Sunday 24 March 2013

Group to exhume bodies of immigrants buried South Texas cemetery in hopes of identification


Starting in May, a group will exhume the remains of dozens of illegal immigrants laid to rest at Falfurrias Cemetery in South Texas in hopes of identifying them.

At the end of last year, 35 immigrants who had died in Brooks County were still unidentified, and immigrant groups called for the use of DNA tests to help with the process.

The San Antonio Express-News reports that the county's decision to partner with Baylor University physical anthropologist Lori Baker's group Reuniting Families to identify the remains defused those tensions. But challenges ahead for the forensic anthropologists include lost markers for some of the graves.

Last year, ranchers and law enforcement in Brooks County found 129 decomposing bodies and skeletal remains of illegal immigrants — by far the most in any Texas county. That number was about double what it was the year before and six times higher than in 2010.

Brooks County is a patchwork of ranchland with about 7,200 residents. To circumvent the Falfurrias border checkpoint, human smuggling routes cut through miles of thick brush in the rural county. During summer months in the area, temperatures climb into the 100s.

Amid a rising number of unidentified dead over the past decade, Baker has taken on the task of identifying and repatriating the remains of illegal immigrants scattered throughout morgues and cemeteries in the Southwestern U.S.

Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, a lecturer in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona, has spent the past two years researching how each county along the U.S. Mexico border processes immigrant remains.

For instance, while Texas offers guidance on how to handle remains, discretion and practices vary according to jurisdiction.

"When we look at the total number of deaths on the border, it's very difficult to know if they are right because nobody really knows how many people die in Texas," Rubio-Goldsmith said. "There are hundreds of people reported missing, and there are hundreds of people unidentified, and yet there's no way of putting those two things together right now."

For fiscal year 2012, the Border Patrol reported 463 migrant deaths in the Southwest border sector, and though the Tucson sector, which at 170 recorded the most deaths, nearly 60 percent of all deaths occurred in Texas, the greatest number of them in Brooks County.

Sunday 24 March 2013

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/1d14bb4d4fb34af0bea9da870b3569c2/TX--Identifying-Immigrants

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Eight fishermen die, 15 missing in rough seas in Senegal


Eight fishermen died and 15 others went missing after their canoes capsized in rough seas off the coast of Senegal, hospital sources and owners of the boats said Sunday.

"The morgue has received eight dead bodies," said Babacar Thiandoum, director of the Saint-Louis hospital in northern Senegal, where the incident took place.

"A total of 15 other fishermen who went out to sea didn't came back," Alassane Fall, owner of one of the canoes, told AFP - a figure confirmed by the other boat owners.

Another eight people survived and are in hospital.

Commercial fishing is one of Senegal's main export industries, but it has in recent years been hit by dwindling fish numbers and falling revenues.

Sunday 24 March 2013

http://www.modernghana.com/news/454600/1/eight-fishermen-die-15-missing-in-rough-seas-in-se.html

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Death toll in Bangladesh tornado climbs to 23, nearly 500 injured


The death toll from a tornado that swept through some 25 villages in eastern Bangladesh, rose to 23 with rescuers finding three more bodies in debris, a day after the deadly storm which also left nearly 500 people injured. The storm which hit the area on Friday, left a trail of destruction in 20 villages of Brahmanbaria sadar, Bijoynagar and Akhaura upazilas.

"Three more bodies were recovered on Saturday. One of them was Yasmin, who is the mother of two young boys and was found inside the tank of a sanitary latrine," a local journalist at the site told PTI by phone. Television footage showed villagers under an open sky around their flattened homes awaiting relief as the storm that lasted for some 15 minutes wreaked havoc in the area. Survivors said the storm blew away many people off the ground and several of the dead were found yards from their houses or where they were when the disaster struck. Rail travel between the capital and three districts Chittagong, Sylhet and Noakhali was suspended, as tracks were blocked by trees uprooted by the tornado.

