Managing Disaster Mortuary Services after the Maui Wildfires

When fires ravaged Maui and took the lives of 102 people, personnel from ASPR’s Office of the National Disaster Medical Systems (NDMS) Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams (DMORT) were deployed to support the decedent management aspects of the disaster. The experienced mortuary specialists on the team, along with regional response staff, assisted across the state with victim identification and respectfully processing human remains. ASPR TRACIE met with Robert Vigil, Deputy Team Commander, DMORT Region 9 (who spent three weeks in Maui and subsequently won the NDMS Director Jack W. Beall 2024 Responder of the Year Award) and Josh Gore, Supply Management Officer/Logistics Section Chief with the Logistics Response Assistance Team (who spent nearly four weeks there) to learn more about the logistics work that contributed to this award-winning response for Issue 20 of the ASPR TRACIE Exchange.