Tuesday 10 December 2013

Egypt mini-bus crash kills at least 13


A truck carrying petrol in northern Egypt has crashed into a mini-bus and exploded into a ball of fire, killing at least 13 people, authorities said.

Officials told the AFP news agency that Monday's crash, which also injured several mini-bus passengers, occurred on a bridge in the town of Kafr El-Zayat, south of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

It was caused when a tyre on the truck burst and the vehicle rolled over before hitting the mini-bus and exploding, according to the officials.

The accident was the worst since a train ploughed into a mini-bus and a truck at a railway crossing on November 18, killing 27 people.

Egyptians have long complained that the authorities have failed to deal with chronic transport problems, with roads and train lines poorly maintained.

In January, 17 people died when a train transporting conscripts derailed, and in November 2012, 47 school children were killed when a train crashed into their bus.

The transport minister and the railway authority head were forced to resign as a result of that accident, which was blamed on a train signal operator who fell asleep on the job.

The government formed a panel to investigate, but as with similar tragedies in the past, it did little to shed light on the details and less still to bring about accountability.

In Egypt's deadliest railway tragedy, the bodies of more than 360 passengers were recovered from a train after a fire in 2002.

Tuesday 10 December 2013

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/12/egypt-mini-bus-crash-kills-at-least-13-2013129194641226928.html

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NBI identifies only 11% of recovered typhoon victims


Only 11% of the fatalities from typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) in this city have been identified so far.

"We can only examine up to 40 bodies everyday, but there are many remains that have been retrieved. We’re not constrained by the method of identification but by the number of bodies," said Raul Alcantara, head of the second team of National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) experts deployed to this city to identify the dead.

Mr. Alcantara said most were in an advanced state of decomposition, further hindering the identification process. Instead of simply using fingerprints to identify the bodies, the team has to conduct dental examination and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) tests.

Those that have been buried will also be exhumed for examination.

"Even if these bodies will be examined, the identification process is a challenge if there are no dental records available. We also need at least three living immediate family members for comparison to complete the DNA testing," Mr. Alcantara explained.

Since it launched retrieval of bodies after the storm, the task force on cadaver collection has recovered 2,321 bodies in this city alone. Only 245 bodies have been identified as of this week.

"They were identified by their relatives through clothing and [pieces of] jewelry," the NBI official said.

From Dec. 4 to Dec. 8, the task force led by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) has recovered 106 more cadavers in the city’s San Jose district, Magallanes Street, Anibong village, Nula-Tula village, and the shoreline near the San Juanico Bridge.

"We expect to retrieve more bodies as seawaters subsided in low-lying areas and storm debris have been cleared in coastal communities," said Sr. Supt. Pablito Cordeta, BFP regional director and task force head.

The team also asked the Department of Health to provide more body bags and step up its support in burying remains.

In a briefing, City Administrator Tecson John Lim said there were reports that some bodies were buried by residents outside mass grave sites without knowledge of authorities. "It’s hard to account for bodies that were buried outside the designated grave site," Mr. Lim said.

As of Sunday afternoon, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) reported 5,582 deaths in Eastern Visayas with 1,729 persons still missing after the typhoon slammed into central Philippines on Nov. 8.

Some 517,579 houses were destroyed, displacing about 479,000 families in Eastern Visayas.

Meanwhile, an official of the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) said Western Visayas can immediately recover from the effects of typhoon Yolanda despite wreaking havoc on the agriculture and fisheries sectors in the region.

Guillermo M. Luz, NCC co-chairman, said Western Visayas can boost its economic growth faster than other areas hit by Yolanda.

Mr. Luz, who led an NCC roadshow in Iloilo City on Friday, cited the fast-paced growth in Iloilo City, which is the economic and political capital of Western Visayas. "You are relatively lucky because Yolanda did not directly hit Iloilo City where everything is up and running. There is no downtime in growth here because of various investments and developments. Had the typhoon directly hit the city, the magnitude of destruction would impact heavily on the economic and social sectors," he added.

He also cited Iloilo’s recovery in the aftermath of typhoon Frank (international name: Fengshen) in 2008.

He said Iloilo City emerged second in the overall competitiveness ranking of top 10 cities in the Philippines five years after typhoon Frank struck.

