Role of Forensic Anthropology in the Search and Recovery of Fatal Wildland Fire Victims

The search and recovery process of fatal fire victims is one of the greatest challenges in forensic anthropology, especially in large-scale wildland fire disasters. Burned human remains can exhibit significant variation in their degree of preservation depending on the temperature of the fire, the length of exposure to the heat source, and intrinsic characteristics of the victim (e.g., body size, age, and bone density). Wildland fire victims typically exhibit characteristics of the final stages of burning (i.e., nearly complete to complete calcination). The search for burned human remains is complicated by the size of the disaster area, the number of structures that need to be searched, collapsed roofs, building debris, interagency coordination, and insufficient information about the missing persons' population. While most forensic anthropologists have experience processing fatal fire scenes (e.g., residential fires, vehicle fires, burn pits), few have experience with the search and recovery of multiple fire victims from wildland contexts. This review discusses recently developed protocols for the search and recovery of fatal fire victims from wildland environments and how implementation of these protocols maximizes the likelihood of personal identification for all who are reported missing. Drought conditions associated with climate change are a major risk factor in wildland fires, and fire-prone areas are more likely to experience these events with increasing frequency in the future. Therefore, forensic anthropologists who work in fire-prone regions should be prepared to respond to disaster scenes in their service area and be familiar with wildland search and recovery protocols.