Sunday 3 February 2013

Malaysia: 15 missing every day


It is a startling figure: An average of 15 people went missing every day last year, Malaysian police records showed.

Even more alarmingly, nearly a quarter of them are Malay girls aged 13 to 17. Of the 4,804 who were reported missing from January to October last year, more than half did not make it home, The Star reported.

Federal CID director Commissioner Mohd Bakri Zinin said a number of missing people were from broken homes.

He added: "Teenagers from broken families are at an increased risk of peer pressure to run away from home."

Some who went missing were school dropouts while others, especially girls, ran away with boyfriends.

Malay girls formed the biggest group, making up 1,124 missing cases. It was four times more than their male counterparts.

Mr Mohd Bakri said there were isolated cases of missing people being victims of sexual predators and human traffickers.

He also said there are mechanisms such as the national urgent response alert for children below 12 who have gone missing. But families should play their part as well, he said.

"It is of the utmost importance that a missing person's report be lodged as fast as possible as it will assist us in mobilising our resources quickly," he said.

Every child and teen aged 18 and below who goes missing and is located will be sent for counselling with the Welfare Department.

Said Mr Mohd Bakri: "The children will be given counselling until they can adapt themselves back into society without worry."

Even as police continue to look for missing people, a 28-year-old factory worker is searching for her younger sister and her daughter.

Ms Tee Que Eng told The Star that 21-year-old Tee Kue Peng and her daughter, Estersiskah, five, have been missing since Aug 24 last year.

"It has been months and we are sad as this may be the first Chinese New Year celebration without them," she said.

The single mother left home without a word, giving her parents little clue as to why. She had taken all her belongings, including clothes, personal documents and pictures, the report said.

The family was worried that she may have run away with a man. The elder sister said that family members had not noticed anything unusual in the few days before she disappeared.

But she said the teachers at the child's kindergarten had noticed a man picking the little girl up. They said they did not recognise him, Ms Que Eng said.

She said the family is worried about the child.

"She is very attached to her grandmother and does not like to talk to strangers," she said.

Her message to her sister: "Please come home. Our parents will not be angry if you are with anyone. We just want both of you home."

Children's right groups said the missing teenagers should be given the same amount of attention as their younger counterparts.

Childline Malaysia project director Michelle Wong said runaway teens can be seen as being more able to take care of themselves. That is an "unfortunate and misguided" presumption.

"The search efforts should be the same for all children under the age of 18 because they have the right to be cared for," she said, adding that even runaway teens were at risk.

"They, too, are vulnerable to human trafficking."

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Malaysia/Story/A1Story20130202-399644.html

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Rescuers Find Body in Mexico Oil Company Blast


Mexico's state-owned oil company says rescuers have found another body amid the rubble of a headquarters building damaged by a still-unexplained blast. The find raises the death toll of Thursday's explosion to 34 people.

Petroleos Mexicanos operations director Carlos Murrieta says rescue crews are still looking for three people in the rubble, and believe they're in the most damaged part of the building.

Officials still have not given any cause for the explosion, though they have said they suspect it was an accident. The blast also injured 121 people.

Rescuers had concluded their search Friday but resumed operations when they suspected more bodies were in the rubble. The latest body was found Saturday, and the news was announced via Twitter by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/rescuers-find-body-mexico-oil-company-blast-18392251

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Mexico blast victims' bodies handed over to families


The bodies of the victims of a blast at the headquarters of Mexican oil company Pemex have been handed to their relatives.

Thirty-three people died in Thursday's explosion in Mexico City.

Hundreds of rescue workers continue to search the rubble for possible survivors.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said investigations into the cause of the blast were underway and no line of enquiry had been ruled out.

Rescue workers regained hope of finding people alive on Saturday after sniffer dogs alerted their handlers in the basement of the collapsed building.

Earlier, two families who believe their relatives could still be trapped, had asked the authorities not to give up on them after the Red Cross had declared its search finished.

The last person to be rescued from the debris was found at noon on Friday (1800 GMT).

Search for truth

Firefighters and police officers using heavy machinery continued to move rubble from the site of the blast as special investigators examined the site for clues to the cause of the explosion.

According to the attorney general, the government "is determined to find out the truth, be it what it may".

"If it's an accident, if it's negligence, if it's an attack, whatever it is," Mr Murillo Karam said.

Mr Murillo Karam said investigators had established that the blast had not set off a fire, but that it was not yet clear what that meant.

More than 100 people are being treated in hospital for injuries sustained as a result of the blast, Many of them were hit by falling rubble and masonry.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto visited some of them on Friday. He has declared three days of mourning.

The BBC's Will Grant said the blast was the biggest explosion to hit Mexico City for 30 years.

Pemex said it would resume operations at its headquarters on Tuesday, moving employees who worked in the affected building to other offices.

The company has experienced a number of fatal accidents in recent years.

Last September, 30 people died in an explosion at a Pemex gas plant in northern Mexico, thought to have been caused by a build-up of gas

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21308780

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Eight dead in Pakistan building collapse

At least eight workers died and another 20 were trapped Sunday when the roof of a warehouse collapsed in Lahore, Pakistan, Geo News reported.

Rescue workers have removed eight people from the rubble of the building, located in the Nishtar Colony area of the city.

Rescuers were still searching through the rubble for the remaining 20 victims, Geo News reported.

The cause of the collapse was not reported.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.upiasia.com/Top-News/2013/02/03/Eight-dead-in-Pakistan-building-collapse/UPI-54681359897611/

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Authorities find 22 corpses in central Colombia mass grave


Authorities said Sunday they have found a mass grave in central Colombia containing 22 remains of presumed members of neo-paramilitary organization "Los Urabeños."

The mass grave was found in Tauramena, a municipality in the Casanare department.

According to officials of the Prosecutor General's Office, the bodies may be of members of the paramilitary group "Bloque Centauros" who died in 2004 while clashing with members of the now-defunct paramilitary group of Hector Buitrago, better known as "Martin Llanos."

Members of the Bloque Centaurus later formed the Urabeños together with members of the ACCU, another group that fell under the command of paramilitary umbrella organization AUC.

Prosecutor investigators told press they had been able to identify 15 of the 22 corpses.

The fighting between Llanos and rival paramilitary groups in the middle of the last decade left thousands of paramilitary fighters dead.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/27976-authorities-find-22-corpses-central-colombia-mass-grave.html

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Papua New Guinea ferry disaster anniversary


On the first anniversary of Papua New Guinea's worst maritime disaster, families of the victims say they are still looking for answers.

At least 140 people died when the Rabaul Queen passenger ferry sank in rough seas off the country's north coast on February 2, 2012.

The MV Rabaul Queen went down while travelling from Kimbe, on the island of New Britain, to the coastal city of Lae on the main island

Rescuers plucked 238 survivors from the sea off Papua New Guinea's east coast with as many as 350 people on board.

Despite the scale of the tragedy and a damning inquiry, police are yet to start a criminal investigation.

The final death toll from the disaster is not known, with the commission of inquiry finding that between 140 and 160 people died.

Authorities are yet to issue death certificates to families of the victims.

