Monday 28 April 2014

Toll in DR Congo train crash rises to 74


The toll in a train crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has risen to 74 dead.

Many people were trapped for days in the mangled wreckage of the goods train that flew off the rails last week in a swampy region about 65 kilometres north of Kamina, in the southeast of the country.

"There are 74 dead on Sunday night" and a further 163 injured, minister Felix Kabange Mukwapa told AFP news agency, adding that about 20 bodies had been recovered from under one of two carriages that overturned and was still lying on the tracks five days after the accident.

Earlier tolls had been revised from 57 to 48 but later went up again.

A newly purchased locomotive hurtled off the track on Tuesday as the goods train, bursting with illegal passengers, rounded a bend.

Many seriously injured were taken to Lubumbashi, the capital of the mineral-rich Katanga province, some 600 kilometres from Kamina, where the train began its journey.

Its planned destination was Mwene-Ditu in the diamond-mining province of Kasai-Oriental.

Witnesses said the train was carrying hundreds of passengers both inside and on top of its carriages, many of whom had paid an illegal reduced fare to ride the train without a proper ticket.

Monday 28 April 2014

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/04/28/toll-dr-congo-train-crash-rises-74

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A 1956 plane crash in the Grand Canyon made flying safer


In 1956 two planes collided over the Arizona desert, killing all 128 people on board and scattering the debris deep inside the Grand Canyon. This week, the National Park Service designated the crash site a National Historic Landmark—even though they don't actually want you to go visit it.

At the time, the tragedy was the deadliest civilian plane crash on American soil. It also served as a devastating wakeup call to the fledgling airline industry, which was suffering from growing pains and lack of government support.

A United Airlines DC-7 and TWA Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation both left LAX on the morning of June 30, 1956, the United flight headed to Chicago Midway and the TWA flight headed to Kansas City. Both planes were flying at different altitudes in uncontrolled airspace when the TWA flight requested permission from air traffic control to fly at higher than normal altitudes due to thunderstorms. Air traffic control said no, due to the United flight nearby. Then the pilot requested to ascend above cloud level, operating under visual flight rules or VFR (instead of instrument flight rules). It was understood that at this altitude, the pilot would be employing the "see and be seen" principle—responsible for visually spotting and avoiding planes nearby.

The planes knew they would be sharing airspace but did not have any way of knowing they were in such close proximity. It's also likely that both planes were off-course slightly to show their passengers the scenic landscape below. As the two pilots headed over the Grand Canyon, clouds probably obscured their views, and the planes collided at a 25-degree angle.

Although there's a burial site for the TWA passengers in nearby Flagstaff, Arizona, the crash site itself has never been formally recognized. For one, they're not exactly sure where the crash itself happened. The planes hit the ground at 700 feet per second near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers. Each ignited fires that were so hot they fused the body of the plane onto the canyon rocks. No bodies were recovered intact.

There are parts of the planes which remain at the bottom of the canyon; due to the treacherous terrain it was impossible to recover all the pieces. But also due to that treacherous terrain, the National Park Service is not revealing the exact location of the crash site because it doesn't want people hiking there.

So why even have a landmark at all? In this case, the landmark status is more about the changes this site brought about. Because of the crash, the country enacted sweeping reforms for communication and safety for the airline industry. Due to the heavy press coverage the crash received, the public was outraged, and there was a movement to demand congressional hearings about the case. Between 1950 and 1955 there had already been 65 mid-air collisions over U.S. airspace.



In 1957, a motion was introduced to boost air traffic control funding, both to modernize the system and hire and train controllers. This would include ways to better manage visual and instrument flight rules. Airports also added radar, which would prove invaluable for tracking planes. And a few years later, the Federal Aviation Agency was formed to oversee all American airspace.

Although memorials for crash sites are commonplace, this is the first time a plane crash site has been landmarked. And it's also the first landmark which technically honors something which happened in the air, not on the ground, National Historic Landmarks Program branch chief Alexandra Lord told The Atlantic Cities:

"We've never done an actual crash site," said Alexandra Lord, branch chief of the National Historic Landmarks Program in Washington, D.C. "In some ways we can argue that the crash itself—which led to the scattering of pieces over a huge debris field—is what's crucial. And it sort of doesn't matter if you think of it as on the air or on the ground."

