FAC Presentation Text only)

1. 1 This is a story about a young man, Johnny Butler, and his journey from his home to the
University of Rural Alabama (TURA) as in “Toora, Loora, Loora.” (John Sings) ADVANCE
2 It is April 24, and this is the Great State of Alabama and the pre-civil war county of Cotton.
Being an old county, Cotton County is located in the rural Black Belt of Alabama, the old
cotton-producing region. By nature, Cotton County is rural – very rural. There aren’t that
many people here – except during the school year where the population is swelled by the
enrollment of the University, a former State Teacher’s College, founded somewhere in the
distant past by Miss Julia Tutwiler and funded by Governor Bibb Graves. ADVANCE
3 This is the Coroner of Cotton County, Quincy Seben, III. He is the owner and operator of
Loving Care Brown Service Funeral Home. As Coroner, he has a budget of $7,000 per year
and a staff of two, counting himself and his Wife, Sammie.
He doesn’t know it, but he’s about to be overwhelmed. ADVANCE
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2. 4 "What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and
illuminate our times... all things are as they were then, and you are there.” That’s where I
come in. ADVANCE . I work here . . . I carry a badge … I’m the FAC Director. My life, too, is
about to get interesting. ADVANCE
5 Now, this is Johnny Butler, a bright kid from Crenshaw County, Alabama. He’s a whiz at
math and science, the kind of kid that has a real future. He can go anywhere he wants to go,
so his teachers tell him. He’s from the grand ole Butler family, a family that came to
Alabama, via Charleston, S.C. in the 1700s from Ireland. In Ireland, the Lord Butler was the
Chancellor to the King. Perhaps one day, Johnny will be the Chancellor of a great university
. . . Perhaps not.
Johnny’s been selected from all the other kids in Crenshaw County to compete in the
State Science Fair at the University of Rural Alabama. He’s excited to go. On April 24, his
parents proudly leave Crenshaw County to take him and to drop him and his project
display off at the gym. He’ll spend several days living in the dorm as the TURA students
are on spring break and is showing his project in the great hall of the gym with all the
other bright students from the rest of Alabama. This is the proudest day his family has
seen – that will change. ADVANCE
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3. 6 Now, this is the University of Rural Alabama, the home of the “Fighting Okra,” the
defending NAIA basketball champions. Their gym is a showplace for a college of this size.
They’ve put a lot of money into it so it will look special. ADVANCE Of course, with tight
budgets, some cuts had to be made here and there – in this case, some of the cross-
members in the ceiling and roof were substituted with lesser-grade materials. Nobody will
ever see them and since there’s no snow in Rural Alabama, the roof doesn’t have to
withstand very much weight any way. As we later learn, some of the wall material turned
out not to be quite as flame-retardant as advertised. Oh, and the water for the showers is
heated by natural gas.
These will turn out to be fateful decisions.
April 25. ADVANCE .Here, you see all the science projects proudly displayed in the gym –
hundreds of them, presented by hundreds of kids – black and white, Asian and Latino. “Fat
kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks. Tough kids, sissy kids. Even kids with chicken
pox.” All to be viewed and judged by a blue ribbon panel of scientists including one Nobel
Laureate, Dr. David J. Wineland of the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado.
This trip will be an eventful one for Dr. Wineland. ADVANCE .
Here, we see a group shot of but a few of the students – all bright, all promising, all have
miles and miles of future ahead of them – or do they.
Moreover, ADVANCE .Johnny Butler is in the middle of it all, a handsome, winsome,
articulate young man who’d make a great physicist some day. He’s particularly interested
in showing his project, ironically, “The Physics of the Wind,” to the famous Dr. Wineland.
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4. It is now April 26, and some problems begin. ADVANCE .A Cold front has begun moving in
from Northwestern Arkansas and a Warm Front up from South Louisiana. There may be a
bit of “weather.” There is some consideration concerning cancelling the rest of the
conference, but the logistics of it all will not permit that, so, school authorities agree to go
on with the Fair. The day is spent in final preparation for the judging on the next day.