Tommy Yep, who has been campaigning on behalf of victims and whose son Theodore survived the disaster, says many people just want to move on.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=224221

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DVI: Victim Affairs Office to open in Sharjah


The only Arab member of Interpol’s Disaster Victim Identification Standing Committee, the Abu Dhabi Police, has announced plans to open a Victim Affairs Office in Sharjah.

“The Victim Affairs Office future plans is to open another office in Sharjah and to train 20 existing Sharjah police officers on DVI, and how to deal with family members and next of kin,” said Colonel Mohammad Ali Al Dallal, deputy chairman of the Victim Affairs Office Committee, Abu Dhabi Police, speaking at the DVI Conference, Middle East and North Africa, in Abu Dhabi.

Established in 2009, the Abu Dhabi Victim Affairs Office currently has 16 employees, six experts and 32 staff members to receive phone calls from members of the public in case of disasters, on their emergency number 909.

“In order to communicate with victims, we have contracted a company called Language Line which provides us with lingual translations of the over 200 nationalities present in the UAE. This is done via conference call which can be prepared in a matter of seconds,” Al Dallal said.

Primary identifiers of victims are fingerprints, DNA samples and odontology records.

“However, in cases where the victim has a pacemaker or a false hip, additional unique evidence can be obtained through the serial number located on the device, as no two patients have the same serial number,” said Professor Peter Ellis, Forensic Pathologist at the Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services facility, Australia.

“Moreover, identifying the cause of death for each deceased individual may reveal clues as to why the disaster occurred which is especially useful in cases involving transportation such as aeroplane or road vehicle crashes,” Ellis added.

While all post-mortem and ante-mortem information on victims is filed through forms provided by Interpol, Dr Ellis revealed that a computerised system of inputting information called Fast ID was currently being developed.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/general/victim-affairs-office-to-open-in-sharjah-1.1141437

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Philippine floods a man-made disaster


Deadly floods that have swamped nearly all of the Philippine capital are less a natural disaster and more the result of poor planning, lax enforcement and political self-interest, experts say.

Damaged watersheds, massive squatter colonies living in danger zones and the neglect of drainage systems are some of the factors that have made the chaotic city of 15 million people much more vulnerable to enormous floods.

Urban planner Nathaniel Einseidel said the Philippines had enough technical know-how and could find the necessary financing to solve the problem, but there was no vision or political will.

"It's a lack of appreciation for the benefits of long-term plans. It's a vicious cycle when the planning, the policies and enforcement are not very well synchronised," said Einseidel, who was Manila's planning chief from 1979-89.

"I haven't heard of a local government, a town or city that has a comprehensive drainage masterplan."

Eighty percent of Manila was this week covered in waters that in some parts were nearly 6 feet and 6 inches deep, after more than a normal August's worth of rain was dumped on the city in 48 hours.

Twenty people have died and two million others have been affected, according to the government.

The deluge was similar to one in 2009, a disaster which claimed more than 460 lives and prompted pledges from government leaders to make the city more resistant to floods.

A government report released then called for 2.7 million people in shantytowns to be moved from "danger zones" alongside riverbanks, lakes and sewers.

Squatters, attracted by economic opportunities in the city, often build shanties on river banks, storm drains and canals, dumping garbage and impeding the flow of waterways.

The plan would have affected one in five Manila residents and taken 10 years and 130 billion pesos ($3.11 billion) to implement.

But squatter communities in danger-zones have in fact grown since 2009.

"With the increasing number of people occupying danger zones, it is inevitable there are a lot people who are endangered when these things happen," Einseidel said.

He blamed the phenomenon on poor enforcement of regulations banning building along creeks and floodways, with local politicians often wanting to keep squatters in their communities to secure their votes at election time.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Manila, vital forested areas have been destroyed to make way for housing developments catering to growing middle and upper classes, according to architect Paulo Alcazaren.

Alcazeren, who is also an urban planner, said the patchwork political structure of Manila had made things even harder.

The capital is actually made up of 16 cities and towns, each with its own government, and they often carry out infrastructure programmes — such as man-made and natural drainage protection — without coordination.

"Individual cities can never solve the problem. They can only mitigate. If you want to govern properly, you must re-draw or overlay existing political boundaries," he said.

Solutions to the flooding will require massive efforts such as re-planting in natural drainage basins, building low-cost housing for the squatters and clearing man-made drainage systems, the experts said.

"It will cost billions of pesos but we lose billions anyway every time it floods," Alcazeren said.

Meanwhile, with Environment Secretary Ramon Paje warning that intense rains like those this week will become the "new normal" due to climate change, there have been concerns about the city's ability to lure and keep foreign investors.

However American Chamber of Commerce president Rhicke Jennings said Manila remained an attractive destination.

"Companies will continue to invest in the Philippines for all its positive qualities," he said, citing well-trained Filipino staff and pointing out there were key parts of the city with good infrastructure that did not badly flood.

Jennings highlighted the rise of the outsourcing sector in the Philippines as evidence that foreigners would not abandon the country because of floods.

Companies such as JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Accenture have all set up backroom operations in recent years, mostly in slick new parts of Manila where infrastructure is state-of-the art and which did not flood this week.

From virtually nothing a decade ago, 600,000 people are now employed in the outsourcing sector and the industry is expecting that number to more than double by 2016 as more foreign firms move in.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/philippine-floods-a-man-made-disaster

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18 dead, 34 injured in NW China bus crash


Eighteen people have been confirmed dead and 34 others injured in a bus accident in Gansu Province after more bodies were recovered from the wreckage, government sources said Saturday.

Reporters at the site saw rescuers had lifted away the wreckage and were finishing up their search for the missing at 7 p.m.. An overloaded bus caught fire after falling into a ravine around 10 p.m. Friday near the county seat of Ningxian, Qingyang City, according to sources with the Gansu provincial government.

Rescuers retrieved six bodies shortly after the accident, and the death toll climbed to 18 after two injured passengers died in the hospital and more bodies were found at the site.

Thirty-four people injured in the accident, including two seriously, were receiving medical treatment in four local hospitals, doctors said.

The bus, carrying mostly migrant farmers and their family members, veered off the road at a curve, before tumbling into the ravine of 10 meters deep and catching fire, sources said.

The bus had a loading capacity of 47 people, and a total of 54 were onboard when it left Langfang City in north China's Hebei Province, according to the provincial emergency response office.

One of the injured passengers, Shi Xiaobo, recalled that the bus dashed into the ravine while attempting to make a turn around the curve.

Some passengers were thrown out of the bus as it tumbled down the ravine, Shi said, adding that others scrambled to escape before the bus caught fire.

He said about seven children were onboard the overloaded bus. Their conditions are not yet known.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/759850.shtml

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Chinese fireworks truck explosion destroys bridge


Four people have been arrested a day after at least 11 died when a lorry loaded with fireworks for the Chinese New Year exploded, causing a section of flyover to collapse.

Vehicles plummeted about 100ft to the ground after the blast, state-run China Central Television reported. It said at least 11 people had been injured, though the search for bodies continued yesterday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the falling concrete smashed and buried at least 25 vehicles. Rescue work continued to recover bodies yesterday.

Local media said that the lorry that exploded had taken to the road without proper registration and had false papers, claiming it was transporting general merchandise. It said police had detained four suspects but did not provide further details.