Next time you're flying over the American Southwest and your pilot tells you to look out the window to see the Grand Canyon, know that the reason you're flying safely is because of that site somewhere below. A single tragic crash spurred along the technology that made the skies a better place for all. And for that, a landmark is very fitting indeed.

Monday 28 April 2014

http://gizmodo.com/why-a-1956-plane-crash-site-in-the-grand-canyon-was-nam-1568330158

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S Korea ferry disaster: Floating buoy used to spot bodies being carried away


Search teams say they'll use floating buoys in an attempt to stop bodies drifting away from the accident site.

The buoys will be used to detect various environmental factors such as the wind direction, speed, water temperature and water pressure to convey information in real time about the possible location of bodies that may have been carried away by strong sea currents.

Among the 188 bodies recovered so far, around 40 were found outside the vessel.

There's currently a net 13 kilometers long surrounding the site.

The search team is also expanding its operations to a 60 kilometer radius around the accident site.

Divers were battling atrocious weather conditions and powerful swell on Sunday in their grim search for bodies believed trapped in a sunken South Korean ferry, a coastguard spokesman said.

Rolling seas whipped up by strong winds were badly complicating efforts to find the remains of more than 100 people still unaccounted for 11 days after the Sewol capsized with 476 people -- many of them schoolchildren -- on board.

Despite waves up to three metres (nine feet) tall and near gale-force winds, teams of divers were still trying to get into the ferry.

"The situation is very difficult due to the weather, but we are continuing search efforts, using the occasional calmer periods," a coastguard spokesman said, adding 93 divers would take part in Sunday's operation.

Heavy seas prevented divers from getting into the ship on Saturday.

Forecasters warned wind and rain would pick up throughout the day.

"There is a possibility that a high wave advisory will be issued in sea areas around Jindo Sunday afternoon," Yonhap news agency quoted a weather service official as saying.

Frogmen -- who were unable to get inside the ferry for the first two days -- have battled strong currents, poor visibility and blockages.

The conditions each mission can be no more than a few minutes in length.

But even in this short time, they are coming across scenes of horror in the murky water, including one dormitory room packed with the bodies of 48 students wearing lifejackets.

Around a quarter of the dead recovered so far have been found in waters outside the sunken vessel, and there are fears that some of the missing may have drifted free from the wreck.

That could be exacerbated if the sea is churned by the gathering storm, scattering bodies.

Authorities -- wary of the anger among relatives about the time the search ios taking -- have mobilised trawlers and installed 13-kilometre-long (eight-mile-long) nets anchored to the seabed across the Maenggol sea channel to prevent the dead being swept into the open ocean.

South Korea has asked Japan and China to inform it about any bodies that wash up on beaches, reports said Monday, as fears grow that some of those who died when a ferry sank may never be found.

Park Seung-Gi, a spokesman for the government's Joint Task Force which is co-ordinating actions, vowed Monday to redouble efforts to prevent bodies getting lost in the sea.

Special teams have been set up to search underwater around the sunken vessel, as well on the sea surface, nearby islands and shores, he said.

"We will try our best to find bodies by using all our resources including helicopters, warships, patrol ships and search personnel," Park told reporters.

"We have asked China and Japan to contact us if they, by any chance, find any unidentified bodies washed up on shore," it quoted one rescue official as saying.

In deeply Confucian South Korea, the proper burial of bodies -- often in the deceased person's home town -- is considered a way to show respect for the dead and to allow their soul to rest in peace.

Waterlogged debris, cramped conditions and poor visibility is making their gruesome task very difficult, say officials, with several frogmen reporting injuries or decompression sickness.

Monday 28 April 2014

http://www.arirang.co.kr/News/News_View.asp?nseq=161586

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/storm-swell-hampers-s/1084776.html

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Tornado sweeps across southern US leaving at least 12 dead


At least 12 people have been killed after a powerful storm system wreaked havoc through the southern and central US on Sunday night.

A spokesman for the Arkansas governor, Mike Beebe, said 11 people were were killed in his state when a tornado carved through several suburbs north of Little Rock.

Local television station THV 11 said the local sheriff in Faulkner county had confirmed that six people died in the town of Vilonia.

"It's just devastating," Sheriff Andy Shock told THV 11. Shock said the town was facing a "mass casualty situation" and that nearby interstate 40 had been closed in both directions after cars and trucks were overturned.

