Butte County Sheriff-Coroner's Office Mass Fatality Plan

Butte County Sheriff - Coroner’s OfficeD- Roles and ResponsibilitiesThe Butte County Sheriff-Coroner is in charge of human remains recovery and isresponsible for developing the best approach to managing personnel, equipment, andresources to affect recovery, identification and disposition of mass fatality victims. Insmall incidents, the EOC is not typically activated and the Coroner will likely be theIncident Commander. In large scale events, the EOC is activated to manage the variousagencies and multiple missions that are involved. In these events, the Coroner may beassigned as the Director of the Coroner’s Service Branch. If the event is caused by aninfectious disease, mass causality, and/or hazardous materials release, the Health Officerwill work with the Coroner in unified command or as the Medical/Health Branch Officer.Note: Commercial airline accidents and suspected domestic terrorism are the exceptions.These incidents are managed by the FBI Evidence Response Team. They providepersonnel and management for the search and recovery of human remains, personaleffects, and accident-related wreckage, with the local jurisdiction augmenting response.The following positions support the Coroner in the County EOC:Health Officer -The local Health Officer is delegated the responsibility for both theenforcement of public health laws and regulations and to ensure that all emergencyoperations enacted to mitigate the public health emergency are compliant with local, stateand federal regulations.Legal Officer/County Counsel - The County Counsel becomes the Legal Officer whenthe EOC/ DOC are activated. He/she provides legal advice to the EOC Director, theIncident Commander, the Health Officer, Coroner and other command staff members inall legal matters relative to the emergency and assists in the proclamation of anemergency.Plans Section Chief/Personnel - Assures that the Legal Officer is provided with IncidentAction Plans for review of proposed tactics and strategies for legal compliance.Operations Section Chief/Personnel - Assures that all legal considerations are includedin all tactical and strategic decisions and those legal issues and concerns that ariseduring operations are referred to the Legal Officer.Three primary responsibilities will need to be assigned by the Coroner:Human Remains Recovery Unit Leader - Oversees the collection and documentation ofpostmortem remains, property and evidence at the incident scene.BCS-CO Mass Fatality Plan 14July 2009