The explosion occurred amid heavy fog on the Yihang bridge near the city of Sanmenxia in central Henan province at about 8.52am, according to the state newswire Xinhua, causing an 80-metre section of the bridge to collapse and sending six vehicles plummeting 30 metres to the ground.



The force from the explosion threw six cars into a ravine beneath the bridge and shattered windows at nearby service stations, according to the People's Daily website. The south side of the bridge collapsed completely and the north side is still unstable, it said.

Preliminary investigations blamed the collapse of the ­elevated road on the blast, ­according to a statement by the provincial government of Henan. A 260ft (80m) stretch of the road in the province’s Mianchi county collapsed, scattering blackened chunks of debris and shattering the ­windows of a nearby service station.

The People's Daily quoted experts as saying that the force of a firecracker explosion could in fact destroy a bridge, underscoring widespread concerns in China about the quality of the country's rapidly constructed infrastructure.

A lorry driver interviewed on China Central Television said he was only 60ft away from the explosion.

“I heard a huge bang and immediately braked. I saw small fireballs falling down one by one,” said the unidentified driver, whose lorry’s windshield was smashed by the blast wave.

Photographs posted online by Xinhua News Agency showed a whole section of the elevated motorway missing, with one lorry’s back wheels perched at the edge of a shorn-off section of road.

Other photographs showed firefighters below spraying ­water on scorched blocks of concrete, wrecked lorries and flattened freight containers.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the explosion, which occurred about 55 miles (90km) west of Luoyang, an ancient capital of China known for grottoes of Buddhist statues carved from limestone cliffs.

Fireworks are an enormously popular part of the Chinese celebrations for the lunar new year. To meet the demand, fireworks are made, shipped and stored in large quantities, sometimes in unsafe conditions.

The accident is a stark reminder of safety hazards often associated with Chinese new year celebrations, which begin this year on 10 February. 5,945 fire accidents were reported during the first day of last year's spring festival alone, according to Xinhua.

In 2006, 367 people were killed at a temple fair in Henan when a storeroom of fireworks exploded, according to the Associated Press. Six years earlier, an explosion at an unlicensed fireworks factory killed 33 people, many of them children.

In 2000, an unlicensed fireworks factory in southern China exploded, killing 33 people, including 13 primary and secondary school pupils working there on a seasonal basis.

The Chinese government outlawed fireworks from 1993 to 2005, but ultimately lifted the ban under intense public pressure.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.scotsman.com/news/international/china-fireworks-blast-four-held-over-deaths-1-2773410

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/01/china-fireworks-explosion-truck

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Dedicated unit for tracing missing persons in Southern Range, India


A separate and dedicated unit would be establishing to trace missing persons in the entire Southern Range of the state police department.

The Southern Range comprises Mysore, Mandya, Chamarajanagara, Hassan and Kodagu Districts. Police sources told this correspondent the Missing Persons unit will have dedicated staff to track the cases,coordinate with other agencies and ensure the cases are solved.

Mysore City Commissioner of Police K L Sudheer said a meeting of officials, including the Inspector-General of Police, had been held and the new dedicated unit would start functioning within a fortnight.

The Commissioner said the Missing Persons Bureau to cover the entire range was essential given the seriousness of the issue.

It would be set up on the lines of similar bureaux functioning in Delhi and Bangalore. We are fine-tuning the details and working out on the staff requirements to handle the unit, Mr Sudheer said. The Commissioner said the bureau would be provided with the list of names of missing persons along with their photographs, personal belongings, if any, recovered from the sites or provided by complainants and even details of unidentified and unclaimed bodies so as to help cross-verify or establish identity.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20130203/2149179.html

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142 Skeletons In Matale Mass Grave


The total number of human skeletal remains unearthed from a mass grave behind the Matale Hospital has risen to 142 since the excavation started in early November last year.

The skeletal remains have been sent for carbon dating in a bid to establish the era the grave came into existence, officials said.

Some argue that the grave contains the victims of the aborted 1971 armed insurrection of the Janatha Vimukthi Perumana (JVP) in 1971 while there are others who say it could go back to the 18th century during the colonial era.

Experts from several agencies are currently working on the site. The grave was discovered by workers who were building bio gas tank in the location.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2013/02/142-skeletons-in-matale-mass-grave.html

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A church of bones


What can be a more sobering reminder of the fragility of human life and its impermanence than an ossuary? A church made up of human bones? I am in Bohemia, just on the outskirts of that beautiful, mournful, Czech capital Prague and have goose bumps on my arms as I contemplate life and its meaning. Kutna Hora, an ancient mining town in this part of eastern Europe, has its share of castles and chapels. But it really is the kostnice, as it is called in Czech, the small Roman Catholic chapel located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints in Sedlec, a suburb of the town, that is the main draw here.

Where else in the world, after all, can you visit a church not just containing the bones of more than 40,000 once-living people but also artefacts and decorations made out of these? Call it macabre or what you will, the chapel exerts a strange pull on us on the afternoon we visit it; standing in its small cavernous enclosure, one level beneath the ground, gaping at the overwhelming chandelier, chalices, wall décor and even a coat of arms, all fashioned out of human bones. Life, afterlife, everything becomes beautiful.

The chandelier is quite the centrepiece — reputed to contain at least one of every bone that makes up the human body. There are garland style decorations on the walls, smaller skulls of children neatly arranged in a pattern to make it almost look ornamental and pretty. There is also the large coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family that owned the estate and commissioned the works as also a signature of Frantisek Rint, the Czech woodcarver, who executed these pieces in bone in 1870.

But the chapel itself is much older — dating back to the medieval times — and if you have been wondering at how the bones came to be collected at this site in the first place, there’s a fascinating story to it. Apparently, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery here was sent to Jerusalem in the 13th century by the king of Bohemia. He returned with some mud from the holy land that was sprinkled over the abbey. This made it the preferred burial spot for many privileged central Europeans. But in the 14th century, with disease and war wiping out entire townships, many thousands were buried here in anonymous, mass graves. In 1400 AD, a Gothic-style church was built here to be used as an ossuary for the mass graves unearthed during the construction of the church.

As more and more people kept getting buried on these grounds, the next century saw a blind monk — or thus the legend goes — getting the task of exhuming the older bones and stacking them up in some order. Finally, in the beginning of the 18th century, the upper part of the church was rebuilt in the baroque style and given the shape that it has even today. While it was only in 1870 that the woodcarver was commissioned to work on the bones, the result is now there for all of us to see.

But if the ossuary is the most stunning part of our travel to this ancient land, it certainly is not an isolated example of the nerve-wracking Gothica that you can still encounter in the Czech Republic, so many centuries later. Instead, the very air of the country is sombre with remains of the past. There are stunning churches and castles strewn across the landscape that evoke that certain atmosphere that everyone from Shelly & Co, the romantic poets, to Bram Stroker and his Dracula may have thrived on. It’s a countryside that will stimulate your imagination, leaving it overwrought with tales of another day — of fierce wars and fiercer sports as land-owning families hunted down elusive beasts and then devoted entire sections in their castles to not just trophies but heads of “fantastic” beasts, clearly more the handiwork of man than nature.