Emergency workers and volunteers went door-to-door to look for victims. "It turned pitch black," said Mark Ausbrooks, who was at his parents' home when the storm arrived. "I ran and got pillows to put over our heads and ... all hell broke loose."

"My parents' home, it's gone completely," he said.

The large tornado stayed on the ground as it moved north-eastward for at least 30 miles (48km). Television footage showed badly damaged buildings and vehicles.

The neighbouring town of Mayflower was also badly hit. About 45 homes were destroyed and a lumberyard was damaged, said Will Elder, an alderman in the town of 2,300 people. He said at least one person was injured.

The tornado passed through the east side of town, tearing up trees and bringing down powerlines, making it difficult for the emergency services to find stricken areas in the the darkness.

"It's extremely hazardous here right now," said Elder. "The power lines are down, roads are blocked and they will have to proceed with caution."

In the western part of the state, Pulaski county sheriff's lieutenant Carl Minden said three people were killed when a tornado hit the area. Minden said several others were injured at the scene.

"I'm standing on the foundation of the house now. It's totally gone," Minden told the Associated Press.

The storm system passed through Arkansas at about 7.30pm as around a dozen twisters were reported across the region.

At least one person was killed in a tornado in the small Oklahoma town of Quapaw.

A police dispatcher in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, said a search and rescue effort was under way in Quapaw, but could not confirm reports of fatalities.

Tornadoes were also reported in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri on Sunday afternoon and evening, causing some damage but no known injuries, according to local officials and the weather service.

Monday 28 April 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/tornado-kills-two-in-oklahoma-as-sheriff-reports-mass-casualties

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Saturday 26 April 2014

Body recovery from sunken S.Korean ferry suspended


Concerns are growing among anguished families that the bodies of those who died in the sinking of a South Korean ferry may never be found, as search teams suspended work on Saturday because of bad weather.

A looming storm and high tides put a temporary halt to operations to recover the remains of more than 100 people still missing over a week after the huge ferry capsized.

"Over the weekend, strong wind and rain is expected in the Jindo area", a coastguard spokesman told journalists.

"As efforts to find the missing people are becoming protracted, there are growing concerns among their families that bodies might be lost for good", he said.

The confirmed death toll stood Saturday at 187, with 115 unaccounted for -- many bodies are believed trapped in the ferry that capsized on April 16 with 476 people on board.

Making up the bulk of the passengers on the 6,825 tonne Sewol when it sank were 325 high school students -- around 250 of whom are either confirmed or presumed dead.

Although all hope of finding survivors has been extinguished, there is still anger and deep frustration among relatives of the missing over the pace of the recovery operation.

- Challenging conditions -


Frogmen have battled strong currents, poor visibility and blockages caused by floating furniture as they have tried to get inside the upturned vessel, which rests on a silty seabed.

The challenging conditions have meant divers are unable to spend more than a few minutes in the ship each time they go down.

Even so, they are coming across horrifying scenes in the murky water, including one dormitory room -- that would normally have held around 31 people -- packed with the bodies of 48 students wearing lifejackets.

Around a quarter of the 187 bodies recovered so far have been found in waters outside the sunken vessel, and there are fears that some of the missing may have drifted free from the wreck.



The gathering storm was intensifying worries that remains could be scattered when the sea is churned by strong winds.

Authorities -- wary of the palpable anger among relatives -- have mobilised eight trawlers and installed 13-kilometre (eight-mile)-long nets anchored to the seabed across the Maenggol sea channel to prevent the dead being swept into the open ocean.

Dozens of other vessels, including navy ships as well as helicopters, have also been scouring the site and beyond.

Three fisheries patrol vessels were being pressed into the search operation, expanding the hunt up to 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the scene of the disaster.

Police and local government officials will also be mobilised to scour coastal areas and nearby islands, a coastguard official said.

- Widening investigation -

Furious families demanded a meeting with Choi Sang-Hwan, deputy head of the Korea Coastguard, near the pier in Jindo Port, urging him to send the divers back into the water.

"We are waiting for the right moment as conditions in the sea are not favourable," said Choi.

Choi was physically attacked by angry parents on Thursday, a victim of the febrile atmosphere surrounding the tragedy, which has already seen multiple arrests and bitter recriminations.

It took divers working in difficult and dangerous conditions more than two days to get into the sunken ferry and two more days to retrieve the first bodies.

Many relatives believe some of the victims may have survived for several days in trapped air pockets, but perished in the cold water after no rescue came.

