identified remains, medical examiners say, their hands are tied. Laws aimed at preventing fraud help make issuing death certificates a painstaking process, they said. Obstacles multiply when a crash occurs in international waters.

Judicial Relief Is Sole Alternative

Judicial relief, such as that sought by the Rhode Island attorney general two weeks after the EgyptAir crash, is generally the only method available to overcome legal impediments in disasters in which few bodies are recovered.

“It’s not consistent; it’s not something you can count on. It’s something you beg for,” Hedlund said.

Their frustration over the EgyptAir crash has prompted Crow and her husband, Michael, to ask U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) to craft a more expedient method for declaring plane-crash victims legally dead, preferably within 72 hours of the disaster.

The Alaska Airlines crash highlights the need for federal legislation, the Crows said.

Assistant Ventura County Counsel Don Hurley said documents will be filed within two weeks seeking the declaration of death for Alaska Airlines victims whose remains have not been found or identified. “We are trying to work this out as quickly as we possibly can,” he said.

Michael Crow and others say it’s taking too long. “Do you know what that does to us? No family should be put through that type of misery.”

Pasadena lawyer Ned Good, a 40-year lawyer specializing in airline litigation, agreed. “They must have had reasonable certainty about 40, 50, 60 people who were on board. That [declaration] should not be delayed because of doubt over any others.”

Enhanced technology, such as boarding-pass scanning and mandatory ID checks, has improved passenger and crew manifests, making it easier and faster to figure out who was aboard a downed plane, experts said.

Death certificates are “not something that people should have to spend a lot of time petitioning for,” said Rob Cox, of Chatsworth, who lost his 16-year-old daughter, Monica, in the TWA Flight 800 crash off Long Island.

“The bills don’t stop coming in because someone dies,” said John Kretz, of Munhall, Pa., whose wife, Janet Stamos, died in the 1994 USAir crash outside Pittsburgh. Kretz said he ended up using credit cards to stay afloat before all the legal issues around his wife’s death were sorted out.

Burke said he had to use inheritance money from his mother’s estate to cover the cost of his only child’s memorial, burial and tombstone after the Korean Air crash on Guam. Without a death certificate, the insurance company would not deliver on the life insurance for Sean Burke, of San Diego.

“Korean Airlines never even acknowledged that my son was on the airplane,” Burke said. “It’s just another thorn in the side, or a stab in the back.”

Delays in death certificates prompted a phone campaign by relatives of TWA victims a couple of months after the Long Island crash, said Hurd, of Severn, Md.

“Even though it was handled poorly in the beginning [TWA] did know who got on the airplane,” Hurd said. “We just put a little bit of pressure” on the medical examiner and elected leaders.

In September 1996, three months after the crash, Suffolk County Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Wetli issued death certificates for 29-year-old Jamie Hurd and 17 others unidentified at the time.

“In hindsight, when you’ve got a crash like you have with SwissAir . . . or even with TWA, after a couple of weeks, three weeks or something like that, it would be better to hold the inquest to issue death certificates,” Wetli said in a recent interview. At the time, identifying the 230 victims was more pressing, he added.

To help overwhelmed coroners, he said, it might be useful for the federal government to provide them a choice in cases of a mass disaster such as a crash: Handle the investigation yourself or turn the entire job over to a special national disaster team. Many might accept such help, he said, especially given the cost in time and money of investigating such accidents.

“In the case of Alaska Airlines, this is not anything that involves the people of Ventura. In the case of EgyptAir, it doesn’t involve the state of Rhode Island,” he said.

Improved coordination among federal, state and local authorities is already underway, fueled by the Family Assistance Act of 1996.

The measure, pushed through by relatives of plane-crash victims, has streamlined efforts to support grieving family members through counseling, referrals and crash investigation updates, all coordinated by the National Transportation Safety Board. It does not, however, set specific guidelines on the issuing of death certificates.