Officials said the tornado led to partial collapse of the Brahmanbaria jail among other damaged buildings, killing a prison guard but all inmates were secure in the facility and officials were safe. "The storm was so powerful that it overturned dozens of motor vehicles and big trucks and uprooted dozens of trees and electricity poles," a local official told a private TV channel at the scene. Initial reports said at least 10 people were killed and a newspaper put the toll for the injured at 500 in the storm that lashed the distant villages in Brahmanbaria district.

Police superintendent of Brahmanbaria, M Moniruzzaman said some 100 people were rushed to hospitals, over a dozen of them with critical wounds. Bangladesh is among the countries most prone to natural floods, tornadoes and cyclones.

Sunday 24 March 2013

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/death-toll-in-bangladesh-tornado-climbs-to-23-nearly-500-injured/380807-2.html

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Forest fire ruled out as death toll hits 37


Local forestry officials have insisted no forest fire occurred in the area that day, RFD deputy director-general Rerngchai Prayoonwet said.

Almost 40 people were killed and more than 100 injured in the blaze at Mae Surin camp, which is situated in Mae Surin forest reserve and Doi Wiang Lah wildlife sanctuary and is home to about 3,000 refugees.

Witnesses told police that they saw embers being blown by the wind land on the thatched roof of a refugee house, sparking a fire which quickly spread to other houses.

However, officials from the RFD and the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department, which oversee forest land in Khun Yuam district, believe the fire started inside the camp.

Mae Hong Son governor Naruemon Palawat said Sunday she had directed Khum Yuam police to investigate the cause of the fire.

She said while a forest fire had not been ruled out, police believed the blaze may have been caused by people cooking. Arson has been ruled out.

The fire broke out in Zone 1 and Zone 4 of the camp about 4pm and was brought under control about 6pm.

Authorities Sunday stopped searching for bodies, with the official death toll at 37 with 115 injured.

The latest casualty was a male refugee who was seriously injured and succumbed at Nakornping Hospital in Chiang Mai Sunday, Khun Yuam assistant district chief Samreong Sudsawat said.

The 37 dead victims comprise 21 males and 16 females. Ten of the dead were children. Nineteen of the injured refugees were seriously hurt.

Pol Maj Gen Chamnan Ruadraew, deputy commander of the Provincial Police Region 5, said officials were working to identify the dead. A Christian burial rite was held for the victims Sunday. More than 400 makeshift houses at the Mae Surin camp were ruined, leaving more than 2,300 refugees homeless. Two firefighters were also killed and five others seriously injured as they raced to tackle the Mae Surin blaze when the six-wheel lorry they were travelling in plunged into a ravine between kilometre markers 83 and 84 in Pai district.

The camp is one of nine refugee camps on the Thai-Myanmar border set up more than two decades ago to offer asylum to ethnic Karen fleeing the fighting between the Myanmar army and rebel troops.

Governor Naruemon said the refugees' houses will be rebuilt on their original location because a stream flows through the area year-round.

The refugees themselves also had no desire to move, she said. Construction of the houses is expected to be completed in a month.

Humanitarian assistance from the state and private sectors continues to pour in for the refugees, with officials from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees preparing food.

Soldiers from the Armed Forces Development Command have set up kitchens at Khun Yuam municipality office. More than 1,000 packets of food were taken to the camp by helicopter.

Public Health Minister Pradit Sintawanarong Sunday said the ministry had sent disease control units to curb the spread of malaria at a temporary shelter set up nearby to house the refugees left homeless by the fire.

Psychiatrists have also been sent to help refugees affected by the blaze and a team of sanitation officials has been assigned to ensure proper hygienic conditions at the shelter.

Haze and thick smoke from forest fires in the region grounded a planned helicopter trip to the stricken camp Sunday morning by a group of officials led by Interior Minister Charupong Ruangsuwan and Chatchai Promlert, director-general of the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department.