As a result some have asked for autopsies to be performed, to see if it would be possible to determine the precise cause and time of death.

The Sewol's captain, Lee Joon-Seok, and 10 crew members have been arrested on charges ranging from criminal negligence to abandoning passengers.

The captain has been particularly criticised for delaying the evacuation order until the ferry was listing so sharply that escape was almost impossible.

Divers battle darkness, fear to find bodies in sunken ferry

Divers grope their way slowly through the dark corridors and cabins of the sunken Sewol ferry. Bodies appear suddenly, floating by in the murky water, buoyed by life-jackets or the bloat of decomposition, their faces etched with fear or shock.

Some are still locked together in embraces, a freeze-frame of panic as the water rushed in and the ship sank. The hair of female corpses ripples in the current, framing pale faces.

At times, heavy sediment in the water can make flashlights useless and it is almost total darkness inside the South Korean ferry, which has flipped upside down on the seafloor. Divers must stretch their hands into the void to search for bodies. There's constant worry their lifeline to the surface, a 100-meter oxygen hose, will get snagged or cut as they swim deeper through the wreck's maze-like hallways.

For nearly a week now, dozens of divers have battled fast currents and cold waters — as well as exhaustion and fear — to pull out a steady stream of corpses. As they go deeper into what's become a huge underwater tomb, they're getting a glimpse of the ship's final moments April 16 before it capsized. More than 300 — most of them high school students — are feared dead.

"They can see the people's expressions at the instant" the ship sank, Hwang Dae-sik said of the team of 30 divers he supervises for the Marine Rescue and Salvage Association, a private group of professional divers who've joined Korean navy and coast guard divers in the search and rescue effort. "From the bodies' expressions, you can see they were facing danger and death."

Divers descend about 30 meters (100 feet) down and enter the ship through windows they've broken with hammers.

Han Yong Duk, a 33-year-old diver, said that visibility was often so poor that divers had to feel their way along the outside of the ship to find windows they could smash. One diver tried to hit the ferry with a hammer but only connected with steel, not glass.

Another civilian diver said that sometimes it was pitch black; other times there was less than 20 centimeters (a foot) of visibility.

"I got around by fumbling in the darkness to try to find things with my hands," said Cha Soon-cheol, who spent five days helping with searches. Swimming against the strong currents exhausted him.

Once inside the ship, divers have to dodge floating debris — passengers' belongings, cargo, ropes, chairs — but also bodies.

The ship turned upside down as it sank, so "just imagine a room that is flipped," said Hwang, who doesn't participate in dives himself but is closely involved in every other part of the operation. "Everything is floating around, and it's hard to know exactly where they are."

It is a delicate operation. Divers must move quickly to find decomposing corpses, but they must also be cautious to protect themselves from injury and keep their air supply hoses from getting cut off. The divers can often work for about an hour when they're hooked up to the hoses, Hwang said.

Some divers use oxygen tanks, but that typically allows for only about 20 minutes under water.

As they explore the hallways of the ship, bodies in lifejackets often float above them, near what used to be the floor, and divers must reach up to grab the bodies and pull them close so they can hold them while notifying colleagues above. They then carefully push the body through an open window cleared of broken glass and debris and let it float up to the boats.

Hwang says divers take special care with decaying bodies to make sure they don't damage them further. When a body without a life jacket is found one diver wraps his arms around the body and another diver pulls his colleague and the body to the surface with a rope.

The work is dangerous.

Air supply problems recently forced two members of Hwang's team to make risky, rapid ascents from about 30 meters (120 meters) underwater to the surface. Rising too quickly puts divers at risk of decompression sickness, also known as the bends, which in severe cases can be fatal. The two divers, he said, were treated in decompression chambers. They're now resting, with one suffering from back pain.

It's also emotionally exhausting, and divers often find themselves thinking of the lives lost.

Hwang said his divers try to avoid looking at the eyes of the bodies they retrieve to minimize the shock. It's not always possible. "Even though they have a lot of diving experience, they get really frightened when they first face the bodies," he said.

Many of the students are found hugging each other.

"How hard it must have been for the kids, with the cold water rushing in and darkness coming over them," Hwang said. "Yesterday, I had a lump in my throat talking about this. I thought to myself: Why did I tell them that I can help with rescues and have a lot of experience when I can't even save one life here?"

