Death in the State Dept Family: Rayda Nadal, Foreign Service; Durron Swain, Civil Service – RIP

August 19, 2014 By in Americans Abroad, Career Employees, Foreign Service, Realities of the FS, State Department, U.S. Missions Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

— Domani Spero
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On March 3, 2014 we wrote about the death of  Deron Durron Swain, a State Department employee assigned to the Miami Passport Office as reported by  Local10 in Miami. Click here for the CBS Miami report the following day. The June 2014 issue of State Magazine includes the following obituary:

Screen Shot 2014-08-16

Extracted from Obituaries, State Magazine, June 2014

The July/August issue of State Magazine includes the following obituary for Rayda Nadal, a Foreign Service OMS who died in Sweden.  The notice did not mention that she died from the gas explosion while posted at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, but we know that the OMS injured in that explosion died in Linkoping, Sweden. See US Embassy Moscow: FS Employee Hurt in Apartment Building Gas Explosion Dies. If anyone  has an update on the promised investigation, we’d like to know.

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Extracted from Obituaries, State Magazine, July/August 2014

We still think that the State Department should be compelled to report the deaths of official Americans overseas. DOD identifies its casualties — name, rank, age, state of residence, date and place of death, and cause of death — why not the State Department?

At a minimum there ought to be  an annual reporting of all deaths from unnatural causes of USG personnel and family members on government orders under chief of mission authority.

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