reply to post by remymartin
With the exception of the hijackers, I believe all the crew and passengers were identified by DNA extraction and sampling.
Walking in his gumboots, the only recognisable body part he saw was a piece of spinal cord, with five vertebrae attached.
"I've seen a lot of highway fatalities where there's fragmentation," Miller said. "The interesting thing about this particular case is that I haven't, to this day, 11 months later, seen any single drop of blood. Not a drop. The only thing I can deduce is that the crash was over in half a second. There was a fireball 15-20 metres high, so all of that material just got vaporised."
There have been other, grimmer, visitors. First the FBI evidence recovery team members came in. They had sieves built to filter the evidence, but especially the human remains, from the soil.
The bureau members stayed at the crash site for 16 days and recovered 230 kilograms of remains.
Searches of the area were conducted on hands and knees. Wallace Miller remembers seeing an agent, from Mississippi, in tears as he crawled forward. When the FBI left, it handed legal responsibility for the location to the coroner, who was left with hell's own clean-up.
Miller and workers from the company contracted by United Airlines to clear the site found some dental work among the piles of dirt excavated from the crater. They used fine sieves to work through the piles again and extracted a further 45 kilograms. When that was done, the soil went back into the crater.
That makes it a grave," Miller said.
In fact, he already knew this, through a calculation of a morbid mathematical problem.
He estimated the average weight of each of the 44 people aboard flight 93 was 79.5 kilograms, for a total body mass of 3500 kilograms. "We recovered 270 kilograms. Of that, we identified about 110. The main thing I've been saying ever since that is the area down there is a cemetery because 92 per cent of these people's loved ones repose there."
As the coroner, Miller's job description was simple: identify the remains, notify the next of kin, return the remains home.
In Pennsylvania, Somerset County coroner Wallace E. Miller and his team scoured the "halo"—the field and woods surrounding the crater left when United Airlines Flight 93 plunged into the ground. The debris was everywhere. Trees were draped with scraps of luggage, clothing, bits of the fuselage and human remains. Walking through the crash site in the days after the attacks, Miller's eye caught a flash of light 20 feet up in the branches of a hemlock tree. "I only noticed it because the sun happened to hit it at just the right angle," he says. A tree climber brought it down. It was a single tooth with a silver filling. Eventually it was matched to one of the passengers.
Originally posted by thedman
Walking in his gumboots, the only recognisable body part he saw was a piece of spinal cord, with five vertebrae attached.
"I've seen a lot of highway fatalities where there's fragmentation," Miller said. "The interesting thing about this particular case is that I haven't, to this day, 11 months later, seen any single drop of blood. Not a drop.
Why your obession with seeing pictures of the carnage> Do you have some morbid fascination?
Most organizations will not release gruesome pictures out of concern for the families....
so it appears that the 600 pounds you recovered really accounts for 4 people. that sounds very reasonable.
Originally posted by thedman
reply to post by wholetruth
So what corporate media would that be?
Here is the complete story from "THE AGE" dated Sept 9, 2002
It is an Australian newspaper or did you miss that?
www.theage.com.au...
"who got snatched out of their bodies really quickly".
"Right now, we're standing on vaporised remains," "This is a grave. This is a cemetery."
"It was the most eerie thing," "Usually, when you see a plane crash on TV, you see the fuselage, the tail or a piece of something. The biggest piece I saw was as big as this (spreading his hands less than a metre apart). It was as though someone took a tri-axle dump truck and spread it over an acre."
"I've seen a lot of highway fatalities where there's fragmentation," "The interesting thing about this particular case is that I haven't, to this day, 11 months later, seen any single drop of blood. Not a drop. The only thing I can deduce is that the crash was over in half a second. There was a fireball 15-20 metres high, so all of that material just got vaporised."
"That makes it a grave,"
"We recovered 270 kilograms. Of that, we identified about 110. The main thing I've been saying ever since that is the area down there is a cemetery because 92 per cent of these people's loved ones repose there."
"I didn't do any of that,"
"This became a job for a funeral director."
"We went through here on our hands and knees hundreds of times,"
"You could drive yourself crazy, picking this stuff up. But, by God, I tried. I did my best." Last November he was in the car park of his funeral home, talking to a client. "I found myself looking down in the parking lot, scanning for stuff."
"To make this some sort of tourist destination would be really disappointing,"
"I've got the feeling that's what's eventually going to occur."
"Kind of jolts you, if you're open to it,"
"I don't like this spot."
Why your obession with seeing pictures of the carnage> Do you have
some morbid fascination?
you swallow whatever you are told and ask for seconds and defend it like it came from some higher power.
In contrast, the remains of all 40 victims in the Pennsylvania crash and all but five of the 184 victims at the Pentagon site were identified months ago.