"The city made adjustments after typhoon Frank and the resiliency of the local government unit in the face of disasters paid off," he added.

Tuesday 10 December 2013

http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=Nation&title=NBI-identifies-only-11%-of-recovered-typhoon-victims&id=80524

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Agonising wait for the missing in Philippine wastelands


In the grieving, grey wastelands that were once bustling towns on tropical Philippine islands, thousands of typhoon survivors are enduring an agonising wait of hope and denial for news of loved ones.

Nearly 1,800 people are officially listed as missing after Super Typhoon Haiyan swept across the central Philippines just over a month ago, and not knowing what happened to them is for some relatives nearly as painful as confirmation that they died.

Francis Batula, 35, buried his aunt and four other relatives in shallow graves outside their badly damaged home in the coastal city of Tacloban, where giant storm surges wiped out thousands of homes as well as schools, churches and other places serving as evacuation centres.

His aunt was in her house facing the Pacific Ocean, along with her husband and daughter. The aunt?s body was found but not those of the other two, and Batula refuses to acknowledge that his uncle and cousin are likely dead.

We are still hoping that they are safe, but that they can't contact us. Maybe there's no (phone) signal where they are now, Batula told AFP after walking past the graves of his five other relatives.

Batula said he and other relatives had paid fruitless visits to neighbouring communities to ask if people had seen his uncle and cousin, and expressed anger at authorities for not doing enough to search for the missing.

?All they are doing is asking for the names of the missing people. They say they will report it. But when you ask them what they will do to help you find them, there is no concrete answer? they say it's not a priority right now, he said.

The government insists it is doing all it can to find the missing but, like virtually all other aspects of the disaster, the magnitude of the response needed is overwhelming.

The number of people confirmed killed is 5,936, and just the task of dealing with the dead has been too much to handle properly, with countless bodies having been dumped into mass graves without being properly identified.

The typhoon on November 8 generated tsunami-like storm surges that powered through dozens of coastal communities on the islands of Leyte and Samar, and piles of rubble from destroyed homes still lie in the streets.

As that debris is being cleared by cash-for-work clean-up crews of survivors and just a few bulldozers, bodies continue to be found.

Amid the chaos, there are haunting messages for the lost.

Churchgoers browse lists of missing people and look at posters appealing for help that are pinned up to the entrances of cathedrals.

At the Santo Nino church in Tacloban, a photocopied photo of a three-year-old boy hangs on a notice board.

Alongside, a handwritten message says the boy was wearing an orange life vest and diapers, but no shirt, when he went missing on November 8. The phone numbers of five people are listed for anyone with information to call.

The Red Cross is playing an important role in trying to find the missing.

It sends tracing teams into communities to look for people after they are reported by relatives or friends as having disappeared.

One of the charity organisation?s team leaders in Tacloban, Iris Recto, said her small team had found at least eight people a day over three weeks, with a record daily success of 29, by searching in evacuation centres and communities.

But Recto said the Red Cross cases mainly involved relatives overseas or elsewhere in the Philippines reporting missing people. The Red Cross typically finds people who had lost their phones or were living in an area without a phone signal, so had been unable to call relatives outside the disaster areas, according to Recto.

For the 1,779 people listed by the government as missing, they have been reported by relatives and local officials in the communities where they lived.

And the fate of many people swept out to sea or buried anonymously in mass graves will likely never be known.



National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council spokesman Reynaldo Balido told AFP that it would not declare any of the missing as dead until local officials officially made that pronouncement.

This sometimes happened one year after the disaster, even without an official identification of the body.

But Balido acknowledged that in the history of tracking the frequent typhoons, earthquakes and other disasters that plague the Philippines, the figures often permanently end up as "dead and missing"

He cited the case of Typhoon Bopha, the world?s deadliest storm last year, which tore across the southern Philippines on December 4, and officially killed 902 people.

But more than a year later, relatives of 934 people still listed as missing continue to live in a tortuous limbo.

Tuesday 10 December 2013

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h_M6KzVzrM0TJeFXXbAKEuDXTmEg?docId=62154848-3ced-4bb5-b9c4-8b5df26e3c27

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