{"id":303488,"date":"2026-05-07T00:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/303488\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T00:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:59:10","slug":"new-fresno-based-training-teaches-first-responders-to-find-human-remains-after-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/303488\/","title":{"rendered":"New Fresno-based training teaches first responders to find human remains after wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

FRESNO, Calif. \u2014 On a recent morning, Fresno County Deputy Coroner Bianca Torres was kneeling at the base of a burned up car. Nearby was a grisly sight: a skeleton found in the driver’s seat \u2013 but not the whole skeleton.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause that person was seated there in the driver’s seat, we know that we’re missing pieces,\u201d she said \u2013 specifically, missing bones.<\/p>\n

She was looking for bone fragments with a team of professionals including a firefighter, an arson investigator, a forensic anthropologist and a homicide detective.<\/p>\n

Normally, not all of them would have been doing this work, but they were enrolled in a training \u2013 and this scene was staged as part of the inaugural Central California Forensic Fire Death Investigation Academy<\/a>. The intensive, weeklong course took place mid-April at Fresno City College.<\/p>\n

As wildfires become more destructive in California, the need for forensic investigations afterward is increasing \u2014 specifically, the need for identifying bodies. The academy teaches first responders how to assist and recover human remains after fatal wildfire mass disasters.<\/p>\n

So as Torres swept and sifted through debris, others were pulling out pieces of the car\u2019s carpet. It was a team effort, because they learned every piece found during an investigation is crucial.<\/p>\n

\u201cBody preservation, bone preservation, that’s very important to us, the medical examiner and the anthropologists,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n

Training offers affordable, specialized skills<\/p>\n

\"From<\/p>\n

Central California Forensic Fire Death Investigation Academy<\/p>\n

From left, Torres, Herrick and Aponte-Guante search through debris from a structure fire scenario. No human remains are pictured in this photo.<\/p>\n

The five-day academy consisted of three days of lectures that taught attendees how a body burns and how to recover remains without accidentally damaging critical evidence. The last two days, students were set into groups to study a fire scenario and recover the remains within it. Some scenarios simulated houses, while others revolved around cars.<\/p>\n

Chelsey Juarez, a forensic anthropologist and a professor at Fresno State, led the academy. She said wildfires are becoming increasingly fatal.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs someone who responds to fire, the best time to prepare is right now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Juarez is one of about seven forensic anthropologists in California with expertise in fire crime scene investigations, according to Fresno State<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the last ten years, at least 180 people<\/a> have died from fires in California, including the fires Camp and Palisades fires that wiped out parts of Butte and Los Angeles counties. So, she said, if fires at that scale continue, more people might be pulled into investigating wildfire deaths \u2013 and she wants them to have a chance to learn before the next big wildfire occurs.<\/p>\n

Many of the attendees came from the Valley, but some traveled from as far as the Bay Area, the East Coast and even Scotland. Juarez said she wanted to plant the training in the Central Valley because professionals in the area should have better access to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been lucky so far,\u201d Juarez said, referring to Fresno County. \u201cWe’ve had fires, no doubt, but we haven’t had a [Camp Fire], and we haven’t had a Palisades [Fire]. But that doesn’t mean it’s not in our future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deadly wildfires may be a new norm<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Juarez\u2019s team generated fake missing persons reports to give attendees clues for uncovering materials in their scenes.<\/p>\n

According to Juarez, human remains ravaged by fire need to be handled with care.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we see bodies in fatal fire scenes, they’re super fragile,\u201d she said. \u201cTheir soft tissue features have changed, making visual identification really, really difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bone fragments and other factors can help in identifying a victim\u2019s age and sex, she said, as well as how they died and any harm they incurred beforehand.<\/p>\n

Juarez said when a body burns, many traits like tattoos or birth marks fall away, leaving professionals to lean on other things in a fire scene. So every piece of that body is important, but so is where and how it was found.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this is a real fatal fire, we don’t know how many people are in that structure,\u201d Juarez said. \u201cWe might know the addresses and who those houses belong to, but we don’t know how many people are in there. And if we are going to try to determine from the remains that we get back how many people are in that structure, we need a full recovery. We need all the parts of our victims back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juarez said that, to make sure no human remains are compromised, first responders need to work together like a \u201cwell-oiled machine\u201d instead of being siloed in different specializations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really need them to understand how their job affects the jobs of others,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For Dara Herrick, collecting evidence of the scene and body revealed details she never thought of before. Herrick is a longtime firefighter from Santa Cruz who recently became a fire investigator.<\/p>\n

\u201cAm I used to fire and fighting fires and running emergency scenes? Yes,\u201d Herrick said. \u201cBut the slow, detailed work of cleaning out the scene and trying to figure out what’s going on from a fire fatality and from an investigator’s perspective is new for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teaching the next generation of forensic anthropologists<\/p>\n

\"First<\/p>\n

First responders from all over the state and world came to attend the training, including first responders from Kings County and the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

All of this work is rewarding to attendees like Mackenzie Aponte-Guante, a graduate student studying forensic anthropology at New York University. Giving families answers is why she\u2019s pursuing the career.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018We found your loved one, and here they are,\u2019\u201d she said, referencing what she would say to a family. \u201cNot only \u2018we found them,\u2019 but \u2018we get to give them back,\u2019 and that provides a lot of closure for the families too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aponte-Guante grew up in the Southern California community of Hacienda Heights. She remembers being fascinated by the animal carcasses left in her family\u2019s backyard that were dragged in by coyotes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to go poke it,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to know what’s in there. Luckily, my parents were not like, \u2018She’s crazy.\u2019 So they supported it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unincorporated community is also mere miles from where the Los Angeles fires started last year. Over 30 people died in those fires, and the training made her think of what it took to identify them.<\/p>\n

While Aponte-Guante was affected by the L.A. fires, Juarez was working on them by recovering the remains of those who were killed.<\/p>\n

Juarez knows the damage wildfires cause, and yet she still calls California home. This work is helping keep everyone more prepared, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love California,\u201d Juarez said. \u201cIt’s part of me. It’s part of my soul and my existence and my being. But fire is also part of us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. \u2014 On a recent morning, Fresno County Deputy Coroner Bianca Torres was kneeling at the base…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[25894,14680,128027,112,1907,114,113,742,4679,128028,51105,1102,3000],"class_list":["post-303488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fire-training","tag-first-responders","tag-forensic-anthropology","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-city-college","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-fresno-state","tag-human","tag-human-remain-recovery","tag-remains","tag-training","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}