Saturday 26 April 2014

http://news.yahoo.com/body-recovery-sunken-korean-ferry-suspended-053924986.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/04/25/sewol-ferry-south-korea/8148419/

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Missing SAR helicopter and crew located by underwater robot submarine near Canary Islands


An underwater robot submarine, “Rรฉmora II”, located the wreck of a Search and Rescue helicopter that crashed into the sea in the waters of the Canary Islands in March, killing all 4 crew members, who were still on board.

The aircraft, from 802 Squadron based at the Gando airbase, has been located 2,632 metres below the surface, about 30 nautical miles southwest of Fuerteventura, during a search of the area around the last known location of the Super Puma helicopter.

Military were sent to the scene to assess the location and status of the aircraft, to ascertain how, and if it was possible, to recover both the helicopter and the bodies of Captain Daniel Pena, Lieutenants Carmen Ortega and Sebastiรกn Ruiz, and Sergeant Carlos Caramanzana.

Described as a “complex and difficult task”, the Spanish ministry of defence contracted an American specialist recovery and recovery company, Phoenix International, at an initial cost of 3.2 million euro, although this was later revised to 5 million, who set about recovering the helicopter and crew.

Despite initially looking like the aircraft would be recovered intact, the six-hour operation proved more difficult than anticipated when the nose and tail broke away from the fuselage during the lift. As the main chunk of fuselage was brought to the surface, it then became clear that only two of the bodies remained inside, although it was impossible at the site to determine who they were.

The two bodies recovered were transferred by another Super Puma helicopter to the naval base for examination, meanwhile, the robot submarine was sent back into the water to try to locate the two now missing crew, but was unsuccessful. A number of other body parts were later recovered from the sea, with forensic tests set to be carried out to ascertain if they belong to those remaining crew members.

In the early hours of Friday morning, the aircraft was brought by ship to the Las Palmas naval base on the island of Gran Canaria.

Despite a military spokesperson confirming that the search for the other two aircrew will be continuing, the search was called off on Friday evening, as it was now considered “unlikely” to find the remaining bodies of those two missing aircrew who dedicated theirs to saving others.

Saturday 26 April 2014

http://www.theleader.info/article/43416/spain/national/missing-sar-helicopter-recovered-from-the-sea-bed/

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Bosnia: 100 of 400 war victims found in mass grave identified


Forensic experts have managed to identify 100 of nearly 400 people killed during the 1992-1995 war and buried in a mass grave near the northwestern town of Prijedor, the State Prosecutor's Office in Sarajevo said on Friday.

The mass grave, containing the remains of 395 people, was discovered in 2013; it is located near the Tomasica mine outside Prijedor. An investigation has found that the victims are local Bosniaks and Croats who were killed by Serb police and military forces at the start of the war in 1992. Their bodies were brought to the Tomasica mine and buried there, and the mass grave remained hidden for more than two decades.

The exhumation began in June 2013, and the Prosecutor's Office said that the work had been intensified to complete the process as soon as possible. It also said that it was investigating some other locations in the Prijedor area believed to be mass grave sites.

Before the discovery of the Tomasica mass grave, about 1,200 non-Serbs from the Prijedor area were still missing. During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, about 30,000 people were reported missing and about 7,000 of them are still unaccounted-for.

Saturday 26 April 2014

http://dalje.com/en-world/bosnia--100-of-400-war-victims-found-in-mass-grave-identified/507025

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Friday 25 April 2014

South Korea admits ferry disaster dead bodies given to wrong families


As visiting President Barack Obama offered South Koreans his condolences Friday for the ferry disaster, the South Korean government conceded that some bodies have been misidentified and announced changes to prevent such mistakes from happening again.

There have been several reports in South Korean media this week of bodies going to the wrong families, with the error sometimes caught only after the remains were taken to a funeral home. An “action plan” released by the government-wide emergency task force acknowledged that “there have been cases where the victims were wrongly transferred.”

Remains will be transferred to families when there is a match using DNA testing or fingerprint or dental records, the task force said. The transfer will be temporary when a body is matched though identification or physical description, and authorities will wait for more authoritative evidence before making the transfer permanent.

Divers have recovered 183 bodies so far, but 119 remain missing and are feared dead in the dark rooms of the submerged vessel.

Search officials including a navy spokesman and a diver said 35 of the ferry’s 111 rooms have been searched so far, Yonhap news agency reported. They said 48 of the bodies recovered were found were in a single large room built to accommodate 38.

