Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/1208031
T M C N E W S . O R G 4 Forensics on Call A new Texas response team, born in Houston, is ready to react to the state's mass fatalities G arrett Phillips, M.D., received an urgent phone call on the evening of Saturday, Aug. 3, 2019. Since mid-morning, national news outlets had been reporting on a mass shooting at an El Paso Wal-Mart—one of the deadliest in modern United States history. Ultimately, 22 people were killed in the attack. Phillips, a physician and assistant medical examiner for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences (HCIFS), had a brief con- versation. When he ended the call, he packed a bag. He was heading to El Paso. Early the next morning, Phillips met two HCIFS colleagues and an autopsy assistant from Galveston County at Hobby Airport in Houston. The group flew to El Paso and connected with another autopsy assistant from Collin County, just north of Dallas. That day, those five individuals made up the first official Texas Mass Fatality Operations Response Team—a new, statewide, around-the-clock response group for death investigations and forensic support, known as TMORT for short. "We hit the ground running," Phillips said. "We got a quick orien- tation and started doing autopsies." The idea for TMORT was first hatched by Jason Wiersema, Ph.D., the director of forensic anthropology and emergency management at HCIFS. Wiersema had a storied career responding to mass fatality incidents; he worked at mass grave sites in Bosnia, in New York City after 9/11 and in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Designing a program from the ground up, however, was a new challenge for the forensic anthropologist. B y A l e x a n d r a B e c k e r Garrett Phillips, M.D., left, an assistant medical examiner for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences (HCIFS), stands with Jason Wiersema, Ph.D., the director of forensic anthropology and emergency management at HCIFS.