Recovery and Interpretation of Burned Human Remains

Victim remains at fatal fire scenes are typically difficult to detect, recover and handle. Burned material at the scene is often modified to a similar appearance, and bones, in particular, become discolored, brittle, and highly fragmented. These remains are often missed, disturbed, altered, or even destroyed during scene processing with the existing protocols. This project addresses these problems by linking rigorous scene recovery and documentation methodologies with subsequent laboratory analyses (in particular, bone trauma analysis) of heat altered human remains from fatal fire scenes. The results of this project will facilitate the analysis of human remains at fire scenes and reduce the case backlog of unidentified human remains. ca/ncf