Johnny is honored to have dinner (ADVANCE )that night with Dr. Wineland and they do
discuss physics and wind. Johnny is excited beyond belief and Dr. Wineland is more than
impressed with the young man.
However, in the night, problems really begin to ensue – ADVANCE there will be blood.
ADVANCE
7 ADVANCE. April 27 dawns with ADVANCE clouds overhead and high aloft – ominous
clouds, foreboding clouds, the kind of clouds you know are up to no good. It’s a hot and
sticky day for April, even in Rural Alabama. The humidity is very high and the air has a
strangely electric feel to it.
The kids are all gathered in the gym, hundreds of them with their projects set up on
the floor. They are all spit, polished, and ready to be judged. Everyone just knows that he or
she is a winner. Dr. Wineland is the Chief Project Investigator. He begins to lead his team of
judges as they methodically observe each project and question the students about the
projects. Meanwhile, the school caretaker, Harlan Regis, gets concerned even though the
students are completely unaware that outside, the sky goes from blue to hazy, to gray, to
charcoal, to black – to green. ADVANCE. Like the proverbial freight-train, an horrific EF-5
tornado bears down on the campus. It has the school in its cross-hairs. ADVANCE.
Before the kids can text “OMG”, the gym becomes the black of a bulls-eye: ADVANCE
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5. windows blow out, doors suck in, seats come un-moored – ADVANCE and then that terrible
crack as the roof-span gives way dropping every bit of its one ton for each 80 square feet of
concrete on the once-prized parquet floor smashing beautiful science projects and
sandwiching once-innocent children. ADVANCE.
8 ADVANCE
The falling roof crashes through the floor and ruptures the gas main, the pilot light from
the hot water heaters ignites the surging gas and the rubble, still blowing up billows of
concrete and sheetrock dust, becomes one giant ignition chamber. Like the “tick, tick,
ticking” of a timer, the gym explodes sending some of its bricks, each one bought by an
alumnus, all the way across the campus. The explosion (ADVANCE) is immediated by a
flash fire that mushrooms as though it were a bomb.
In 20 seconds, it’s all over. The “Mother of All Alabama Tornadoes” moves on to wreak
more havoc on Cotton County and then lift back to the clouds that bore it on “buzzard’s
wings.” However, the all-consuming fire continues to burn unabated until it self-consumes
in a matter of minutes.
Who can survive this inferno? ADVANCE
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6. 9 They say that every disaster is first local, and I guess that’s true, but this one rapidly turns
into a state and ADVANCE national event. First on the scene are the ADVANCE local police
followed by every member of the volunteer fire department. Officer Bill Gannon is first to
grasp the magnitude of this calamity and, remembering his ICS training, immediately
assumes the role of Incident Commander, a role he soon surrenders to Fire Chief, Stephen
"Bull" McCaffrey.
Cotton County EMA, which was monitoring the gathering tornadic event on weather
radios, is notified by Incident Command that great numbers of fire-rescue personnel are
going to be needed ASAP, PDQ, instanter, stat, rattle-dags. As EMA calls out rescue
personnel from nearby fire departments and rescue squads; Likewise, EMA has calls,
through the Regional Law Enforcement Taskforce for every police officer available in the
county to establish a perimeter. Fire squads extinguish the remaining blaze that soon
burns out when the gas company closes off the gas line. no
The building must first cool before rescuers can take the time to cut through the rubble
of smoldering, crumbled concrete and steel to find survivors. Volunteers begin to arrive
and assist (some, of course, injuring themselves.) Ambulances requested through EMA,
draw near and start taking away those who can be saved. Some can – but many can’t. They
will first head for the nearby County General Hospital, a 25-bed primary care hospital that
notifies ADPH to activate AIMS to take the surge.