And there are pilgrimage churches in the memory of martyrs, often felled cruelly, but whose names have lived on. Zd’ar nad Sazavou, quite close to Kutna Hora, has, for instance, the wonderous Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk, a Czech martyr. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the final work of Jan Santini Aichel, a Bohemian architect who combined the baroque with references to Gothic elements in construction and design.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.dailypioneer.com/sunday-edition/sundayagenda/travel-agenda/125356-czech-this-a-church-of-bones.html

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Mexico Still Seeking Answers Days After Deadly Pemex Blast


The search for the cause of a blast that destroyed three floors of a building at Petroleos Mexicanos’s headquarters and killed at least 34 people entered a fourth day, as investigators toiled ahead of a self-imposed deadline for finding an answer.

Federal agents are reviewing tapes from banking facilities, such as Grupo Financiero BBVA Bancomer SA, in the complex as well as forensic, chemical and explosive evidence for clues to the cause of the Jan. 31 explosion.

“In a few hours, a day or two, but no later,” we’ll have update on the certainty of the cause of the blast, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, said Feb 1.

The nation’s deadliest explosion since a mine accident in 2006 comes as President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office Dec. 1, plans to submit a bill to increase private investment in the energy industry and lower taxes on Pemex, the nation’s largest company by revenue and the world’s fourth-biggest crude producer.

The initiative is set to be the biggest energy-industry overhaul since the nation seized oil fields from British and U.S. companies 75 years ago. Unrelated to the bill, Pemex’s management was due to conduct a review of a plan this month to merge some or all of its units in a move that, according to El Universal, may reduce as many as 15,000 non-unionized jobs.

Murillo said there weren’t signs of any fire sparked by the explosion. “The federal government is determined to find the truth of this incident whatever it may be, whether it involves an accident, whether it involves negligence, whether it involves an attack,” he said.

Pemex has stepped up security at oil production facilities during the investigation, the company said. Investigators from the attorney general’s office, the Defense Ministry and Navy are inspecting about 1,300 square meters (14,000 square feet) of rubble from the basement, first and second floor.

The basement of the B2 building held storage for documents, polishing machines and a water-treatment plant, a Pemex official, who declined to be identified, citing corporate policy, said yesterday in an interview. The union office was on the first floor, as well as management offices for human resources and administration, which also occupied space on the second floor. Pemex Output

Pemex Chief Executive Officer Emilio Lozoya, who took the helm of the oil producer two months ago, told reporters Feb. 1 that the incident didn’t hinder Pemex output. The company, he said, is producing about 2.57 million barrels of oil daily and the headquarters will reopen Feb. 5 after a three-day federal holiday weekend commemorating Constitution Day.

The blast also injured 121 at the complex where about 10,000 work or visit daily, Lozoya said. Yesterday, he visited several of those who were injured and attended the funeral services of many of the fatalities.

Milenio TV reported that the incident may have been caused by an implosion due to halon gas, a fire-suppressant chemical that the network said Pemex was storing after taking the gas offline amid global bans because of the threat it poses to the environment. Milenio didn’t say where it got the information. Murillo said that while he couldn’t confirm whether halon was found at the scene, an implosion has been ruled out.

Footage on Milenio TV showed shattered windows and gaping holes in walls on several floors after the blast rocked the B2 building adjacent to the company’s main office, the second- tallest tower in the country, between 3:40 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. local time on Jan. 31. Security personnel surrounded the complex and roped off the area outside, where dozens of ambulances were parked and a bust of the late President Lazaro Cardenas, who nationalized Mexico’s oil industry in 1938, stood intact.

Employees were evacuated from the scene of the blast, some on stretchers. The Army cordoned off the complex and sent in search parties with dogs to seek survivors.

The explosion won’t have any financial or economic impact, Lozoya said in an interview Feb. 1 after the news conference with journalists in Mexico City.

Leticia Vigueras, who was working on the second floor of the adjacent B1 building, said she felt a burst like a shockwave as the windows shattered.

“From the magnitude of the damage, it’s hard for me to think it was an accident,” said Vigueras, 38, a finance department employee who said one of her co-workers was killed and another is missing. “The whole structure of the first floor and mezzanine was destroyed.”

The explosion “seriously” damaged the basement and the first two floors of building B2, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told reporters on Jan. 31.

The blast may have been related to maintenance deficiencies in the boilers used for power generation and air conditioning, Mexico City-based newspaper El Universal reported, citing Moises Flores, the leader of one of Pemex’s unions.

Pemex said on its Twitter account on Jan. 31 that an electrical failure had prompted a preventive evacuation of the headquarters. Lozoya declined to comment on the bad equipment report.

“We’re going to dedicate ourselves as much as possible to first know what happened,” Pena Nieto said from the explosion site, when he toured the area hours after the blast. “If there are people who are responsible in this case, we’ll put the full weight of the law on them.”

At least three other incidents have caused significant casualties at Pemex in the past five years. A fire at a gas distribution hub near the U.S. border left at least 30 dead last year, and 21 workers were killed in 2007 when an oil rig hit a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition, an explosion prompted by a criminal gang attempting to steal oil from a pipeline in the state of Puebla killed 28 in 2010. Mexico has been wracked by drug violence since Calderon sent troops to fight the nation’s organized crime groups after taking office in December 2006. The drug war resulted in more than 58,000 deaths during his term, and his government estimated it shaved one percentage point annually off gross domestic product.

Milenio newspaper reported that between 2008 and 2011 Pemex requested funds to update disaster-prevention equipment, such as smoke detectors, at its headquarters. The government repeatedly denied those requests, Milenio said.

The explosion could have been even deadlier at other times of day. “At the time of the blast many Pemex employees, including my staff and those of other board members, were out” board member Fluvio Ruiz said in an interview on Jan. 31. “It was lunch hour.” The Pemex facilities are “very well maintained,” leaving a “low probability” of accidents at the site, Sergio Flores, a former Pemex employee who teaches architecture at Mexico’s National Autonomous University in Mexico City, said in an interview.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-03/mexico-still-seeking-answers-days-after-deadly-pemex-blast.html

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A decade later, memories of Rhode Island nightclub fire still vivid


Time has taken its toll on the makeshift memorial set up a decade ago to recognize the 100 people killed in the Feb. 20, 2003, inferno at The Station nightclub on Route 3.

Nobody expected the memorial to last forever so it's no surprise that the lovingly crafted wooden crosses are now deeply weathered and that many of them frequently fall to the ground.

The stuffed animals, photographs and other items that were once cherished by the memorialized sometimes haphazardly lie about — faded and battered by the elements.

Relatives and friends of the deceased remain deeply devoted to keeping alive the memories of those they lost by occasionally dropping by to right the downed crosses and to clear the 4,484-square-foot parcel of the beer cans, food wrappers and other litter discarded by the teenagers who sometimes hang out at the site.

And though it has been 10 years since the club was ripped apart by the fast-moving blaze, passers-by, most with no connections to the dead, still pull off the busy highway to spend a few minutes at the memorial.

“People haven't forgotten what happened here and that's very important,” said Victoria L. Eagan, who was at the club on the night of the blaze and who is working with others to construct a permanent memorial.

As Ms. Eagan spoke with a reporter, an older man drove his car into what's left of the paved parking lot and spent a few minutes walking about.

