The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force hosted a three-day Disaster Victim Identification Investigator certification and Mass Casualty Management workshop on July 19th 22nd, 2021.
Facilitated by the UK National Disaster Victim Identification Unit (UK DVI) and funded by the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the sessions were conducted at the Gustavus Lightbourne Sports Centre on Providenciales.
The training was aimed to develop and train key staff in Mass Fatalities Management to meet the demands of a mass casualty incident in the Turks and Caicos Islands in line with international standards.
Commissioner of Police Trevor Botting said, “The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force, together with our partner agencies, are committed to ensuring that we are well-equipped to deal with emerging threats of mass casualty incidents and future needs. Our most recent incident that involved the discovery of a boat with human remains is an example of why this training is timely as well as our ongoing human trafficking concerns with illegal migration”.
“I would like to use this opportunity to thank the FCDO and the UK DVI team for their support. We are grateful for the training. A special thanks to the Training Unit in the Force, who did an extraordinary job organizing and ensuring everything was in place for the sessions”, added Commissioner Botting.
The sessions combined theory and practical exercises and covered disaster scene management, disaster victim recovery, post-mortem investigations and documentation processes in line with Interpol disaster victim’s guidelines and standards to aid victim identification.
Fourteen officers from Providenciales, six from Grand Turk, one officer from South Caicos, an officer representing North Caicos, and representatives from the TCI Regiment were all trained to attend mass casualty incidents and correctly recover, package and process victims for further forensics investigations.
The week-long training initiative ended with a Multi-Agency Mass Fatality Coordination that took place on Thursday, July 22nd, 2021, targeting the relevant department heads of the RTCIPF responsible for incident management, other government agencies that included the Governor’s Office, the Department of Disaster Management & Emergencies (DDME), TCI Environmental Health Department, TCIG Fire Department, TCI Regiment and the TCI Red Cross.
This training is the first of its kind in the Turks and Caicos Islands, with the Turks and Caicos Islands being the second country in the Caribbean to receive the same from the FCDO.