BANGOR – At least one of the 14 victims of last Thursday’s deadly van accident in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway was released to an Augusta funeral home Monday for preparation for burial.

The other bodies remain at the State Medical Examiner’s Office while the Honduran and Guatemalan governments seek rates from at least two Augusta funeral homes to prepare and transport the remains in accordance with international codes.

The governments, too, are trying to arrange for flights to return the victims to their Central American homelands. One Honduran airline flies only to New York City, and getting the bodies there is something that is being worked out, according to one official. Plus, there are restrictions as to how many human remains may be carried at a time on some airlines.

The 14 men died Thursday morning after the van in which they were riding at speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour flipped over on John’s Bridge and plunged into 15 feet of water. There was only one survivor, who helped the medical examiner’s office positively identify the remains of his co-workers.

The men were foreign workers who were in Maine to thin trees on privately owned forest property. According to the survivor, the crew’s foreman was in a hurry to make up for lost work time the day before, when their shift was cut short because of rain.

On Monday, the medical examiner’s office said it had completed an external examination of 13 of the victims and an autopsy of Juan Turcios-Matomoros of Honduras, who was identified as the driver of the 15-person Dodge passenger van. Blood from Turcios-Matomoros was sent to an unspecified laboratory for toxicological analysis.

The medical examiner’s office concluded that all of the victims suffered minor injuries in the accident, but they all died from drowning.

Along with Turcios-Matomoros, the victims from Honduras are: Alexci Alcantara-Acosta, Jose Santos Alvarado-Hernandez, Alcidez Chavez-Hernandez, Pablo Euceda-Amaya, Dionisio Funez-Diaz, Sebastian Garcia-Garcia, Carlos H. Izaguirre, Delkin Padilla-Alvarado and Jose Santos Euceda-Cebeda.

The victims from Guatemala are Juan Mendez, Cecilio Morales-Domingo, Sebastian Morales-Domingo and Alberto Sales-Domingo.

Both the Guatemalan and Honduran embassies have been inundated with telephone calls from the victims’ families. Family members were not officially notified of the deaths until over the weekend when the State Medical Examiner’s Office had positively identified the bodies.

“The families are devastated very much because they don’t have much information,” said Antonieta Maximo, counsel general of Honduras in New York City. “We have some relatives here, but there’s not much they can do. They have to wait.”

Maximo said Honduras President Ricardo Maduro spoke with U.S. government officials “to please make sure bodies are sent as soon as possible.”

David Hernandez-Caballero, the counselor for the Embassy of Honduras in Washington, D.C., who was in Augusta on Monday, said he was “trying to get quotes” from area funeral homes on how much it would cost to prepare the men’s bodies for transport and burial. He also said he was trying to get “authorization from the families to transport the bodies home.”

Leon Roberts of Knowlton & Hewins Funeral Homes in Augusta said he received the body of Carlos H. Izaguirre on Monday. Members of Izaguirre’s family, including his wife, Shelly of Presque Isle, are planning a memorial service for him before he is sent to Honduras for burial, Roberts said. Another memorial service for all of the victims is planned for 1 p.m. Saturday in Caribou.

The lone survivor of the accident, Edilberto Morales-Luis, 24, of Guatemala, returned from Augusta to Caribou on Sunday to help identify the personal belongings of his co-workers so they could be shipped to their families.

Carla Tracy-Picard, whose grandfather rented an apartment to 12 of the men, said her family helped pack the men’s belongings.

“He had a very difficult time coming back into the house,” Tracy-Picard said of Morales-Luis. “He just began to sob.”

Juan Perez-Febles, state monitor advocate with the Division of Migrant and Immigrant Services, said Morales-Luis should be returning to Guatemala this week.

“He told me he wants to go home very quickly,” Perez-Febles said.

Most of the burial and transportation expenses should be covered through workers’ compensation, said Steven P. Minkowsky, deputy director of the state’s workers’ compensation board. The workers’ compensation act requires that up to $4,000 be reimbursed to the person who has paid the employee’s burial expenses, and an additional payment of up to $3,000 be paid to the employee’s estate for incidental compensation, such as for transportation.

The victims’ employer, Evergreen Forestry Services of Standpoint, Idaho, has filed its initial claims under workers’ compensation to its insurance company, Liberty Mutual of Massachusetts. The insurer has 14 days to reply to the claims, Minkowsky said.

Bangor Daily News reporter Wayne Brown contributed to this report.