The Station nightclub was located in a small, single-story wood frame building at 211 Cowesett Avenue and it showcased heavy metal and rock 'n' roll bands that were popular in the 1980s.

“These were the bands that were featured on posters hanging in the bedrooms of many teens in the 1980s,” Ms. Eagan said. “For a lot of younger adults, The Station was a great place to hang out. You could come down here and pay a small cover charge to see the groups that you adored as a kid.”

On the night of the fire, Great White was the evening's headliner.

The group sold more than 6 million records during the era of the so-called “hair bands.” The group's 1989 album, “. . . Twice Shy,” was the band's best-seller, with the song “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” earning a Grammy nomination.

Shortly after 11 p.m., a member of the band's entourage set off some pyrotechnics and the fireworks ignited the flammable sound insulation foam in the walls and ceilings surrounding the stage area.

Officials estimated that the entire structure was engulfed in flame in about 5 minutes.

In addition to the 100 fatalities, at least 230 people were hurt, some with debilitating injuries. About 130 escaped unscathed.

The Station blaze was the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history.

“A nightclub and a fire. Now that's a perfect storm,” said Kathy A. Notarianni, who heads the Fire Protection Engineering Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “Just look at the factors involved. The fire starts and nobody can move because the building's so packed in. Adding to the confusion is the loud music and people disoriented by alcohol (consumption).”

Adrian Krasinskas said that he and his friend, Keith Lapierre, a Worcester schoolteacher, had watched Great White perform at the Liquid nightclub in Leominster the previous fall. They liked the band so they decided to drive down to West Warwick to see Great White perform again.

“We thought we were pretty lucky since we were close to the stage,” said Mr. Krasinskas, who works for National Grange Mutual Insurance Co. in Auburn. “But then the fire started and we knew we had to get out of there real quick.”

In a videotape taken at the club, the two could briefly be seen a few rows from the stage.

Mr. Lapierre and Mr. Krasinskas, who forged their friendship at Oxford High School, worked hard to make their way to the building's entrance.

“We came in that door and that's the only way we knew how to get out,” Mr. Krasinskas said.

He said that entrance was blocked by bodies and he collapsed onto the floor.

Mr. Krasinskas said somebody yanked him out of the building.

Once outside, he placed his badly burned hands into some snow. Then he got up and made his way toward Route 3 before collapsing.

He and several others were stuffed by first responders into an ambulance.

Mr. Krasinskas, who suffered burns over 50 percent of his body, was briefly treated at a Rhode Island hospital before being airlifted to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

He remained in an induced coma for two months and spent several weeks at a rehabilitation center in Rhode Island.

“But I was lucky,” he said. “I made it out of the building. Keith didn't.”

At the time of the fire, Mr. Lapierre had a 22-month-old son, Ryan, and his wife was expecting a second child in a couple of weeks.

Mr. Krasinskas said that, although he still enjoys going out to see bands perform, he has never returned to the site of the fire.

The 39-year-old said he might go back on Feb. 17 when the design for a permanent memorial is unveiled.

Mr. Krasinskas married Teriann Wyman, the girl he was dating at the time of the fire, and the Oxford couple have two children — Tora, 14, and Kyra, 5.

“I always tell the kids to make sure they know where the exit doors are at any place they visit,” Mr. Krasinskas said.

Meanwhile, Mario Giamei of Sutton, is another area resident who was at the fire and he said his knowledge of the layout of The Station probably saved his life.

“That place went up real fast,” said Mr. Giamei, a former Sutton selectman and former part-time employee of the club.

He said the fire deeply impacted his life because he knew many of the people who died.

“The fire will always be a part of me and there's nothing I can do about that,” Mr. Giamei said. “I am who I am.”

Mr. Giamei, who's in the process of forming a band of his own, said that catastrophes that impact many people occur all the time, noting that a tsunami killed hundreds shortly after The Station fire.

“Stuff happens and I made a decision to move on,” he said. “The incident is still in my mind and very emotional. But I'm not going to throw my life away by continually thinking about it.”

The Station fire prompted many states, including Massachusetts, to beef up fire codes.

In the Bay State, for example, the state Legislature, in 2004, mandated sprinklers for “places of assembly,” such as nightclubs, which have an occupancy of 100 or more. Criminal penalties were also drawn up for individuals who violate provisions of the state building or fire codes.

However, Ms. Notarianni, the WPI professor, said regulations are set up state by state and there is no uniform national code.

“Every state is different,” she said. “But there are some things communities can do to make things safer. For example, mandatory automatic sprinklers take care of a multitude of sins. At the least, they give people a better chance to get out of a burning building.”

Ms. Notarianni added that regular inspections are also a necessity.

“You need accountability from the people who run or own these clubs,” she explained.

Ms. Notarianni noted that science and technology are providing improvements and a better understanding of fire science. For example, materials are less toxic and more fire retardant.

“But human error is one thing that you can never take into account,” she said. “You can have the most up-to-date codes, but, if you pack in people and something happens, you're going to have a disaster.”

Ms. Notarianni said the similarities between The Station Fire and the recent blaze at the Kiss club in southern Brazil where at least 236 died were eerie.

“The Brazil fire mimicked what happened in Rhode Island,” she said.

Heavy death tolls also occurred in recent years at nightclub fires in Argentina and Thailand.

Other countries aside, Ms. Eagan added that even officials in some American states don't take the threat of a catastrophic fire seriously.

“Just look at how they pack them in at the clubs in Vegas,” she said.

Ms. Eagan said she's hoping the new memorial in West Warwick will keep the threat fresh in people's mind.

She said the groundbreaking is scheduled for this spring, adding the project will cost millions.

Ms. Eagan said the memorial will focus in on everyone who died, along with the efforts of first responders.

Since the fire, Ms. Eagan said seven fire survivors have died, three of them taking their own lives. She added that at least three first responders have also killed themselves.

“This fire has impacted so many,” she said.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.telegram.com/article/20130203/MOST_RECENT/302039900/0/SEARCH

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Released photos appear to show Korean victims of past Japanese massacre as retaliation for Great Kanto earthquake


A South Korean historian on Sunday released photos apparently showing Korean victims of a Japanese massacre following a devastating earthquake nine decades ago.

The release comes just a few days after officials in Tokyo decided to remove references to the mass killing from high school textbooks.

Jeong Seong-gil, the honorary director of Keimyung University Dongsan Medical Center Museum, presented to Yonhap News Agency photos dated Sept. 1, 1923, the day that the Great Kanto Earthquake occurred. The disaster is named after the region that includes Tokyo.

After the 7.9-magnitude earthquake devastated Tokyo, Yokohama and other surrounding prefectures, Japan is known to have murdered thousands of Koreans, holding them accountable for the post-quake unrest. There were rumors that Koreans poisoned wells and committed arson and robbery to take advantage of the disaster, fueling anti-Korean sentiment in Japan.

In one photo revealed by Jeong, dozens of corpses are on the ground, with their lower bodies exposed. Next to the remains stand men holding long sticks, which appear to be either bamboo spears or metal skewers.

"Japanese people even pay respect to deceased dogs with gravestones, and they wouldn't have exposed the bottom portions of their own people," Jeong said. "It's such an atrocious act of brutality that they chose only the female bodies to strip bare."

Jeong said the men holding the sticks appeared to be Japanese vigilantes who committed mass murders.

