Emergency services invest €125k in mobile morgue system

The emergency services have invested €125,000 in a mobile morgue and body storage system for mass fatality emergencies in the southern region.

The Flexmort system was deployed for the first time yesterday at Collins Barracks in Cork — one of two designated national mortuary sites — as part of a major inter-agency exercise involving multiple deaths following a massive explosion at a large industrial site on the outskirts of the city.

It will be deployed in crisis situations involving 15 or more deaths at a single event.

Assistant chief fire officer David Spillett said preparation for such incidents is vital.

“We have a great inter-agency relationship in Cork and the focus of this exercise will ensure that we are prepared to deal with any incident on this scale, to be best of our ability,” he said.

Inspector Finbarr O’Sullivan said all involved would hope they will never have to use the Flexmort system.

“But if we do, we know that we have the right equipment and have planned for such an eventuality,” he said.

The need for the system was identified following a review of the emergency response to the Manx2 air crash at Cork Airport in February 2011 which claimed the lives of six people.

Given capacity limitations on the morgue and pathology facilities at Cork University Hospital (CUH), the review concluded there was a need to identify an off-site location and an appropriate storage facility system that would maintain integrity of the chain of evidence and respect dignity of the deceased.

An extensive consultation process followed involving the gardaí, HSE, local authorities, coroners in Cork City, Cork county, and Kerry, assistant State pathologist Dr Margot Bolster and morgue staff, and the CUH crisis response group, and funding was secured to buy the Flexmort system.

Housed in a large refrigerated container, it can be deployed from the back of a truck by the Defence Forces. The heavy-duty structure can be inflated in minutes. Its body-racking system can store 56 bodies in the refrigerated structure. The system includes two standalone refrigerated containers, increasing body storage capacity to almost 100.

In the event of larger casualty numbers, a national plan will be triggered involving the intervention of a Dutch firm to set up an even larger body-processing site.

Undertakers were also involved in yesterday’s exercise to ensure the specialised ‘disaster victim identification’ process is done as quickly, professionally, and sensitively as possible.

The ultimate aim is to ensure that when grieving families are brought to the site for the difficult formal identification process, it can be done as sensitively as possible before the bodies are transported to CUH for postmortem. It will also help streamline the process leading to the formal release of the body to the family, or the repatriation of remains in certain circumstances.

The Flexmort system also provides for long-term storage of bodies or body parts, pending formal identification.