BLOOMSBURG, Pa. — More than 50 coroners, deputy coroners, and medical examiners were at the Bloomsburg Fairgrounds on Thursday but were not there for an emergency.
Coroners from all over Pennsylvania gathered here for a mass-fatality training exercise.
"If a major-fatality incident would happen like a plane crash or a train wreck, how we would process that high number of deceased in a timely manner and dignified manner," Columbia County Coroner Jeremy Reese said.
Reese, the vice president of the Pennsylvania State Coroners Association, helped organize this training.
"It's an opportunity that we don't get to exercise this type of thing a lot, but we need to because obviously if something happens like this, every coroner wants to get it right and not have anything go wrong for the family in what's the most horrible of times," Reese said.
The training was done in three phases. First, the coroners started by processing the incident scene, which in this case, was a plane crash. After that, the death investigators went to a makeshift morgue.
"They're walking through simulating the autopsy, photography, radiology," Reese said.
The third part of the exercise was a family-assistance center.
"As coroners, we never know what's going to happen. We never know what's coming down the pike. If we don't get training like this, we're not as well prepared to serve families and reunite folks when a mass tragedy happens," said Wayne County Coroner Edward Howell.
"If there were a major event anywhere in the state, we could deploy and assist our fellow coroners in everything from the morgue operations to field operations to family-assistance center," Sullivan County Coroner Wendy Hastings said.
The coroners tell us they hope they never have to put this training to use, but they feel prepared in case they do.
Check out WNEP's YouTube channel.