Today’s correspondent is with Victoria SES who asks about:
… roles and responsibilities when it comes to extricating a deceased person.
For context, in RCR [Road Crash Rescue] arrangements, we know that’s common practice, as with land search and casualty handling for remote rescue etc. But when we are talking about recovery from suicide or similar, there is a grey area.
We were recently at two separate incidents and were at the forefront of recovery in both instances. First, I can understand the justification because the undertaker wouldn’t be able to access the area, but the second was a request for access that turned into an extrication. In both instances, VicPol made the request, and in both the undertaker was not capable of doing the job.
As volunteers, several members have asked what line do we draw and are tasks like this within our remit?
I have answered a similar question with respect to NSW – see Body recovery, the police and the SES in NSW (December 29, 2012).
The Victoria State Emergency Service Act 2003 (Vic) s 5 sets out the functions of the SES. One of the functions is ‘emergency support’ which includes ‘assisting other agencies and organisations in relation to the performance and exercise of their duties and responsibilities under the Emergency Management Act 2013’. The Act adopts the definition of ‘emergency’ (s 3) set out in the Emergency Management Act 2013 (Vic) s 3. That Act says an emergency is:
… an emergency due to the actual or imminent occurrence of an event which in any way endangers or threatens to endanger the safety or health of any person in Victoria or which destroys or damages, or threatens to destroy or damage, any property in Victoria or endangers or threatens to endanger the environment or an element of the environment in Victoria …
Body recovery is presumably not an emergency, there is little risk to the community and there is no possibility of saving the person’s life.
Body recovery will be incidental to things that are a function of the SES eg ‘responding to floods, earthquakes and storms and their effects’, ‘providing rescue services’ and ‘assisting search and rescue for persons lost on land or in Victorian waters’. That is if a person has died in a flood or storm, or a motor vehicle accident or during a search for a missing person their body is found, it could be inferred that is part of the task to recovery the body for delivery to a morgue.
In NSW, rescue is defined as ‘the safe removal of persons or domestic animals from actual or threatened danger of physical harm’ (State Emergency and Rescue Management Act 1989 (NSW) s 3). There does not appear to be a definition of ‘rescue’ in Victorian legislation. The Australian Institute of Disaster Resilience (AIDR) online glossary defines rescue as ‘An operation to retrieve persons in distress, provide for their initial medical or other needs, and deliver them to a place of safety’. A deceased body is not a person. Body recovery is not therefore part of ‘providing rescue services’. It is however intimately related and the skills required to access a person in need of rescue and to remove them to safety will be very much the same skills to access a body and remove it to a place of dignity.
One of the functions of the NSW SES is (State Emergency Service Act 1989 (NSW) s 8(1)(g)) ‘to assist, at their request, members of the NSW Police Force … in dealing with any incident …’. There is no similar provision in the Victoria State Emergency Service Act.
Discussion
Body recovery is not a specific function of the SES even if, sometimes body recovery is incidental to things that are a function of the SES. Body recovery is ultimately a matter for police, and they can ask anyone who they think can assist, to assist. That could be the SES, the CFA, FRV, Surf Lifesavers or non-emergency service volunteers eg the local speleological (caving) society.
Where an organisation like the SES draws the line is up to the SES. The SES could refuse but I suspect that the leadership of the SES would see assisting police as very much an appropriate function for the SES even if that is not specifically listed as a function in the Act. I think the community would be outraged if the SES indicated it would not assist once it was determined that a person was died and could no longer be ‘rescued’. I think that is true particularly given the SES will have the necessary equipment and training as part of its core roles relating to search and rescue and emergency response.
Where volunteers draw the line is up to them; that is the privilege of being a volunteer. Any volunteer who is asked to attend a body recovery task is free to not go. As a matter of law such tasks are not within the specific remit of the SES but I think that it is within an implied remit from the standing of the SES as a uniformed, community based emergency service. Even if such a task does not literally fall within the definition of either an ‘emergency’ or a ‘rescue’ I expect the community would see it as both; and SES management and many volunteers would see it as an appropriate use of SES resources to assist police when requested even if that is not mandatory.
Conclusion
Legally body recovery and assisting police in a non-emergency are not functions of the Victoria SES. That does not mean that the SES cannot do those things, but it is no required to do them. But the SES and its volunteers can assist if asked and if they want to. Where the SES draws the line is up to the SES; where the volunteers draw the line is up to them. No volunteer is required to take part in those tasks if they would prefer not to.