Another photo shows corpses piled up on top of each other.

Jeong said he'd acquired these photos in Japan a few years ago and he at first decided not to make them public because they were "too gruesome and disgraceful." But Japanese officials' decision last month to remove references to the massacre from textbooks changed his mind, Jeong said.

"It's a shameful and humiliating moment in our history, but we have to protect spirits of some 6,000 Korean victims of the massacre," Jeong said. "By presenting photos and other pieces of evidence, we must expose brutal acts committed by the Japanese in the past."

The Japanese media on Jan. 25 reported that education officials in Tokyo decided to replace the sentence, "Many Koreans were massacred in the aftermath of the great earthquake," with "Tombstones commemorating Korean victims of the Great Kanto Earthquake read, 'Koreans lost their precious lives.'"

News reports said the officials were concerned that the term "massacre" would create misunderstanding.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2013/02/03/78/0301000000AEN20130203000600315F.HTML

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UAE: Disaster Victim Identification Conference


The UAE will play host to the international conference on Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) today.

The two-day Coordinated Approach to Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) Conference Middle East and North Africa (Mena) is organised by the Ministry of Interior in association with the Interpol under the patronage of Lt.-General Shaikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior.

Forensic experts from Interpol and Scotland Yard will present papers on DVI.

Major-General Nasser Al Rayese, head of the victims affairs officeat the ministry and coordinator-general of the conference, said over two days, experts will focus on how criminal evidence assists forensic medicine to identify victims of disasters.

They will also discuss papers on advanced technology to recognise identity of victims and mass fatalities and mechanisms to boost DVI regional coordination.

Disaster Victim Identification is the Interpol-authorised formal and organised process of identifying multiple bodies after a mass fatality. It requires a number of skilled professionals working together to amass the evidence required to clearly identify victims and release them to their families.

The professionals involved include the police and medical experts including forensic pathologists and technicians and, depending on the nature of the incident, forensic odontologists, forensic anthropologists, toxicologists and molecular biologists

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=data/nationgeneral/2013/February/nationgeneral_February31.xml§ion=nationgeneral

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Brazil nigthclub fire claims another victim


State health officials say a 22-year-old man injured in last week's deadly nightclub fire in southern Brazil has died.

The Rio Grande do Sul Health Secretariat says Bruno Portella Fricks died late Saturday from injuries he sustained in last Sunday's blaze.

Fricks' death brings to 237 the death toll from the fire at the Kiss nightclub in the college town of Santa Maria.

In its statement Sunday, the health secretariat said 101 people injured in the fire remain hospitalized.

Police say the fire likely started when a band set off flares, which ignited soundproofing foam on the ceiling. Police investigators have also said the club was lacking basic fire safety equipment, and a judge last week extended the temporary detentions of the club's owners and two band members by 30 days.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/brazil-fire-bruno-portella-fricks-death-toll_n_2610419.html

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Civil rights group: Texas authorities fail to do part identifying remains of undocumented immigrants


A civil-rights group is preparing to pressure Texas agencies that don’t take DNA samples from the unidentified remains of undocumented immigrants, saying those agencies aren’t following state law.

The Texas Civil Rights Project said South Texas especially does a poor job of cataloging immigrant deaths, to the despair of those seeking missing relatives who may be buried and forgotten in nameless graves.

“There’s total disarray in South Texas,” said Maria Jimenez, a Houston-based immigrant advocate and civil rights activist.

The pressure comes as South Texas experiences a surge in migrant deaths, even as overall immigration decreases. In Brooks County, the epicenter of deadly illegal border crossings in South Texas, the remains of 129 people were discovered in 2012. Of those, at least 47 remain unidentified, according to county records.

It was the most dead in one year in local officials’ memory, and more than double the 52 recovered bodies in 2011. The county cemetery, site of dozens of “John Doe” markers, is running out of space.

“We took interest in it because we saw it primarily as a humanitarian crisis in the state of Texas,” said Tom Power, a legal advocate for the project.

SIMPLE SOLUTION?

Sheriff’s investigators said the tally represents a fraction of those who die because many are never found among the prickly mesquite thickets and sandy soils that make the 944-square-mile county such a deadly route for migrants.

They and their smugglers choose the route more than 60 miles inland because it avoids a Border Patrol checkpoint at Falfurrias. But that means walking at least 30 miles across bleak, unforgiving terrain where it is easy to get lost or injured, or to succumb to the elements.

Even with cellphones, callers who get through on weak signals can’t always tell dispatchers where they are because there are few landmarks across the wide ranches. Animals quickly find and ravage remains, making identification that much harder.

Power said his initial inquiries about the handling of remains show policies vary widely among agencies, leading to inconsistencies in tracking the cases.

But there may be a ready solution.

The Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth analyzes DNA samples from unidentified remains under a federal grant. The information is fed into state and national databases. The services are free to law enforcement agencies and to relatives of the missing who can submit their own samples to see if their family members are among the dead.

The center also provides free training for law enforcement and medical examiners.

LACK OF DIALOGUE

While Washington haggles over federal immigration policy at the start of a new term, the grim task of gathering and identifying the dead remains a local problem.

Tiny rural agencies such as the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office are ill equipped to deal with the tide of bodies, bones and personal effects discovered by ranchers and Border Patrol agents in the wilderness. The sheriff’s office has about 10 deputies on a budget of $681,000, not counting the jail budget. That is supplemented with about $400,000 in asset seizures. Typically only one deputy is on patrol.

Chief Deputy Benny Martinez said county officials are only now becoming aware of the DNA issue and were not familiar with the Center for Human Identification. He said the sheriff’s office and other county officials are likely to be receptive to the DNA testing program, especially if it comes at little or no cost to the county.

“I think it needs to be done, absolutely,” he said.

Earlier attempts to work with forensic anthropologists around Texas didn’t come to fruition because Brooks County couldn’t afford to transport bodies back and forth, County Judge Raul Ramirez said.

Shipping samples to the center would be much cheaper as it would involve mailing just a few bones in most cases, said Dixie Peters, technical leader for the center’s missing persons unit.

“I think folks didn’t know about this,” Power said. “I think the problem arose pretty quickly, pretty rapidly and they just couldn’t deal with it.”

Power said his group believes Texas law requires the DNA samples be taken from each unidentified set of remains. They are pondering legal action but may be able to work with local jurisdictions to inform them about the UNT program and convince them to participate without the need for litigation, he said.

“There’s a lack of communication between agencies as to what’s available,” said Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, researcher and adjunct lecturer at the University of Arizona’s Binational Migration Institute. “I really think there’s a lot of things that can be done that would help the situation that have to do with just coordination and deciding to set up a system.”

Arizona had similar problems because its border counties had no centralized process for unidentified remains, Rubio-Goldsmith said. Things improved after the Pima County Medical Examiner started processing all of the border counties’ unidentified remains.

TO THE MORTUARY

Brooks County has no medical examiner. It uses Elizondo Mortuary in Mission to handle the bodies. The sheriff’s office doesn’t have the staff to investigate the identity of each dead migrant, Chief Deputy Martinez said. They came in spades last year — about every other day on average, with as many as two or three on some days.

