The Camp Fire, in the area of Paradise, California this past year killed 86 people. Now Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea is reporting that they have identified all the bodies but two – and they are hoping to ID those using genealogy databases. The following excerpt is from an article posted September 16, 2019 at the ABC10.com website.
No one has come forward claiming they lost a friend or family member who hasn’t already been identified, and the DNA profiles officials were able to get from the unidentified remains didn’t match any of the ones they had on file.
“Genealogy DNA is actually going to play a pretty big part in this final identification,” [Sacramento County Coroner Kim Gin] said.
For the first time, Sacramento and Butte County officials are turning to genealogical databases to identify victims of a mass casualty incident. They hope to find a familial match to someone who may not have known one of their family members was killed in the fire, but recognize the privacy concerns people have after the databases have been used to identify criminal suspects like the Golden State Killer.
“My hope is that the administrators of these databases would draw a distinction between what we’re trying to do, which is to identify the next of kin of people who you know tragically perished in a fire, versus utilizing it to identify criminal suspects,” Honea said.