The ferry sank April 16 on its way from Incheon port to the southern tourist island of Jeju. More than 80 percent of the 302 dead and missing are students from a single high school in Ansan, south of Seoul.

Friday 25 April 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/25/south-korea-ferry-remains-dead-wrong-families

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Another 20 Fromelles diggers identified


A further 20 Australian soldiers killed during the bloody World War I battle at Fromelles have been identified, defence officials have confirmed.

Relatives are being notified after the soldiers became the latest to be identified out of the 250 Australians and Brits recovered from a mass burial site at Pheasant Wood in northern France in 2009.

It takes to 144 the number of Australian diggers identified by a joint Australian-British program which uses DNA and other evidence.

The newly-identified soldiers are likely to have graves dedicated in their names for the first time at a ceremony in Fromelles in July.

'Defence can confirm that a further 20 Australians from the 250 Australian and British World War One soldiers recovered from a mass burial site at Pheasant Wood in France in 2009 have now been identified,' a

Department of Defence spokesman said on Thursday.

An official announcement will be made after the soldiers' families are notified.

There are still 67 Australian and two British soldiers who remain unidentified. Another 37 have been interred as 'A soldier of the Great War - Known unto God'.

The DNA identification program has now officially concluded but the army's Unrecovered War Casualties team will continue to process any new information.

'The Government and Army remain determined to identify as many of the Australians as possible,' the spokesman said.

Fromelles was the first major action involving Australian troops in France in World War I.

It was fought over July 19 and 20 in 1916 and resulted in more than 5500 Australian dead and wounded. Many of the fallen were never found.

The battle is regarded by some as the worst 24 hours in Australian military history.

In 2009 a mass grave was located in Pheasant Wood on the site where German soldiers had buried Australian and British dead.

All the bodies have now been reburied in the new Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery.

Friday 25 April 2014

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/national/2014/04/24/another-20-fromelles-diggers-identified.html

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There are still broken bones beneath Bangladesh's collapsed sweat shop


One year ago today, Rana Plaza — a nine-story factory building in Savar, Bangladesh — collapsed, killing 1,116 workers immediately and injuring many more. Some of their bodies are still in the back lot, waiting to be found.

Images of the wrecked building — layers of concrete pancaked from roof to street — made it perfectly clear how severe the collapse had been. A year on, the site looks a lot different from the one you see in those photos; it's now an empty gap in a dense commercial strip, a rare blank in one of the most crowded, swiftly developing nations on Earth. But like the World Trade Center site before it, the grim history of this spot has temporarily delayed redevelopment. Besides an ugly hammer-and-sickle statue left there by some communists, nothing has been added.

Curiously, almost nothing has been taken away, either. A week after the collapse, heavy construction machinery moved in and started to shift the piles of broken concrete to an undeveloped lot a few meters away. The wreckage is still there, unsearched. It is known to contain body parts of workers who died in the collapse. The question is why they're still there and what this means for their families.

At another historical atrocity, some 12 years and 7,000 miles away, the approach to human remains was very different. After the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, a hunt began with the excavation of Ground Zero. Eventually, the results of the search included bone fragments retrieved from locations as far away as the gravel roof of the Deutsche Bank Building. To date, the New York Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (NYOCME) has catalogued over 21,000 human remains and matched two-thirds to the 2,794 victims of 9/11.

Just as 9/11 initially overwhelmed the NYOCME, the Rana Plaza atrocity overwhelmed the Bangladesh National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory. In the seven years between January of 2006 and February of 2014, the Bangladeshi lab profiled just 222 homicide cases, or about 31 per year. Rana Plaza immediately killed 1,116 people. It was like three decades of homicides in a single day. The lab had nowhere near the kind of funding or equipment as the NYOCME. In fact, the lab in Bangladesh was unable to efficiently identify the deceased until the FBI donated some software.

However, in other ways the identification work is easier than 9/11. The World Trade Center attacks were an “open manifest mass fatality” in a dense section of Manhattan, which meant the total number of victims was unknown. The force of explosions had also “vaporized” some bodies, and fires as hot as a cremation chamber burned for days. At Rana Plaza, there were one-third the amount of victims, and casualties were clearly limited to workers inside the building. The disaster crushed and burned some bodies, but didn’t “vaporize” or cremate anyone. This means that identifying the remains of every person who lost their life in the Rana Plaza atrocity is theoretically possible.