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7. Various hospitals in the State come on-line and notify the State Trauma System and
AIMS that they can receive incoming. The Trauma System guides EMS personnel with
casualties to some-distant hospitals. At the end of days, the scene of what can best be
described as a ”Skyfall” witnesses a veritable “alphabet-soup” of agencies summoned to
perform their various tasks. ADVANCE
10 Miraculously, some do survive. One such is Dr. Wineland who is found wandering, covered
with dust and ash completely dazed. He has somehow survived and has, himself, dragged
clear a number of now-nameless children, some still alive – some not. Asked to come back
later to TURA to receive an award for his meritorious service, he declines, never able to see
such a sight again. After this event, he will retire to his farm in Wyoming. ADVANCE
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8. SLIDE 11 Later, much later, when the smoke clears and the dust settles, the scoreboard
which once counted free-throws, dunks and bank-shots, now counts casualties -Sixty-
Seven Dead . . . One hundred Eighty-Five Injured – men, women and children. ADVANCE
12 At this point, a volunteer organization which started with funeral home directors and
other mortuary personnel is alerted by EMA – SMORT, the State Mortuary Operations
Response Team was formed for “a time such as this.”
Quincy is acquainted with SMORT through his training with the Coroners’ Association. He
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9. remembers that SMORT is composed of funeral directors, funeral employees, coroners,
other trained personnel, as well as administrative support staff, and security personnel;
And it has a number of responsibilities under the direction of the Coroner whom they
assist. These responsibilities include:
•provision of temporary morgue facilities
• victim identification,
Decedent processing and preparation for disposition of remains to funeral home directors
at the request of families. NO.
SMORT has available to it personnel that can provide additional services such as forensic
dental pathology and forensic anthropology to aid in identification of remains. It works
closely, He learns, with the Funeral Home Director’s Association, Alabama Board of Funeral
Service, the Alabama Department of Forensic Science and ADPH as well as with local
coroners/medical examiners.
SMORT is patterned after the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team
(DMORT), which is administered since 2007 by HHS, National Disaster Medical System
(NDMS.) Like DMORT, SMORT has a two-part process that utilizes a sophisticated
computer program for matching physical characteristics.
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10. If necessary, the families of the decedents provide as much information about their loved
one as possible: medical or dental records, X-rays, fingerprints, photos or descriptions of
tattoos, clothing and jewelry; blood type information and objects that may contain the
decedents’ DNA, such as hair or a toothbrush. NO.
SMORT provides or procures hot/cold running water, electricity, HVAC, adequate and
secure drainage, parking, communications, and security.
The information gathered, called antemortem, or "before death" information, is entered
into a computer program called VIP (Victim Identification Profile), which is capable of
assimilating 800 different item categories, including graphics, photographs and x-rays. As
forensic scientists (pathologists, anthropologists, odontologists) examine the recovered
remains, they enter their findings - called postmortem data—into VIP.
Coroner Quincy is aware that this mass casualty event could be determined to be of
national importance or might exceed the capacity of even SMORT. That being the case,
DMORT could be activated to assist, by HHS at the request of ADPH or through AEMA
through EMAC, Interstate Mutual Aid overseen by FEMA. ADVANCE
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11. 13 Coroner Quincy knows that SMORT is administered by the Cullman County EMA where
Phyllis Little is the Director and Kelly Allen is her Deputy. Doug Williams, a funeral director
in Cullman is the statewide SMORT Commander. It utilizes only volunteers, but receives
certain funding through ADPH from ASPR. Tim Hatch oversees the grant.
SMORT has 50 personnel divided into 5 regional teams of ten persons. It has five large
inflatable tents, three mobile units and three refrigerated trucks. All will be needed at this
scene.
“Funeral home.” That has an ominous ring to it doesn’t it. Yet, funeral homes in the State of
Alabama are about to be busy. Sixty-seven Alabama children and adults are lost is less than
one minute.
ADVANCE
14 One such student is Johnny Butler, lost in the melee’. Like hundreds of other families, the
worried Butler family hears the news and drive quickly to the scene, clogging the highway.
And like all loved ones, they want to find out whether their son is alive . . . or not. Only
time and work, a lot of work, will tell.
