Four hours after Air France flight 4590 crashed into a roadside motel on July 25th, killing 113 people, police and gendarmes asked the crowd of journalists and bystanders who had gathered around the site to leave.
Night had fallen and 20 off-white, unmarked vans drove up to the perimeter of the impact area. Their passengers, a troop of forensic scientists in white coats, set about the grisly business of photographing the site, then numbering and collecting the body parts they found amid the still smoking wreckage. The scientists worked all night, using red-and-white traffic cones to mark the locations of the remains. Bodies were wrapped in sheets, along with clothing, jewellery or personal effects found closest to them, then carried on stretchers to the waiting vans which ferried them to the Institut MedicoLegal near the Bastille, in Paris's 12th arrondissement.
After removing those most easily accessible at the site, the scientists had to sift the ground with hoes and gloved hands.
Few of the bodies will be identified in time for the mostly German relatives of the Concorde victims to take remains home for burial this week. "It would be cruel to let the families view the bodies," said Ms Elisabeth Senot, the deputy prosecutor who is leading the crash investigation.
At the Institut Medico-Legal, a team of 40 gendarmes from the Identification Cell for the Victims of Catastrophes has begun the painstaking process of identifying the "degraded human remains" brought from the crash site. The cell has worked on 14 air and rail accidents and the Mont Blanc tunnel disaster in the past eight years.
Before the Concorde crash, Liberation newspaper correspondent Ms Patricia Tourancheau visited the cell, where its officers explained their methods. The group works in two teams, one called "ante-mortem", the other "post-mortem". The "pre-death" team is contacting the families of everyone on the Air France passenger list, the crew and hotel employees who died.
"We ask the families for a detailed description of the victim," Col Rouillon told Liberation. "Size, weight, colour of eyes and hair, scars, tattoos, jewels, baggage and clothes worn on the day of the disaster, and the telephone numbers of their doctors and dentists."
Gendarmes then ask the doctors and dentists if their former patients had intra-uterine devices or pacemakers, whether they had undergone appendicectomies or other operations. Gradually, they match these details with a large paper chart where they have noted separately numbered descriptions of the remains. The first step is always to X-ray the remains - to look for identifying implants, or pieces of the aircraft that may have entered the body.
Dental records are the surest form of identification, used in at least 75 per cent of cases. DNA tests, which require samples from relatives, take longer, are costly and are completely reliable only if blood, muscle tissue or bone marrow is available - not often the case when victims are severely burned. Fingerprints can be used to reunite severed hands and arms with the right body.
French officials say they will take as much time as they need - to avoid returning incomplete or the wrong remains to the crash victims' families.