The officials had planned to fly from Chiang Mai to visit the camp.

Meanwhile, five fire fighters are in hospital after getting hurt tackling forest fires. Four are being treated at Nakornping Hospital and one is being treated at Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai Hospital.

Sunday 24 March 2013

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/342174/rfd-steps-into-blaze-row

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Why do planes taking tourists to Nepal to visit Mount Everest keep on crashing?


Angie Gaunt woke up on a Friday last September to hear the radio announce an air crash in Kathmandu.

The report said that Britons were among those killed shortly after a Sita Air flight took off, en route to the Everest region. Gaunt’s husband, Timothy Oakes, was in Nepal realising his long-held dream of trekking to base camp.

‘I jumped out of bed screaming. Only a few hours earlier I’d read he was flying out to Lukla to start the trek,’ she says. She called her friend Maggie Holding, whose husband Steve was travelling with Oakes. Days earlier, the four had enjoyed a meal before the men set off for Heathrow.

Calls to the Foreign Office confirmed that both men’s names were on the flight manifest. The FCO rang Holding to confirm Steve’s death as she watched footage of the burning wreckage on TV.

All of the 19 people on board, seven of whom were British, died. It was Nepal’s sixth fatal air crash – three of them Everest-bound – in two years, a period that claimed the lives of 95 people.

The lure of the Himalayas attracts more than 100,000 trekkers, including 40,000 Brits, each year to Nepal. Visitor numbers to Everest have doubled since the end of the civil war there in 2006.

Some 35,000 walk each year to Everest’s base camp, the vast majority starting from Lukla’s Tenzing-Hillary Airport.

Climbing the peak is also more popular than ever. Last spring was so busy there were queues on the upper slopes.

This spring is the 60th anniversary of the first ascent by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.

Trekkers and climbers are already flocking to Nepal to join in the celebrations. Thousands more will take Everest flights to view the peak from the air.

Now Angie Gaunt, Maggie Holding and other relatives of those killed in the Sita Air accident want to know what has been done to improve aviation safety.

Pilots and experts in Nepal fear more accidents will happen in a country where political failure and poor regulation are undermining its vital tourist industry.

Sixty years ago, when the British expedition left Kathmandu’s lush valley to climb Everest, they walked the whole way to base camp in around three weeks.

In 1953, with few cars and very few roads, there was no choice. The first planes only landed in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, in 1949. Now the city’s polluted streets are clogged with traffic.

A construction boom has gobbled up farmland to house a growing population swollen by those escaping poverty and the ten-year civil war that brought an end to the Nepalese monarchy.

Manju Pokhrel migrated to the city a decade ago, and built a shack on the banks of the polluted Manohara river, close to Kathmandu’s airport. She was one of the few up and about that September morning.

Flights into the Everest region start early to make the most of calm flying conditions. More than 60 flights a day land at Tenzing-Hillary Airport at the height of the season.

The Pokhrels and their neighbours barely notice them. But Manju heard an engine note that was unfamiliar.

‘It was going put-put-put-put,’ she says.

From the cowshed, her husband Badri saw an aircraft turning unusually low over the rooftops towards the slum. Manju watched it clear the corrugated roofs and plough nose-first into a bare patch of sand 150ft from where she sat.

What was so unusual with this latest Everest crash was that it happened close to Kathmandu and not nearer to Lukla, often cited as the most challenging airstrip in the world. Built in the early Sixties, Lukla airport is now an essential part of Everest tourism, carved into a hillside above the Dudh Kosi river at 9,200ft.

The old dirt strip was tarmacked in 1999, but landing at Lukla is still a challenge. Just 1,500ft long and only 60ft wide, the runway ends in a blank mountain wall and has an uphill gradient of 12 per cent.

Only STOL (short take-off and landing) aircraft, like the Dornier 228 or Twin Otter, are able to land in such a short distance. Overshoot and you crash into the hillside at its end. Undershoot and you plough into the steep hillside beneath.