ADVANCE
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12. 15 When the Butlers arrive at the scene, they find a policeman and tell him who they are and
ask if there is any information on Johnny Butler. The Red Cross, called by EMA and in
coordination with a branch of SMORT called the Family Assistance Center or FAC, has
established a temporary place for families and friends to go. This is the Victim Information
Center (VIC.) At the VIC, which has been hastily located at the municipal auditorium; the
family finds many other worried and concerned families, some food, some organization
and what little information there is.
The municipal auditorium is close to the scene, perhaps too close. Bearing that in mind,
EMA, in coordination with the FAC, establish a Center, the Family Assistance Center, at New
Bethlehem, a local United Methodist church which is on the other side of town and
unharmed by the monster-storm. ADVANCE
16 FAC staff are trained to quickly activate the Center following the event as they have here.
Over the next few days, they will provide critical and secondary services to the 5 to 7
expected family members of each of the victims. The FAC will partner with a number of
sister agencies and will at all times maintain a high degree of sensitivity and respect for
both the family and the lost loved one. Perhaps most importantly, the FAC will provide a
place of security and serenity away from the prying eyes of the media and the gawkers.
None such will be allowed in FAC at any time, not on my watch any way.
In the end, the FAC will be the families’ life-line to information as it becomes available, to
sanity, and will begin to build the bridge to coping with what is to come. ADVANCE
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13. 17 Staff of the FAC will assist SMORT in identifying victims through conducting antemortem
interviews, will provide comfort and assistance to families, and will refer family members
for spiritual or psychological counseling, medical assistance, and material needs. ADVANCE
18 The SMORT staff consists of the County Coroner/Medical Examiner who is the Incident
Commander, the SMORT Commander, the FAC Executive Director (FACED) and Deputy
Director, the Chief of Professional Personnel (ChoPPs,) Family Assistance Representatives
(FARs), the Chief of Operations (Ops,) Antemortem Interviewers (AMIs,) Antemortem Data
Entry Personnel (ADEP,) Administrative Staff (Admin,) and the Chief of Logistics (CoLog).
ADVANCE
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14. 19 ADVANCE
At the FAC, families will see these faces: Doug Williams, the SMORT Commander; ADVANCE
Debbie Gaddy, R.N., the Deputy FAC Director; ADVANCE
Dr. Bill Morgan, the Autauga County Baptist Director of Associational Missions and Chief of
Professional Personnel; ADVANCE
and your FAC Director. ADVANCE
Dr. Morgan supervises the Family Assistance Representatives, the to-be-determined Chief
of Ops supervises the Antemortem Data Interviewers and the Chief of Logistics who will
be FAC’s answer to MSgt. Bilko, the scrounger who can procure it . . . Just don’t ask him how
or where he got it. ADVANCE
We are currently actively recruiting both a ChoPPs and a CoLog as well as FARs, AMIs and
Admins. Our goal in recruitment is to fill out the table of organization and equipment
(TO&E) with a racially and culturally diverse team that includes people of different faiths,
genders and disciplines who are best suited for their particular assignment. ADVANCE
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15. 20 Also assisting with the administration of the FAC are Maury West and Stephan Mambozo of
ADPH. ADVANCE
21 In this event, New Bethlehem was transformed into the FAC with a number of service
areas, all designed to accomplish its two major goals, taking care of the families and
assisting SMORT to identify decedents so that ultimately, there can take place the sad
reunion as the families are assisted in taking their loved one to their own funeral home.
The service areas include a reception/screening checkpoint; a waiting area; a large family
briefing room; a place for victim identification services and data entry/computer
operations; and general operations, childcare, staff break, and family feeding
areas.ADVANCE
22 Just who is a “family?” The working definition of victim and family groups is broad in
scope. The Red Cross, National Transportation Safety Board and the military all define
“family” as anyone that the primary victim’s family considered to be a family member. If
other words, if they say they are “family,” we won’t question that. Of course, in a disaster of
this magnitude, there might have to be limits placed on the size of these “families.”