“The officials that I talked with not only in Brooks but in a number of the counties were people who really wanted to do the right thing ... but the systems don’t seem to be in place,” said Rubio-Goldsmith, who is in the middle of federally funded research on how immigrants’ remains are processed in local jurisdictions across the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

With only one full-time crime investigator at the sheriff’s office, the family-owned funeral home became the de facto entity for piecing together clues about the identities of the dead. It has been somewhat successful, identifying and reaching the families of dozens of the dead, based on body markings, notes and ID cards found with clothing, and other clues.

Power said these efforts fall short of what the law requires and don’t provide enough assurance that bodies are being correctly identified. Moreover, when identification can’t be made, and DNA samples aren’t taken, the likelihood of getting an answer falls to almost zero, he said.

The funeral home sends unidentified bodies back to Brooks County for burial in “John Doe” graves after two weeks, he said. If a relative calls seeking information after burial, it may be impossible to locate and exhume the correct set of remains for testing.

The Elizondos couldn’t be reached for comment but have said in previous interviews that they do their best to piece together information and work with consulates to help families of the dead. They installed a new refrigerated storage unit last year to handle the surge in deaths.

CRIMINAL EVIDENCE

Power’s group also has concerns because the evidence could be useful in prosecuting human smugglers. Though undocumented immigrants break the law when they enter the country, they may also be crime victims when misled or mistreated by the smugglers who lead them across the wilderness.

A Honduran woman told sheriff’s and Border Patrol investigators Jan. 15 that she was raped by three smugglers at a stash house near Hidalgo. The smugglers left her behind in Brooks County when she became faint and couldn’t keep up with the rest of the group.

Many who are apprehended in the county tell authorities they were left behind after falling ill or injured. Those who don’t get apprehended, especially in the searing summer months, may end up at the Elizondo Mortuary.

That’s where one woman from El Salvador believes her son is. Jimenez, the civil rights advocate, said she and the California-based Angels of the Desert, an aid group, have been trying to help the woman ascertain whether the remains from Brooks County are her son’s, based on a few physical characteristics.

But there is no DNA sampling, Jimenez said, and the woman can’t afford the $100 per day the funeral home would charge to store the remains to keep him from being buried among the other unknowns in the county cemetery. The civil rights project and Angels of the Desert are working with the Salvadoran consulate in Houston to try to delay burial.

The project has made dozens of public information requests with Brooks and other South Texas counties, including Hidalgo, Cameron and Webb, to assess their policies for handling unidentified remains. It plans to publicize its findings this year, Power said.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.caller.com/news/2013/feb/03/civil-rights-group-texas-authorities-fail-to-do/

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Anniversary of Black Saturday, Australia's worst natural disaster


Thursday marks the fourth anniversary of Black Saturday, Australia's worst natural disaster in a century. In the weeks and months following the event, Victoria's forensic detectives made incredible efforts to identify the dead.

'YOU could hear the panic in my staff member's voice,'' says mortuary manager Jodie Leditschke, remembering the first phone calls warning of a deluge of bodies. It is Saturday, February 7, 2009, and Melbourne's mortuary at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine is already full because of 450 unexpected deaths, mainly elderly and vulnerable people, attributed to the recent heatwave.

After a fortnight when temperatures averaged 35 degrees, the mercury today hits a record 46.4 degrees, made more frightening by gale-force winds.

In the afternoon, news of the bushfires in towns to the north and east of the city reaches the institute, and forensic pathologists ponder the scale of the job ahead. It's their responsibility to investigate and report the cause of unexpected or suspicious deaths to the Coroner - a profession made familiar by TV crime dramas such as Silent Witness.

Told that the fires have been deadly, the few staff on duty work overnight to finish reports on the heatwave victims, in order to release their bodies and make more space.

Naming the dead is routine for these medical detectives, but none could anticipate the horror and complexity of the task that would consume them for the next three months.

LEDITSCHKE, who holds a PhD in forensic medicine, is the first to attempt to take stock of the situation. In the institute's low-slung grey building, a punt kick from the ABC's Southbank studios, she makes calls and directs staff like a triage nurse. She is reassuring, warm and efficient, according to colleagues.

Not all her staff, which usually number between 8 and 10, are on deck - some are overseas, others are simply enjoying their weekend.

Among those away is Richard Bassed, a dental expert or forensic odontologist, who has taken his three young children to visit his parents' sheep and wheat farm near the town of Colbinabbin, near the NSW border.

At about 7pm, Bassed gets a call from the institute. Ten people are dead, he is told, and he is needed.

Driving home with his children the next morning, he can hardly see the road for smoke by the time the freeway passes Kilmore, just north of Melbourne's fringes. Dropping off the kids, he heads to the Southbank room that will become his virtual home for the next three months and begins calling other dentists and organising the examination area.

Early the same morning, Leditschke briefs the Coroner, Judge Jennifer Coate, on the likely number of dead from the heatwave and fires.

The atmosphere, already, is one of disbelief. The fires are known to have killed at least 40 people. On a normal week, the mortuary holds 80 bodies, and can take up to about 120. Judge Coate says: ''We need to build more storage.''

On Monday morning, senior staff meet to complete plans. By the afternoon, the official death toll is between 70 and 80, but planning is now based on it reaching 300. (Of the 300 people reported missing by relatives and friends, just under half survive.)

Leditschke hires marquees, similar to those used at the races. A food and rest tent goes up. Events companies, with experience in quickly assembling venues, raise the marquees and a tent tunnel from the main mortuary to the temporary storage area in the carpark. Six 13-metre refrigerated containers for storing bodies are ordered.

Easy access to power is critical. Water is needed, too. Electricians, plumbers and carpenters, experienced at the institute, come in. By Monday night, they have finished. The temporary mortuary is set up, surrounded by a security fence to keep out the curious and the media.

By Tuesday, bodies start arriving. Each is given a barcode, photographed and registered in the computer. Care is taken to tag asbestos debris with a pink bag label.

Masked and gowned teams of pathologists, dental experts, anthropologists, police and mortuary assistants wipe their feet on a sticky mat as they enter a room of pipettes, benders and other instruments. Fresh air helps prevent contamination.

There are four phases of identification: first, the recovery of a body, then a post-mortem, in which the cause of death, and if possible, an identity, is established.

Phase three is ''ante mortem'', in which checks are made for fingerprints, DNA, dental or medical records. How tall was a person, what were they wearing, did they have tattoos or piercings?

Using a system developed by Interpol, the investigators write on pink forms everything known about a person. All the details found in phase three go on yellow forms. Phase four is the reconciliation of the two coloured forms to get a scientifically robust identification.

The teams stop for breaks of 10 to 15 minutes. Sandwiches, fruit and drinks arrive as they work through the weekend for the first two months.

The investigators aim to be detached and professional, and try not to allow their emotions to affect their work. They avoid the news, although inevitably the face of a person they may have helped identify pops up on TV.

''You remove yourself,'' says DNA expert Dadna Hartman, 45.

Staff numbers at the mortuary grow to 200, with experts arriving from across Australia and abroad, including photographers, fingerprint experts, note-takers and exhibits officers.

Leditschke, 45, is hard at it each day from 5.30am to 9pm. By Thursday, she is exhausted. ''You know it's going to end,'' she says, ''but you know that you have to put in the hours.''

