Mount Ida College

Mount Ida Funeral Service Graduate Takes on Solemn Southern Task

September 23, 2005

by Roslindale West Roxbury Transcript, Staff Writer Lindsay Crudele

For 16 days, Mike Flynn slept in the back of a refrigerated truck that would soon be used to transport the dead bodies of Hurricane Katrina's victims.

     Flynn traveled to Gulfport, Miss., with FEMA's DMORT - Disaster Mortuary - Team to help recover and identify the dead. After being drafted to some of modern history's grisliest tragedies, he said that the devastation in the South is haunting him as some of the worst he has seen.

     "It's not the easiest work out there. It's very emotionally draining and physically draining," said Flynn. "Two weeks is about all one person can take."

     He said that after his return last Thursday, he has been resting a lot, and trying to keep busy in order to keep his mind off the images he absorbed. "But there's always that unknown that we might be going back down there," he said.

     Flynn was activated on Aug. 30 for his more than two-week stint in the South to Gulfport, over which the eye of the storm passed, and where a 35-foot tidal wave decimated residents.

     Flynns' team was responsible for receiving, transporting and working on identification of victims. Most bodies he saw were victims of drowning and from being hit by flying objects. They worked 12-hour shifts from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., processing the dead through various stages, administering X-rays and dental exams and collecting DNA.

     A crew of interviewers would compare notes from conversations with families - called antemortum information by DMORT - with information from medical examiners, down to details such as tattoos, or prior surgery.

     "It was total devastation. There's nothing left there," he said. "Everything is just gone. People's lives were just turned upside down and inside out. Whatever they had is gone now, whether it was their house, their places of employment, cars, and in some cases, sadly, their families are gone. Total devastation."

     Flynn said one of the most frustrating things about the task was being chased down the street by people desperate for help with their homes and other recovery needs, but his team was limited to the work they were assigned.

     "They would see that we're FEMA, but they don't understand that we're there for mortuary operations," he said. "It's tough to tell someone that we can't help, that it's not our area."

     Flynn worked with DMORT recovering bodies at the site of the 9/11 attack in Manhattan, the crash of Flight 587 in Queens, N.Y., the Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, R.I., and in January, he went to work in Phuket, Thailand after the tsunami that killed thousands.

     "What you see on the news doesn't even compare with what you see in person."

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