Both have happened. The approach can only be attempted in good weather and there are still no navigational aids.

And because the bottom of the runway is lower than the top, pilots suffer spatial disorientation, with their aircraft lower than they think.

‘What you’re seeing is an illusion,’ says Nepal Airlines pilot Vijay Lama.

‘It’s scintillating. I never do a landing with tourists without them applauding.’

During the tourist season, in the spring and autumn, airlines in Nepal focus on lucrative flights to Everest. Foreign visitors to the country pay a hefty premium to subsidise seats for Nepalese passengers.

The half-hour flight from Kathmandu to Lukla costs a foreigner $127. Seventy per cent of Nepal’s domestic air freight also passes through Lukla to service the Everest trekking industry.

With only four parking bays at the tiny strip, at peak times pilots have just five minutes to turn around and head back to Kathmandu.

Incidents – minor accidents where the aircraft bumps into something – are not uncommon but often go unreported.

And with so little time on the ground, pilots can’t check on what’s being put on board. With Nepal’s laissez-faire attitude to regulation, aircraft routinely leave Lukla overloaded.

Ang Chhu, a sherpa who has worked on dozens of expeditions and climbed Everest three times, says everyone knows how to get extra weight onto a flight.

‘You give the baggage loader 1,000 rupees (£7.50) and they’ll get it on. Either they’ll overload the aircraft or they’ll take someone else’s stuff off. The tourist only finds out when they’ve landed at Kathmandu.’

‘I can almost guarantee you that all the flights in and out of Lukla are overloaded,’ says Lama.

‘Taking off from Kathmandu, you can feel if the aircraft’s too heavy. I’m very strict about it. I’ll go back. But can you do that if you are flying for a private airline?’

Nepal’s private airlines are doing their utmost to cash in on the country’s booming tourism sector.

Bad weather frequently closes Tenzing-Hillary Airport during the season and tourists become desperate to fly out to connect with flights home. In 2011, cloud obscured Lukla for a week, and 4,000 tourists and sherpas crowded into the village.

Food prices soared and tempers frayed. It’s in conditions like this that air traffic controllers come under pressure and bribes swap hands to move tourists up the waiting list.

Local politicians, airlines, police, even tourists can get access to control towers and lean on controllers to permit flights. ‘Controllers have to be isolated from the public at remote air strips,’ Lama warns. ‘Nobody should be able to go in the tower.’

Lama is an outspoken critic of how aviation is regulated and managed in Nepal.

‘The biggest question is why so many accidents have occurred in our country. We play this game of throwing the ball into someone else’s court all the time. We have to accept our mistakes.’

Four months on from the Sita Air disaster, I’m standing at the spot where the aircraft came down, looking for answers. A gaggle of boys and girls are playing football nearby. Scraps of half-burned trekking gear still lie in the dirt – the top of a ski pole, half a walking boot – along with what looks like a piece of the aircraft itself.

Soaring in the sky on the flight path to the airport are black kites that feed on the rubbish dumped in the filthy water. The pilot of the doomed plane, Captain Bijay Tandukar, reported hitting one of these birds, severely damaging the right engine during take-off.

Experts in Nepal believe fragments from the engine may have damaged the tail fin, taking the aircraft either completely or partially out of his control.

Local people on the ground believe Tandukar steered his stricken plane away from the camp; some pilots agree. Until the official accident report is released no one can be sure.

It took 15 minutes for police to arrive and start moving hundreds of onlookers away from the burning wreckage.

Almost half an hour after the crash, the first fire engine appeared but on the wrong side of the river, which was swollen with late-summer rain.

When the fire was out, police turned the tail fin on its side, disrupting the site before investigators could arrive. Then the aviation authorities did what they usually do following a crash in Nepal – they blamed the pilot.