Whoever self-define as “family,” as in this case, they will or may present desperately
seeking information, physical and emotional comfort, hydration, meals, and protection
from media. In fact, though great emotion is not always immediately present in families,
the Butler family appeared dazed or numb. We know that each of them will gradually go
through stages of denial, hope, and then grief and despair. Our job is simply to be there
with them and for them.
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16. At the TURA disaster, we, the FAC staff find some family members to have irrational beliefs
regarding the survival of their loved ones in face of certain death, which is common and
not abnormal in early stages of the event. NO.
We even have a few individuals, none of the Butler family, though, who experience stress-
induced physical or behavioral symptoms of such severity that we have to refer them to
other providers for urgent and immediate care.
We learned through this that acute stress symptoms such as confusion, the presence of
intrusive memories, increased anxiety and a sense of disbelief will be present even in some
of those who directly experienced or witnessed the incident. ADVANCE
23 At New Bethlehem, each family had assigned to them a Family Assistance Representative
(FAR) who served as their guide on this perilous and sad journey. Like all FARs, the Butler
Family FAR, Miss Henrietta Mears, ministered to their needs, helped them procure things
they needed and generally served as their “next friend.” The FARs exuded a sense of safety,
calm, efficiency, community, and connectedness to social support. Above all, they provided
the Butlers and the hundreds of others like them with hope. Where there is no hope, there
is only despair. No one should despair in the FAC. ADVANCE
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17. 24 The Butler Family has material needs as well as emotional needs. Miss Mears and the FARs
through FAC have many resources upon whom to call should the need arise. EMA is the
gateway, but people services are provided by Red Cross, Salvation Army, denominational
disaster ministries, especially for Alabama’s FAC, The Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief
Ministry consisting of Chaplaincy, child care, and food service (food supplied either by Red
Cross of Salvation Army.) The Baptists even provide temporary shower units and self-
contained clothes washing trailers.
Most faiths and denominations have on-call clergy who can give spiritual counseling. EMA
can provide mental health/social worker counseling if need be. All these resources and
more are available to the families through the FAC. And, it’s the FAR’s job to see that they
are connected. ADVANCE
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18. 25 If the FAR refers a family member for mental health counseling through EMA/Red Cross,
they may need psychological first aid - comfort care over and above what our FARs have
been trained to give. A family member could also need crisis intervention support to
provide opportunities for family members to make decisions to regain control of their
lives, psychological education on stress symptoms and coping as well as casualty support
such as connecting with support systems, decision-making on disposition of remains or
spiritual care interventions by Disaster Chaplains or local clergy of the appropriate faith.
ADVANCE
26 The second, perhaps toughest, task facing the Butler family will be assisting SMORT
through FAC in identifying remains. In this event, we have already witnessed search and
recovery of remains and an assessment by Coroner Quincy of the condition of the remains.
Some will be easy to identify, some will not. You know, but the Butler Family does not
know, that what has already begun is the identification process. In this process, forensic
experts, if necessary, will assess the length of time it might take to make a positive ID and
what methods (esp. DNA) will be needed.
Certainly, involved in the process is antemortem data collection involving the making of
decisions about the release of remains to the family and receiving information on
identification of common/unidentified corporeal fragments. Likewise, the Coroner is
already working with due deliberate speed to determine an exact cause or manner of
death for each decedent that has been identified. ADVANCE
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19. 27 After the Butler Family became comfortable with their FAR, Henrietta Mears, also a
member of the Alabama Baptist Disaster Response Mission, they met with an FAC Staffer,
Mr. Richard Cavett, an Antemortem Data Interviewer (AMI) who led them through the
delicate process of obtaining data that helped SMORT, Coroner Quincy and the ADFS Staff
identify a young man who was finally and sadly determined to be Johnny Butler.
Miss Mears is with them throughout this process. While AMIs move from family to family
gathering information on the VIP form, FARs stay with their family until relieved.
ADVANCE
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20. 28 Behind the scenes at the FAC and out of view of the grieving families, the antemortem data
which has been collected by AMIs such as Mr. Cavett is entered into a data collection
system set up and installed in the FAC by the IT staff of ADFS. This information is
uploaded to the ADFS HQ in Montgomery where the antemortem data is matched with the
post-mortem data. The goal is to create a putative match. While ADFS suggests the match,
Coroner makes the final call since this is his County and his responsibility.
