Master of disaster
Kenyon International jumps in when large-scale tragedy hits
The Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla., collapsed in a heap of rubble overnight June 24. The next day, Robert Jensen had uploaded a lengthy blog post predicting — accurately — what would come in the days to follow.
Search and rescue, he wrote, would take several days before the tasks shifted to the recovery of bodies; media coverage would evolve from “nonstop coverage of the recovery, with focus on any rescues” to the whys of the collapse; and how various agencies would step into the investigation.
Few are in a better position to understand disasters on this scale than Jensen, the 55-year-old chairman and co-owner of Kenyon International, an emergency services company based in Spring.
Airlines and governments large and small from all over the world keep Kenyon on call, standing ready to help recover and identify bodies at disaster scenes, transport the dead and provide information and support to survivors. The company built its reputation responding to airplane crashes, but disasters of all kinds know no bounds and often require specialized expertise and an extra set of hands.
When a large-scale tragedy hits, Jensen and Kenyon are usually on their way. He was there when first responders drilled through sections of the collapsed Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, site of a domestic
terrorist bombing that killed 168 in 1995. He has been to more than 50 mass casualty scenes throughout his career, including in Thailand after the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 and the Haitian Earthquake in 2010, which together killed roughly 500,000 people.
Kenyon’s teams helped tackle disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, COVID-19 outbreaks in New York and last year’s explosion in Beirut, where a warehouse containing explosive material blew up, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.
“I’ve been around the world a long time and I’ve seen probably more events than any individual,” he said. “So, I know they will occur again. I wish they wouldn’t, but I know they will.”
A former deputy sheriff in Fresno County, Calif., Jensen was in the Army when he was assigned mortuary duties because of his law enforcement background.
He joined Kenyon, which was founded as a funeral home company in London in 1880, in 1998.
“Kenyon was after me to come and work for them,” he said. “Kenyon seemed to be a place where I could do some good.”
Royal lineage
Kenyon started out handling royal funerals and has been responding to mass casualty incidents since 1906, when a highspeed rail derailment in Salisbury, England, killed 28 people and local authorities asked for help recovering remains.
The company later helped handle the repatriation of bodies during World War II and in the 1950s developed an international reputation for swooping in after airplane crashes and providing services.
It drew the attention of Houston-based funeral services company Service Corp. International, which bought Kenyon in the late 1990s and moved its headquarters to the Houston area to be near its own.
It was here that it would undergo a transformation that separated the funeral business from its emergency services operations, Jensen said.
In 2007, Jensen purchased 70 percent of the emergency services side of the company, Kenyon International, in a management buyout and took it private. He later bought the remaining 30 percent. He shares ownership of the company with his husband, Brandon D. Jones, the company’s vice chairman.
Jensen joined the company as it was developing a stronger emphasis on support for survivors in addition to recovery efforts.
“There was a big shift in realizing when you have these mass disasters, the focus needs to take into account the living, the survivors,” he said. “All these areas need to really be coordinated and work together.”
Not only is casting survivors aside when disaster strikes “just not right,” it’s bad for business, he said. Those who loved the dead tend to come after airlines, governments or whatever companies may have been involved in the incident more vengefully when recovery efforts aren’t handled well.
“Litigation is an extension of rage,” he said.
Emotional recovery
Now, he said, Kenyon does a lot more than recover the dead and their personal effects. It provides mental and social support for the living, providing them grief and financial counseling to help them move forward.
The company relies largely on contractors; it has more than 2,000 oncall associates, including forensic specialists, mental health providers, linguists and search-andrecovery experts. It has just 25 full-time employees, servicing around 600 clients that keep it on retainer, paying between $4,000 and $30,000 a year to be ready if disaster strikes. Jensen declined to disclose the company’s revenue.
Kenyon teams are trained in the universalities of loss, Jensen said. They’re trained to expect grief and its effects on survivors, selflessly support people through it and work with different cultures. So when a 24-yearold mother lost her husband in a cargo plane crash in Houston in 2019, Kenyon provided both mental health and financial guidance, helping her access financial support for herself and her two young children.
“We’re not training people for any of the skills they’re supposed to have when they come here,” he said. “We’re Kenyonizing people ... working with different cultures, making it not about you, working with grief. This is about: How do I deal with the universalities of loss?”
Matt Ziemkiewicz, now president of the National Air Disaster Foundation, lost his 23-year-old sister nearly 25 years ago after a plane she was on crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from New York bound for Paris. Kenyon was able to retrieve a childhood photo she carried of her hugging him as he blew out birthday candles.
“Kenyon got it back for us,” Ziemkiewicz said. “It’s still got the water damage, and it’s one of my most prized positions.”
Janice Watson lost her daughter, Jill, on the same flight. She’d fallen asleep watching television that night and remembers waking up to images of a plane’s wing sticking out of the ocean against the night sky.
Kenyon recovered two of her daughter’s favorite necklaces from the wreck.
“When I put them around my neck,” she said, “it just feels like a hug from her.”
Personal effects Kenyon recovers from disaster sites get cataloged in a binder and put online so they can be retrieved by families. If the family wants it cleaned or restored, Kenyon will handle it.
Sometimes families ask that the items not be cleaned. “I did his shirts for 17 years,” Jensen recalled one mother saying after her son died in a crash. “I want to be the last one to wash his shirt.”
In a storage room inside Kenyon’s headquarters in Spring, Jensen keeps a personal locker with gear and clothes for any climate. In his locker there are also flak vests for war zones, earplugs and safety goggles at the ready.
Portable morgues and pre-made death certificates await loading in a rear warehouse. There’s a handheld dental X-ray machine to help them identify bodies, a box full of test tubes, jackhammers and metal grinders for cutting through rebar. And a typewriter for where that’s necessary for typing death certificates.
“We don’t travel light,” he said. “You never know where you’re going to go.”