Alabama Mortuary Team Trains for Mass Fatalities

Jan. 25--Emergency and funeral workers from throughout the state converged on the Cullman County Fairgrounds Tuesday for a simulation exercise that's as necessary as it is gloomy: preparing to recover dead bodies in the event of a mass casualty event.

If that sounds morbid, it can't be helped. When bad things happen and lives are lost, someone has to step into action to begin picking up the pieces -- in every sense.

In Alabama, that someone is the State Mortuary Operations Response Team (SMORT), a group of five dozen or so volunteers from all over the state who meet annually to rehearse worst-case scenarios so they can be ready to act in the event of a deadly hurricane, accident, terror attack or any other conceivable mass casualty.

"This is all volunteer," said Cullman County Emergency Management Agency Director Phyllis Little, who coordinated Tuesday's exercise. "Nobody's paid. In fact, the only thing I can do while they're here is help them out with their [hotel] room. Our grant is for the training, and that's it."

SMORT was establish through an initial federal grant, and it continues to operate annually with renewed grant funding that Little helps administer. The team remains one of the few such units in the U.S., and has served as a model for other states -- mostly coastal states that contend with hurricanes -- as they seek to establish similar response teams of their own.

The program got its start in Cullman County.

"Our first grant was written in January of 2005," Little recalled. "But it was not approved until September, about 30 days after [Hurricane] Katrina. Nobody thought it was necessary. Then Katrina hit, and that disaster actually kind of jump-started the idea that this was necessary and important."

The grants have been approved each year ever since. They're not lavish -- last year's grant came to $10,000 -- but they've kept the program going.

Cullman continues to serve as the home base for one of the team's three mobile units -- which include portable refrigerated trailers that essentially serve as rolling mortuaries -- and remains the driving force behind the team's annual grant renewal process and its overall command hierarchy.

Local funeral director and former associate Cullman County Commissioner Doug Williams has long been the state commander for the SMORT team. He coordinates the efforts of team members, communicates with county-level emergency management agencies when real-world logistics come into play, and helps craft training scenarios like the one that played out at the fairgrounds on Tuesday.

"It's a testament to the people who do this that they participate voluntarily, for no pay," said Williams. "They're here because they want to be. A lot of these folks come from the funeral industry, and they understand what we're doing here. They're doing it because they give a flip. They're doing it to help people on the worst day of their lives."

Indeed, recovering human remains and ensuring the forensic integrity of bodies -- and body parts -- is a grim, behind-the-scenes and thankless task. But that's just fine with most of the team's members.

"When you get to be my age, you're okay with giving back in a way that's unacknowledged," said retired Birmingham funeral worker Ray Bischoff.

"When we came back from Rainsville, where they had a terrible tornado in 2011, I realized why we do what we do. Those people were devastated. When something like that happens, their minds aren't going to be on something like this."

(c)2017 The Cullman Times (Cullman, Ala.)