This blog is made possible with generous financial support from the Australasian College of Paramedicine, the Australian Paramedics Association (NSW), Natural Hazards Research Australia, NSW Rural Fire Service Association and the NSW SES Volunteers Association. I am responsible for the content in this post including any errors or omissions. Any opinions expressed are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or understanding of the donors.
Australian Emergency Law 
Hi Michael, Just on this point, it is worth noting that, at least in Queensland, and probably more widely, the coroners have exclusive control of bodies from the time they are notified of the death (always by police), until the body is released after all necessary actions have been taken (eg post-mortem, if required) for burial. The coroner’s priority as to control was not recognised in the decisional law until (as I recall) R v Bristol Coroner exp Kerr, in the 70’s). If we accept Officium Coronatoris as a statute, it was the source of the directions to view and take charge of the body, and order burial after his duties were complete. If it was NOT a statute, it was certainly a Royal instrument of some description, eg an assize, and my thoughts are that it was created to advise the coroners, who copped a Royal blast in Westminster I in 1275, of the full extent of their duties.
Best wishes, John Aberdeen
John, thanks you for the detailed history. It is still the case that the Coroner also has control of the body in Victoria until it is released – Coroners Act 2008 (Vic) s 22. Further police can control access to the place of death (s 37) and can otherwise assist the coroner in his or her investigations (Victoria Police Act 2013 (Vic) s 59). That I think makes it the police responsibility to recover the body but as I argue in the post, they can ask anyone they like to assist in that task. There is no specific statute about that.
Respectfully, I disagree that “…the community would be outraged if the SES indicated it would not assist once it was determined that a person was died and could no longer be ‘rescued’.” I think there is a pronounced changing of gears in most circumstances when a “rescue” switches to a “body recovery”, and I would suggest that most members of the community would understand that difference. I do not think anyone would have any justifiable reason to be “outraged” as you suggest, and if they were, they are more than welcome to volunteer and deliver the service they expect unpaid volunteers to deliver.
I think a better question here would be asking why those responsible for the recover of the body are not equipped to perform their role. And are there not private contractors who could be engaged to perform the task rather than expecting volunteers to give their time to do it?
I know there has long been discussion within NSW SES about ensuring that the services performed by NSW SES volunteers, using NSW SES equipment, should be contained to the specific role of NSW SES and we should not be performing roles which, by doing for nothing with publicly funded equipment, we are competing against private contractors who can’t beat our price of “free”.
The situation described in this discussion is a scene where the police have completed their initial work and are asking the undertaker to take custody of the remains. If the undertaker is then responsible for that task, but cannot perform it, then shouldn’t the undertaker be responsible for engaging a contractor to perform that task on their behalf?
Interesting questions and fair comment about what the public might expect. I suppose I think the public would want the SES to assist police if asked but indeed there has to be limits to that; minds will differ as to where those limits lie – and opinions on what are the limits of community outrage are not legal analysis so perhaps ‘outside my lane’- for which I apologise. As I said in the post, one of the functions of the NSW SES is to assist police at any incident, so NSW SES has less room to argue the point than Victoria SES.
Reference the report of the WA Coroner’s Court in relation to ‘Four Deaths at Mt Augustus’; ([2022] WACOR 29), where at 224, it is noted that a request to the WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services for SES assistance in body recovery was formally declined.
Conversely, for a similar incident a month later, a request for SES personnel for a search of another missing person was accepted by DFES and SES personnel dispatched (see 243).
During South Australia’s first Ash Wednesday I was an SES Volunteer deployed on Disaster Duties and I was recalled back to My Divisional Headquarters and immediately Stood Down from Duty and Sent Home.
The reason for this extraordinary action was that it was anticipated by South Australian SES State Headquarters that bodies, the result of people being overrun by Bushfire, were being anticipated and South Australian Headquarters SES needed people for whom such a task would not be too onerous.
I was selected for such Duty because of My Background in Registered Nursing, perceived familiarity with Dead Bodies and My intimate Knowledge of Mass Casualty Disaster Protocols.
For many years afterwards I was assigned to Police Crime Scene Support Duties because of similar logical thinking.
Michael O’Donoghue MAIES
former SES member
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