In a lino-floored room resembling a big operating theatre, dentists work in pairs at silver trolleys. Institute director and forensic pathologist Stephen Cordner recalls a calm, professional atmosphere.

(Cordner, 60, is an earnest man whose rumpled appearance shows his dedication to the job. His family is such a part of the Melbourne Football Club, their name is on an entrance to the MCG.)

More help arrives as the week progresses. Cordner's opposite numbers fly in from Sydney and Perth. Keeping track of the many staff and volunteers, their travel, accommodation and supplies becomes a burden.

On Friday, six days after Black Saturday, forensic anthropologist Soren Blau, 41, who had been working in the Himalayas teaching Nepalese about disaster identification, returns to Melbourne. Forensic odontologist Tony Hill takes a little longer in returning from Nepal, where he watched the fires on TV news.

Back in Melbourne, they slot in with ease. To Blau, who first worked on human remains on a dig in Israel, the process is the same whether remains are 3000 years old or six days. She is among those chosen by Leditschke to join police at fire scenes in the search for bodies.

It is now 11 days since the fires, and some roads are still blocked, so Blau flies by helicopter to Marysville. Through the enveloping smoke she spots a brightly coloured home, a lone survivor. To colleagues, she can seem intense and detached, yet images such as this will cling to her memory.

In the town, she remembers seeing a child's plastic swing, undamaged, while all around is gone.

Blau works to establish victims' ancestry, sex and age, taking note of any bones that have healed or that show signs of age. Each day she joins the others - DNA experts, pathologists, odontologists, mortuary technicians and police. Sitting in the high-backed blue swivel chairs in a conference room, each report helps to piece together positive IDs.

Other forensic anthropologists from the institute also go to the fire scenes, and are shocked by what they see. Teams check 1800 dwellings and 760 burnt-out vehicles, and see destruction almost complete.

Chris Briggs, 62, who saw the aftermath of the Bali bombing, the Christchurch earthquake and East Timor killings, compares what he sees at Strathewen, Strath Creek and Myrtleford with unforgettable images of the nuclear wipeout of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Back at Southbank, the bustling Tony Hill takes over from Bassed as co-ordinator of the dental team, about 40 people strong, which will eventually identify about 60 per cent of the victims. They use techniques that enable them to accurately assess ages from birth to about 20.

Hill, who sits in a cramped cubicle, adorned with a plastic model of a skull, says people's back teeth are protected from trauma and incineration by dense bone and cheek muscles.

Police evidence about victims' residences helps consolidate evidence, says Hill. In one case, the crowned tooth of a 45-year-old man leads to his identification from dental records.

Throughout the first week, rumours about the number of victims swirl like bushfire smoke (such as the claim of ''300 dead at Seymour'').

Teams of police forensic experts, pathologists, dental experts and archeologists head for country towns whose names become morbidly familiar: Narbethong and Flowerdale that, like Kinglake, Marysville and Strathewen, were almost wiped out, and the badly hit Steeles Creek, Humevale, Clonbinane, Wandong, St Andrews and Taggerty. All bushfire victims are taken to the institute, which reports to the State Coroner on all unexpected or suspicious deaths.

The enormity of the fires, the 145 different scenes, blocked roads and the danger of falling trees, power lines and flare-ups make a final body count impossible, even into the second week.

Amid the institute's extraordinary new routine, ordinary deaths continue across the state. Work goes on to confirm the cause of death of accident victims and unusual fatalities. The public is patient, despite delays in bodies being released for burial. ''I know you are really busy, but … '' is how many phone conversations begin.

At the bushfire scenes and at the institute, the tiniest of fragments of the dead are identified with due dignity. The mammoth task of identification is made easier by a $30,000 robot, 1.5 metres tall, donated by a company to help identify the bushfire victims. It performs the necessary but wearisome work of dipping instruments into vial after vial to test DNA.

While teeth often provide the best clues in disasters such as fire - because they are the strongest part the body and the last to disintegrate - DNA identification is faster and more reliable. Where DNA samples are available, computer software, of the kind seen on crime thrillers such as CSI, helps accelerate the process.

Using 12 extra computers and a software program developed by the FBI, Dadna Hartman, head of molecular biology, and her team build genetic ''pedigrees'' to positively identify 50 people.

DNA is identified by using swabs from surviving siblings or grandparents, and then comparing the genetic data with remains such as blood, bone or tissue, creating a probability ratio to link a victim with family.

''Guthrie cards'', containing blood samples of people born in Victoria after 1970, also help. (Babies have a pin-prick blood test at birth to check for genetic disorders, and the dried blood spot containing DNA is stored on a card at the Royal Children's Hospital along with their names and their mothers' name.) Although there is a delay in deciding who can requisition the Guthrie cards, checking against them throws up about a dozen bushfire victims' names.

Over the next three months, the number of identifications Hartman works on is the same as the previous year's total. Known as maternal yet highly professional, she worries her colleagues because of the effect the mammoth job is having on her.

''We'll be right,'' she says to those who ask how she is coping. (As we talk three years later, she uses the term ''horrible'' several times in describing the experience.)

Some identifications, of victims not badly burned, are easy. Others are difficult, although sometimes the process is made easier by CT scans, which pick up wallets, jewellery, watches, fillings, Pacemakers and numbered titanium hips in the remains.

ON APRIL 7, three months to the day after Black Saturday, the final identifications are handed to the Coroner. Of the 173 victims, only one is not scientifically identified. This toll makes Black Saturday the greatest Australian natural disaster in more than a century - if the preceding heatwave's 450 dead are excluded. The toll is exceeded only by the Cape York cyclone of 1899, when more than 400 people died.

Nine Black Saturday victims died in hospital in the weeks after the fire and did not need to be identified. Another 24 burns victims were admitted to hospital, while 295 were treated and discharged.

The experience will never be forgotten. Cordner says one of the lessons was the importance of looking after all staff - not only those directly involved in responding to the disaster.

''This includes proper rest and breaks and proper time for de-briefing,'' he says, adding ''no communication is too much with partners and collaborating institutions.''

Another flow-on from the institute's work on bushfire victims is that it now holds Australia's first missing persons DNA data base, a significant step in working on cold cases of people missing for at least 10 years.

The institute also collaborated last May on a disaster-response exercise, called Operation Hades.

Run by police under the framework of national counter-terrorism, the exercise dealt with an imaginary poisonous gas attack at Tullamarine Airport, in which an unknown chemical killed people on a flight from Darwin to Melbourne.

A temporary mortuary was set up by the institute with forensic pathologists, mortuary technicians, odontologists and IT staff working through emergency processes, together with other services including the police, ambulance officers and firefighters.

As ghoulish as such an exercise might seem, imagining the unimaginable is a legacy of Black Saturday. As a consequence of their work in Operation Hades, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade said it could lend the institute its portable field hospital, the size of a suburban home and air-conditioned, should it be available and the mortuary be overwhelmed again.

The thought of such a need has never been far away for the institute's staff this summer. At his home one scorching day recently, Richard Bassed glances at the TV to check the forecast while nursing his infant son. ''It's days like today,'' he says, ''that make you think twice about everybody.''

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://www.theage.com.au/national/imagine-the-unimaginable-20130202-2drn1.html?skin=text-only

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