DNA Detection: It's no CSI, but it gives closure to victim families
By Harold Schapelhouman

I was reading an article recently on forensic detection and information databases when it occurred to me that my name may appear in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) database. The majority of those currently in the database are criminals or individuals who’ve been arrested. Although I’ve had some minor bumps in the road early on in my life, mostly for speeding, I like to think I’m a decent person, and I’ve never been convicted of a crime.

FBI Database Expansion
Popular TV shows, such as Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) and its more realistic partner, Forensic Files, have chronicled advances in investigation, accurate prosecution of criminals and exoneration of the legally innocent through the use of DNA cell samples, as well as the creation and coordination of large databases.

By 2012, the FBI database will expand from 80,000 individuals to more than 1.2 million people, as states begin to work with the FBI toward one common National database. The use of DNA detection and the recording of that information have expanded dramatically since first being used in the mid-1990s.

My DNA?
By now, you’re probably wondering how it is that I would have willingly given up a DNA sample since I’ve never been arrested and I very much respect and appreciate my Fourth Amendment rights.

In 2001, days after the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon, as our team prepared to deploy for New York, it was suggested that, based upon the potential risk of secondary attack, each of us should give a DNA sample so that we could be identified if something happened to us. Essentially, we all determined that should we be killed, we wanted our remains to be identifiable.

A company that takes DNA samples arrived before our departure, and each of us had the inside of our mouths swabbed so that they could obtain a cell sample. I don’t know what happened to all that data, but I’m guessing it was loaded into a database, which ultimately may have been given to the federal government.

Visiting a DMORT
In December, 2001, I traveled back to New York City for FDNY Chief Ray Downey’s funeral and to pay my respects to his family. Traveling with me was Deputy Director Mark Ghilarducci, who was with the California Office of Emergency Services (CAL-OES) at the time.While in New York, we also visited a mutual friend who was assigned to a Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, or DMORT.

Visiting a DMORT working both the WTC site and a major aircraft crash incident wasn’t my idea of fun, but it was both educational and fascinating. The team had identified almost 2,000 different DNA strands, or people, essentially, who were killed in the collapse of the WTC towers. Their ability to organize, collect, process, test and identify victims was impressive and amazing.

The families of those individuals who were lost were able to obtain legally important death certificates, collect critical life insurance benefits and most importantly, begin the process of finding closure. Finding out that a loved one has died is never easy, but it’s much better than not knowing what happened to that person. Being able to collect on death benefits, such as life insurance, can make a huge difference to a family that shouldn’t have to struggle both financially and emotionally.

Providing Closure
It’s easy to forget the lessons of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City Bombing, where the grim tasks of body and body part recovery were something we all tried to put behind us. Years later, putting it all into perspective, we were essentially giving families back their loved ones so they could truly try to move on with their lives.

The discovery of human remains, no matter how small, is critically important during the recovery phase, since all it takes is one single cell to determine who the victim was. No, it isn’t as sexy as they make it on CSI or as interesting as they make it on Forensic Files television, but DNA detection is a revolutionary science that’s vitally important to providing closure to families who may have lost someone in a collapsed structure, explosion, flood or other unfortunate disaster or event.

Harold Schapelhouman is a 29-year veteran firefighter with the Menlo Park (Calif.) Fire Protection District. At the start of 2007, he became the first internally selected fire chief in 21 years for his organization. Previously, he was the division chief in charge of special operations, which includes all district specialized preparedness efforts, the local and state water rescue program, and the local, state and National Urban Search and Rescue Program (USAR).

Schapelhouman was the task force leader in charge of California Task Force 3, one of the eight California USAR teams and one of the 28 federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS/FEMA) teams.



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