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Monday 23 April 2012

What I learned today (6): about recovering pieces of dead people

There was a pretty serious train crash in Amsterdam when I was there. That same evening, when we were on our way back from another city by train, we met a train driver who told us all about the accident.

For some reason the conversation turned to people getting hit by trains and how that is obviously very traumatising for the driver. 'I imagine it is even worse for the firemen who have to come clean it up', the driver added.


Interesting fact: in the Netherlands, by law, at least 80% of your remains need to be recovered if you ever get run over or hit by a train. It is even divided up per body part: 60% of your leg, 70% of your skull, or something along those lines.

Morbid stuff. Imagine being a fireman and having to do that.

- "So honey, how was your day?"

- "Well..."

I was thinking about that when I was travelling by airplane yesterday. Would the same rule apply? Would my parents get at least 80% of me returned to them in case of a crash? Who makes up these ridiculous rules?

I am having mental images of firemen walking around a crash site with buckets. "Ah, here's a part of someone's leg... What do you think, Steve, would that make it 80% recovered? Can we go home now? I'm late for dinner."


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