The system allows the FAC Ops to query the system periodically for reports on putative
matches so that Coroner Quincy can be constantly informed as to the status of remains
since he must report to the public, the press and most importantly to the families on the
status of identification of victims.
Data released outside a family is general in nature. Only the data that pertains to a
particular family is released to the family. General informational sessions are held in the
FAC as needed when facts become available. What one family knows, every family knows,
except as it pertains to an identified decedent. ADVANCE
29 ADVANCE
It is now April 30. ADVANCE
The victims are identified and Coroner Quincy makes his rounds notifying each individual
family privately. ADVANCE
Such is the case with the Butler Family as Coroner Quincy, assisted by the FAC Director and
the Family FAR, ADVANCE
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21. Miss Mears, notifies them of the truth of what they already knew – Johnny was one of the
fatalities. ADVANCE
If one can find good news in this, it’s that Johnny is intact and ready to be delivered to his
family for burial. There will be many wreaths on the doors of Alabama tonight.
ADVANCE X 4
30 Henrietta Mears and the Staff of the FAC begin to bid good-bye to the families as they have
completed the exigent portion of the mission, that being taking care of families and
reuniting them with their loved one. They have assisted the Butlers with making
arrangements with Turner Funeral Home in Luverne to take Johnny, to make final
preparations and to lay him to rest. This scene, too, is rehearsed over and over again.
However, their job is not over. ADVANCE
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22. 31 A vital part of this tragedy, as with many such tragedies, is the concept of rituals. In this
case, the FAC established a designated area for pictures, messages, mementos, and
tributes, such a flowers and teddy bears. The FAC staff assisted families with
memorializing those lost-ones through faith based services as requested by families.
It may be that some families will want to revisit the scene at a later time, though others
will want to blot it from memory. If the former is the case, the FAC will assist local
authorities in establishing memorials at perhaps one month and annual commemorations
until the need is gone. After the site is released, the FAC has a continuing mission to work
with local authorities to make visits, escorted by FARs, mental health and disaster
chaplains to the site where loved ones died. If requested by a family, the FAC will assist the
family in obtaining remnants from the such as rubble that is free of human remains and
toxic materials.
With the help of the Red Cross and mental health professionals, the FAC will endeavor to
give special considerations for children: drawings, letters, additional support if attending
services and memorials. ADVANCE
32 Johnny Butler was one of 67 victims of that end of days at the University of Rural Alabama,
but he was one. To his family, while they regretted the loss of the other 66, they grieved
and grieve the loss of the one. It is said that “the loss of a loved one turns our life upside
down. Our world as we knew it has changed and those changes require that we in turn
adjust to a new ‘normal.’”
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23. Perhaps it is also true that one who lives in memory is never really “lost,” but is forever
“saved.” That’s the Mission of SMORT/FAC; Though many are “lost,” all are saved. It was a
great honor to have had a small part in saving Johnny Butler.
ADVANCE
33 What did we learn today? We learned that victims’ families must be identified quickly and
given access to information and services that are victim sensitive and easily accessible. We
learned that there is a strong need for continuous flow of information delivered through
regularly scheduled family briefings and a pro active approach to family issues and
requests. We learned that consistent and equitable support to all victim family groups is a
challenge, but it is important.
Finally, we learned that the FAC, the “One stop” support center approach, was efficient,
provided a safe haven for families, and helped facilitate the victim identification process.
Does this sound like a mission you feel called to accept, a challenge you’d like to take, a set
of memories you’d like to create . . . and share, then . . .
ADVANCE
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24. 34 The FAC wants you! You can be a volunteer; I know you can do it. Heck, if I can run the
thing then anybody ought to be able to just take a part in it. To quote the great
philosopher, “Snoop Dog,” “here’s how you order. . .” ADVANCE
35 Just follow the directions.
ADVANCE
36 The end. NO
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