In practice, identification has its limits. The process hinges on extracting DNA, chemically processing it and comparing it to samples from living family members. Software like CODIS quantifies matches and assists in certainty, but while DNA sometimes lasts a long time, extracting enough DNA for a conclusive match can become more difficult over time if the tissues are left exposed to harsh conditions.

In the wreckage behind Rana Plaza, what's left of workers has been dumped into a kind of landfill of garments and concrete – not ideal conditions for preserving DNA. The people looking for body parts are not scientists or government personnel, but the bereaved families of the dead.

This neglect has led to another problem: there are more people waiting for bodies than there are actual bodies. By mid-May, some 550 people had registered as family members with the DNA lab, which held samples from only 321 individuals. Now, a year after the collapse, 207 bodies have been identified. Over 100 bodies remain unidentified, but some 300 families are waiting for a lost loved one.

Mere absence was enough to constitute a death after 9/11, though some disappearances were highly ambiguous, and the identification of bone fragments was often purely to allow families some closure. In a gesture of sensitivity, the 9/11 memorial eventually even classified voice recordings of the deceased as “human remains”.

In Bangladesh, where people still gather at the old factory to weep for missing loved ones, no such respect exists. According to government policy, missing Rana Plaza workers must be identified by a DNA match before their families can receive compensation – even though there's basically only one possible answer for what happened to those workers.

This is partly because of misidentifications in the atrocity’s chaotic aftermath. Last April, hundreds of family members came to Savar. Amid their panicked searching and overwhelming grief, they identified the first recovered bodies through their phones, ID cards or clothing. To relieve overcrowding, rescuers buried unidentified bodies in Jurain cemetery (many of whom have now been identified via DNA samples rescuers obtained). About 777 bodies were also hurriedly given to loved ones, sometimes in error. Meanwhile, criminals laid claim to a few cadavers and their 20,000 taka (about $220) payouts, dumped the corpses and escaped with the money.

The fact that fraud of that kind happens here demonstrates something important about Bangladesh: the level of poverty is so crushing that some are willing to steal a stranger's corpse, just for the $220 payout. It’s crushing for the actual families of the dead, many of whom were destitute before losing a major breadwinner. The humanitarian function of DNA identification after 9/11 was to allow families emotional closure. In Bangladesh today, it would also enable families to eat.

Families now allege that the government is obscuring the true number of victims to push down compensation payouts, while a Bangladesh Garment Manufacturing and Exporters Association representative has told the press that families are “village people who are unclear about how they can properly trace [their living family members]”.

The information that could end the debate is readily available; it’s in the rubble directly behind the old factory.

In the football pitch-sized lot, concrete chunks are piled high. Scattered throughout there is a mรฉlange of purchase orders, lunchboxes and cheap garments. While scalps, limb bones and other large bones are visible, there are likely plenty of smaller fragments hidden among the rubble. Family members may want these for identification purposes, but the larger bones are the only ones retrievable by untrained observers.

And there are many of these amateur archaeologists. Scavengers earn a living sifting through the rubble to find sellable scrap metal; sari-clad women hunt; children hammer concrete off reinforcing bars. Standing on a pile of rubble, scavenger Laila Begum thinks about coming across bones for a long while. “I’ve never seen [any],” she says.

But a local man named Khalil told me that he believes bones are there. And he’s right. This December, children collected over 100 body parts and turned them in to Savar police. According to the police chief, it was the fifth time that month.

For now, there is no word on whether those remains will be tested.

Friday 25 April 2014

https://news.vice.com/articles/there-are-still-broken-bones-beneath-bangladeshs-collapsed-sweat-shop?trk_source=homepage-in-the-news

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South korea ferry disaster: Confirmed death toll at 183 with 119 still missing


Latest search operations for the sunken ferry have been focused on its third- and fourth-deck cabins, where most of the missing victims are believed to be trapped.

Working during the last remaining critical hours of favorable weather conditions, Coast Guard, Navy and civilian rescue workers and divers recovered more than 20 bodies overnight.

In waters off Korea's southwestern coast where the accident happened search operations are now into a tenth day.

Not a single survivor has been found since the ferry capsized last Wednesday morning but efforts continue, with authorities having decided to use a "diving bell" at the site for the first time later this afternoon.

Divers also say there were no air pockets inside the sunken ferry reducing the chance of possible survivors after the ship submerged completely underwater.

