Dozens of AFP officers, soldiers and forensics experts gathered for a training drill at a "body farm" run by the University of Technology Sydney near the Blue Mountains. The drill mimicked a disaster, but the bodies first responders identified were real. The UTS facility is the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere, which allows for studies on how bodies decompose in Australia's climate.
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00:00At a secret bushland location at the foot of the Blue Mountains, dozens of Australian
00:07Federal Police, soldiers and forensic officers are sent to comb over the aftermath of what
00:12appears to be a terrorist attack.
00:15There was a simulated building collapse that was caused by an explosion. The six hostages
00:22were missing people and their bodies weren't discovered for a couple of weeks.
00:26It's actually a drill for a joint training exercise where multiple victims are buried
00:31under the rubble. But the bodies they are working to recover are real. They've been
00:36donated to one of the world's only body farms, officially known as the Australian Facility
00:41for Taphonomic Experimental Research.
00:43It adds an element of realism that I haven't seen before in any training environment. We
00:48understand it's the only training environment in the world that's doing this sort of disaster
00:53training with real cadavers.
00:55The facility, run by UTS, is a place where scientists usually study how human remains
01:00decompose. But for five days it was transformed into a training ground for the AFP specialists
01:05who are assigned the grim task of identifying Australian victims of mass casualty events
01:11like plane crashes and bombings.
01:13As they examine the bodies at a temporary morgue on site and use the latest technology
01:17to try to identify them as soon as possible, they're practising skills they wish they didn't
01:22have to use.
01:24The main drive I suppose for us is to bring that comfort to families as quickly as we
01:30can at a really terrible time in their lives.
01:34High stakes work in the saddest of circumstances.