Identification of Bodies and Burial Fall in Hands of Haitian Government
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is leading the search and rescue operation in Haiti, says the grisly task of body identification and burial rests in the hands of Haitian authorities.
As bodies line the streets of earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince and the danger of disease grows more urgent, the task of removing the dead falls to a Haitian government as crippled as the nation it rules.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is leading the search and rescue operation after a 7.0 quake rocked the Caribbean nation Tuesday, told FoxNews.com that the grisly task of body identification and burial rests in the hands of Haitian authorities.
"USAID traditionally has nothing to do with that," spokeswoman Gina Jackson said in an interview Thursday, adding that the agency remains focused on rescue efforts -- not recovery -- as it digs through the rubble for survivors.
"If there are morgues in existence right now, they're being constructed by the Haitians -- not us," she said. "That's not traditionally our role."
Jackson said the agency has employed two highly specialized 72-person search-and-rescue teams -- Virginia Task Force 1, an international urban search-and-rescue team from the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department in Northern Virginia, and California Task Force 2, made up volunteers from The Los Angeles County Fire Department.
U.S. and Haitian officials are very worried that Tuesday's earthquake could spawn a second catastrophe -- an epidemic -- resulting from the tens of thousands of decomposing bodies buried under collapsed buildings. The International Red Cross estimated Thursday that 45,000 to 50,000 died in the quake, with 3 million others injured or homeless.
At least 1,500 bodies were reportedly stacked inside and outside the morgue of Port-au-Prince's General Hospital on Thursday, as many residents began pulling the dust-covered dead to nearby fields for burials.
"No community anywhere in the world is prepared for thousands and thousands of fatalities," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told FoxNews.com on Thursday.
Crowley said plans are under way to construct temporary morgues and implement a process by which grief-stricken family members can identify dead relatives -- though he did not elaborate on the delegation of responsibility.
"Our focus today is on saving as many lives as possible," he said of the American effort, adding that the rescue operation is a "shared responsibility" between the U.S. and Haiti.
"It's going to take weeks, if not months, to work through this process," he said.
Six volunteers have also been deployed from Zaka International, a Jerusalem-based humanitarian organization that rescues and recovers victims of terrorist attacks and national disasters.
The volunteers -- who are trained to recover and identify bodies pulled from the rubble -- are planning to assist the Haitians in building morgues and mass graves.
"They have a lot of experience and expertise in body identification," said Zaka spokeswoman Lydia Weitzman. She said the group's volunteers go to extreme measures to "respect the dead as much as respect the living."
"They will literally climb trees -- do whatever is necessary -- to get the last piece of body tissue or hair," she said. "They're among the first to arrive and always the last to leave."
Fox News' Bill Hemmer and Steve Harrigan contributed to this report.