On the morning of the crash, at her home in Kathmandu, the pilot’s wife Julie Tandukar got a call from one of her husband’s pilot friends.

He told her there had been an accident and to turn on the television. Like Maggie Holding, she saw her husband’s aircraft on the screen in flames.

Tandukar had been a pilot for 15 years. At the time of his death, he was planning to study in America to become Sita Air’s pilot instructor.

Yet even while the wreckage was still smouldering, an official at the aviation ministry, Suresh Acharya, told the media that following the bird strike the pilot had been ‘panic-stricken’, and had tried to turn too quickly to regain the runway. This was the story that went round the world, but his comments angered Tandukar’s family.

‘On what basis did he say this?’ says Julie Tandukar. ‘If he’d said this privately to colleagues, that would have been fine, but not to the media. We have to wait for the accident report. He doesn’t know what happened.’

Shortly after his press briefing, Acharya was appointed to the crash investigation team.

Julie Tandukar says she hasn’t been able to tell her five-year-old son that his father is dead.

‘We told him his father’s in America buying him a plane. You know, a lot of people by the river think my husband is like a god for taking the aircraft away from their homes.’

Pilots are still seen as glamorous in Nepal, but thanks to decades of political interference and corruption the national airline has turned from being a source of pride into a national joke. It now has fewer than half a dozen aircraft in service.

Leaner private operators have taken up the slack but insiders say it’s too easy to start a domestic airline in Nepal. The list of failed airlines easily outstrips those still in business. When one goes bust, like Agni Air did recently after two fatal crashes, remaining aircraft are sold on to a new operator.

Pilots say they are under too much pressure from their bosses during busy periods and that the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) isn’t capable of addressing the problems undermining safety. They worry that heavy traffic in the Everest region could lead to a mid-air collision.

‘CAAN cannot close its eyes any more,’ says Lama. ‘There have been too many crashes. It’s the same in lots of developing countries.

'We bring in a system but we don’t make people stick to it. The regulatory body hasn’t been able to keep up with the growth in aviation. We have the same aircraft, but twice the traffic.’

Nagendra Prasad Ghimire is the chair of the investigation board for the Sita Air crash and worked at the civil aviation ministry for 36 years.

He knows his team is under close scrutiny. Investigators from the UK’s Air Accident Investigation Board have also flown to Nepal to form their own judgments.

He acknowledges police compromised the crash site but claims the tail section was moved as part of the ‘rescue operation’. Ghimire admits there is some ‘hanky-panky’ with overloading aircraft but that regulations are enforced.

He says development loans could bring new navigation aids to Lukla and that traffic growth is under control.

‘We (have) instituted a traffic flow system. Lukla needs to know how much traffic it’s getting. So far so good.’

Doubts about regulation and lack of investment in Nepalese civil aviation could have dire consequences for Everest tourism as relatives seek legal redress and foreign governments try to protect their nationals.

In Nepal, compensation for families of air-crash victims is limited to $20,000 (£13,400), an anachronism in modern civil aviation.

‘Commercial operators with low levels of liability don’t make flying safer,’ says James Healy-Pratt, head of aviation at law firm Stewarts Law.

In the UK, he adds, there’s no such restriction, and tour operators might find themselves liable under European law.

Hampshire-based Explore Worldwide, the company that organised the trek for all the British victims, has already joined with other operators to send an independent aviation auditor to Nepal, according to managing director Ashley Toft.

The European Aviation Safety Agency has written to CAAN asking what is being done about improving safety. Some experts believe that one or more of Nepal’s domestic airlines will soon be placed on the EU’s blacklist.

Local people are planning a prayer ceremony for the first anniversary of the Sita Air crash. Angie Gaunt and Maggie Holding say they are grateful to the Foreign Office and praise the charity Disaster Action. But they are still waiting for answers. ‘I would never have said to Steve, “Don’t go, it’s too dangerous,”’ says Maggie Holding.

