'District administration did not follow procedures'

Unfortunately, the district administration according to experts, has failed largely in handling the situation systematically. A forensic expert who performed autopsy on bodies of vic tims in this regard, on conditions of anonymity, informed Deccan Herald that in case of such massive tragedy, the first and foremost duty of the district administration is to put up a temporary casualty on the spot or at close proximity and have a medical team with doctors from all specialities, including forensic expert constituted and deputed. This was not done at all.

Cold storage

Further, the district administration must see to it that a 50-body capacity cold storage is established in the mortuary in one place, for convenience of relatives of the victims, as well as the medical teams working on the issue.

The expert informed that in Mangalore though the bodies were taken to the District Wenlock Hospital, the irony is that Wenlock does not have a cold storage unit functioning. The unit went kaput about two months ago yet 100 bodies were taken to the hospital. While some were kept in the mortuary, several were kept outside due to which the bodies had putrefied.

He suggested that the district administration should have distributed at least 20 bodies each to five big medical colleges in the City, which could have solved the problem of keeping bodies in cold storage to a large extent.

Lack of professionals

“Each of the five medical colleges have cold storage of 12 bodies’ capacity. In case of emergency, 20 bodies can be handled in each medical college. But less than 10 bodies were sent to these medical colleges and instead, bodies were taken to small hospitals across the City, which neither have infrastructure nor professionals to handle routine cases, let alone cases of this magnitude,” he informed.