It’s a state issue, said Kendra St. Charles, who survived a 1992 USAir crash in New York City and serves on a task force involved with the act. Whether on death certificates or handling remains, “we tried to do what was in the best interest of everybody and yet not handcuff the people who were going to be in charge,” she said. “We felt with NTSB’s help it would be taken care of in a timely fashion.”

Compared with the pace in previous disasters, efforts on behalf of families in the EgyptAir and Alaska Airlines crashes have moved along quickly under the NTSB’s guidance.

Still, it was the Rhode Island attorney general whom Ventura officials called soon after the crash to get advice on how to handle death certificates, according to a spokesman for the Rhode Island attorney general.

The state’s top lawyer petitioned the court two weeks after the EgyptAir crash to have presumptive death certificates issued to waiting relatives.

“We were looking at the pain and anguish the families were dealing with,” said Bill Fischer, the attorney general’s chief of staff. “To let the families begin to deal with some healing, to begin to deal with insurance policies, to begin to deal with wills, we felt it best to put the presumptive death certificate issue up front.”

The action was bolstered by public pressure, said Paul Brouillette of Cottage Grove, Minn., who lost his mother, Marylou Sterner of Omita, Texas, in the crash. He and others reacted angrily to the possibility that the issuing of death certificates could drag on for months, if not longer, Brouillette recalled.

They confronted crash investigators about it, he added. “I said, ‘Is it not a fact that my mother and everyone else is on that airplane? Is it not a fact that you’ve called off any search and rescue operations? . . . If it’s a fact that everyone is dead, where are the death certificates?’ ”

Since the Rhode Island court’s ruling, most Egypt-Air families have asked for, and received, presumptive death certificates, although requests were still trickling in last week, Fischer said. Those certificates will be replaced with final ones if and when victims’ remains are identified.

To date, none have been.

Dealing With Grief and Bureaucracy

For 47 of the families of Alaska Airlines victims, identification came relatively quickly--within two weeks of the Jan. 31 disaster. But the others will probably have to wait for a court decision.

One California man said he was “one of the luckier ones,” because his family has received death certificates for all but one of the relatives lost aboard Flight 261.

The man, who asked not to be identified, described dealing not only with mind-numbing grief, but with a vexing bureaucracy of estate management, insurance claims and taxes.

“We’re real new with managing estates, and now we have two estates to manage,” he said. “So we are trying to figure out what to do, and unravel the trouble the accident created. . . . We’re still in the shock phase of it all.”

He added that he feels for families who are still waiting for legal confirmation.

In California, there is no law covering provisional death certificates, said Hurley, the Ventura assistant counsel.

Instead, officials will ask a Superior Court judge to legally determine deaths that have occurred using the state’s health and safety code. Another legal option would be for relatives to file for relief in courts located in the county where the victims had real or personal property, he said. A third way to get a death certificate without a body requires a five-year waiting period.

It might be a “very good idea” to have some sort of legislation to expedite the process, Hurley added.

Attorney Hedlund agreed. “These are the kind of things that should be debated by Congress and there should be a law drafted, but it should [include] input of coroners, input of insurance industries,” among others.

The federal government’s hands may be tied, however, said an aide to Rep. Inslee, who asked not to be identified. The Congressional Research Service has informed Inslee’s office that mandating states to deliver death certificates in a specific time period would violate the 10th Amendment, which bars the federal government from intruding upon powers reserved to the states. Establishing federal death certificates is also legally complicated, the aide said.’

A global solution would be better, said Hans Ephrimson-Abt, who heads the American Assn. for Families of KAL 007 victims. The group suggested to the International Civil Aviation Organization in January 1999 that it consider developing an international death certificate.

“It should be solved internationally, especially since many of those accidents are international,” said Ephrimson-Abt, of Ridgewood, N.J., who lost his 23-year-old daughter, Alice, when Soviet jets shot down the Korean Air jet in 1983. But “it’s not something they can do by themselves. They have to have [most] countries agree to this by treaty.”

Special correspondent Jessica Garrison contributed to this story.