‘These things always happen to other people, don’t they? It should have been the best experience ever in the mountains and I would very much wish for others to have that experience – but safely.’

Sunday 24 March 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2296381/Everest-danger-Why-planes-taking-tourists-Nepal-climb-mountain-crashing.html

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Families still seeking truth 70 years after wartime HMS Dasher disaster in Firth of Clyde that killed 379 men


The dark waters of the Firth of Clyde are icy cold today as families gather to mark a secret wartime tragedy that set the sea ablaze – and claimed the lives of 379 men.

It is exactly 70 years since aircraft carrier HMS Dasher exploded off the Ayrshire coast at Ardrossan, sending debris 60ft into the air and spewing burning petrol across the surface of the water.

But seven decades on from the disaster on March 27, 1943, relatives of many of those sailors are still fighting to find out exactly what happened to them.

Author John Steele, who has spent years researching the tragedy, is convinced that Dasher’s sinking is the subject of a cover-up and delicate information is being withheld because the ship was a “floating bomb” from the start.

He said: “Dasher was a disaster waiting to happen. It was an embarrassment to the Ministry of Defence.

“The Navy were so desperate for ships that they bought five converted aircraft carriers from America – Dasher used to be a banana boat.

“The ships weren’t up to scratch. They failed on over 20 Royal Navy regulations – the most significant being petrol leakage.

“Sometimes the pilots were sloshing about in petrol lying in the ship’s hangar. Sometimes they couldn’t use their cabins because of the petrol fumes.

“And the extractor fans weren’t up to the job. It was an explosive cocktail – and the worst happened.

“But it was covered up and it continues to be covered up. The bodies of 68 casualties which were recovered from the sea have never been found. It seems they were buried in a mass grave, probably somewhere near Ardrossan, but we still don’t know where.

“The relatives of these men have no graves. Surely they have suffered enough? Surely now is the time to release the information? Where are these boys buried?”

The Dasher was carrying 75,000 gallons of diesel, 20,000 gallons of aviation fuel and a full load of torpedoes and depth charges when she went up in a massive explosion. She took just eight minutes to sink.

There were no German U-boats in the area and Germany never claimed responsibility.

Official war diaries record the cause as suspected internal explosion.

John suspects that something as simple as a discarded cigarette or the spark from a dropped spanner could have ignited leaking petrol, though no official details were released.

It became one of the biggest wartime disasters in British waters.

John said: “Everything was kept secret for 30 years – and much of the information is still secret. But after 30 years, they slipped some documents into the public records office, which is now the National Archives.

“They did that without an announcement so only professional researchers would come across it.

“Only a handful of people found out – none of the relatives who had written letters pleading for information.”

Retired company manager John, 73, and his wife Noreen, 72, live near Ardrossan beach. Their home looks out across the spot where the ship went down – halfway between the Ayrshire coast and the isle of Arran.

They became interested in the disaster after moving from Paisley and listening to some of the locals discuss old memories of a large explosion at sea and bodies being washed ashore.

But when they tried to discover what happened to Dasher, they could find no published details.

John and Noreen were so intrigued, they embarked on relentless research, pursuing secret documents held in military archives and interviewing any of the 149 survivors they could track down.

They uncovered information which shocked the relatives of those who died.

John said: “The parents and wives of the men who died were told nothing. They were just sent telegrams telling them they were killed or missing – not what happened or where or why.

“The men who survived were told never to talk about it. Of those bodies recovered, only 24 burials took place, with no explanation of what happened to the rest.

“We obtained permission to have an area of Ardrossan cemetery excavated last year but there was no sign of a mass grave. So we still haven’t found the location of the burials. It’s a terrible situation.”

Grandmother Eunice Clark, 73, from Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, was only three when her father George Wood became one the Dasher casualties.

He had only joined the crew three weeks before the catastrophe, having previously served in the merchant navy.

Eunice grew up spending holidays in Ardrossan with her grieving mother Betty and little brother George, who was born after their dad died. With no grave to visit, it was her mum’s way of being close to her husband. George’s body was never found.

She said: “I don’t remember much from the time but my mum spoke about it.

“There were so many stories going about – that the ship hit a mine in the water. But my mum never found out what happened before she died and we still don’t really know.

“To me, the ship was a death trap right from the start. As a result, I never got to know my dad and my brother never met him.”

The ship is now an official war grave, lying on the seabed 600 feet down in the firth. John and Noreen arranged for a team of specialist divers to lay a brass plaque on the wreck commemorating the men who died.

There are two memorial plaques to the Dasher victims – one at the seafront in Ardrossan and one in Brodick on Arran.

A special service will take place in Ardrossan today.

Every year there is a ceremony for bereaved relatives aboard the Calmac ferry from Ardrossan to Arran. The ship stops directly above the wreck while prayers are said and floral tributes are cast into the water.

It’s an important gesture for Eunice and one she clings to even 70 years on.

She said: “I go to the memorial service every year. It’s doing something for my dad and for my mum. It’s very sad.”

Sunday 24 March 2013

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/families-seeking-truth-over-wartime-1782540

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Bihar boat tragedy: Seven bodies recovered, 3 still missing


Seven bodies were fished out while three others are missing in the boat capsize in Ganga at Bhagalpur today, as Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh for next of kins of victims.

Sub-Divisional Officer, Kahalgaon, Sanjay Kumar said that after day-long efforts, six more bodies have been fished out from the river, mostly of women and girls. Body of a woman was recovered in the morning hours, he added.

Search is on for the three missing, he said.

Tragedy struck when the country boat capsized in Ganga in Bhagalpur district this morning, with at least 25 people, including women and children on board.

They were mostly labourers enroute Rani Diara.

Expressing grief over the incident Kumar today announced that the Disaster Management department will give Rs 1.5 lakh, and another Rs 50,000 from CM's relief fund, totalling Rs 2 lakh, for each of the next of kin of victims.

Sunday 24 March 2013

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bihar-boat-tragedy-seven-bodies-recover.../1092405/

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Nepal: Separate security units to fight natural disasters


The government is thinking of constituting trained and equipped search and rescue (SAR) teams of security personnel to deal with natural disasters in the country.

One medium SAR team comprising 50-60 personnel each from the Armed Police Force (APF) and the Nepal Army (NA) and around 10 light SAR teams of 10-12 personnel from the Nepal Police (NP) are proposed to be formed under the National Disaster Response Framework. The Disaster Response Division under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) has prepared the framework. The ministry is the focal national institution to coordinate, formulate policies and programmes to deal with various kinds of natural disasters. According to the category of SAR teams, heavy includes those teams with highly sophisticated equipment like helicopters and bulldozers and well-trained human resources who can be mostly found in mega cities like New York. The medium and light teams are common and responsible to carry normal activities during any disaster.

According to Laxmi Dhakal, joint-secretary at the MoHA, considering the need of trained and equipped SAR teams to effectively fight natural disasters like flood, landslide, earthquake and fire, among others, the ministry came up with the proposal to form special security teams. The proposal is one of the components of a draft of National Disaster Response Framework (NDRF). At present the security personnel from all the three departments—NA, APF and NP—are involved in carrying out rescue and search operations in the country during natural disasters. “Though there are some security persons trained in disaster management, there are no separate units formed under the security bodies to specifically fight disasters,” he said.

Unlike the present situation, where a few individuals trained in disaster management are working from their respective units, the proposed framework aims at forming a separate battalion or company responsible for disaster preparedness only, said Dhakal.

The NDRF document will be discussed during the upcoming meeting of the Central Natural Disaster Relief Committee chaired by the PM on Friday.

Sunday 24 March 2013

http://ekantipur.com/2013/03/24/capital/separate-security-units-to-fight-natural-disasters/368929.html

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