The rescue operation continues although currents in the area are forecast to get stronger again from today.

Three more female bodies most likely Danwon High school students were recovered from early this morning -- and the death toll now well exceeds the number of survivors standing at 183 with 119 still missing.

The divers will continue their search on the third floor where the cafeteria isand on the fourth level of the ship where the cabins of most Danwon High School students were located -- focusing on the center of the deck.

Authorities will also deploy a diving bell in an hour from now - a chamber that could be used as a base and transportation of divers underwater to beef up the number of divers that can engage in search operation.

Five cranes are on stand-by, but no one assumes the lifting will take place any time soon.

But the search will continue as parents of the missing have requested the ferry not be lifted out of water until every body is recovered.

the all-out search efforts came after the exhausted and angry parents of the missing Danwon High School students made their doubts about the ongoing operation known to authorities here.

They sat down with the oceans minister and the coast guard commissioner from 5 p.m. Thursday evening questioning them for hours about whether enough was and is being done.

The parents want more diving distance lines to be installed on the fourth deck of the sunken ferry where most students are expected to be and they are demanding more civilian divers be brought into the operation.

Parents want them back in the water as they think there are not enough divers out there to recover the bodies of their children.

Several parents will also be out on the waters on the barge where divers engage in search operation.

The maritime minister and coast guard chief will stay on site to direct the operations and assist the familiesas the parents requested until the last student is brought back on shore.

Friday 25 April 2014

http://www.arirang.co.kr/News/News_View.asp?nseq=161496&category=2

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Thursday 24 April 2014

Deadly illegal mining booms below South African City of Gold


Smoke rises from a derelict mine shaft 25 miles east of Johannesburg, where illegal miners cook, work and sleep below ground for weeks at a time.

They have broken through a slab of concrete covering the entrance to the shaft, one of 6,000 abandoned mines, many around Johannesburg, known as “eGoli,” or “City of Gold” in Zulu. At least 40 unlawful prospectors have died in South Africa this year as mines collapse, workers succumb to poisonous gases and gangs wage turf wars underground.

“Any mistake and you feel you’re going to be killed,” said Joseph Sithole, 23, an undocumented Mozambican migrant, as he stood among corrugated-iron shacks and rubbish-strewn paths near the mine. He recounted how last year he dashed to one side of a shaft after hearing a crack, narrowly avoiding being buried by falling rocks. He felt his way to the surface through clouds of dust.

Sithole is one of 14,000 people the government estimates are now involved in illegal mining, which comes as a drop in gold prices and aging ore bodies shut South African shafts. The practice has grown to create a complex criminal industry valued at 6 billion rand ($566 million) a year, Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu said in February.

The government now plans to block up entrances to abandoned mines, compel owners to heighten security and increase convictions for illegal mining.

Worth Risks

“It’s getting out of control,” Shabangu said. “We need to act with speed.”

While Sithole, in jeans and slip-on shoes, typically earns less than $5 a day, he said it’s worth the risk, because hitting a rich seam can make him significantly more and allows him to send money home to his mother in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital.

Sithole and prospectors like him are known as zama-zamas, or hustlers, in Zulu. They live and work in subterranean tunnels rife with robbery and prostitution, according to police. Illegal miners from job-scarce nations including Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho as well as fired workers from South Africa, where almost one in four is unemployed, are drawn to the shafts.

Rockfalls, gang violence and robbery are becoming more common as some of the zama-zamas fight between themselves for a bigger share of the profit. Sithole says that he and his colleagues work “innocently” and carry no weapons, which means they are victims of the violence.

Gang Wars

Sithole was once held at gunpoint by a gang from Lesotho, robbed and forced to mine for two straight days, he said. The Mozambican citizen came to South Africa in 2010 after being recruited by a man from his neighborhood in Maputo, he said.

“It’s much better here because even the little that you get here when you go back home it’s worth much more,” said Sithole, whose father is a welder in Tembisa, a township north of where he lives near Brakpan, and two brothers work nearby fitting tiles.

The 28 percent drop in the gold price last year and the dwindling amount of ore in South Africa that can be mined profitably has increased the number of abandoned shafts around Johannesburg. The city lies in the middle of the Witwatersrand basin, the source of a third of all bullion the world has yet produced.

The government estimates there are 6,000 illegal miners underground and 8,000 on the surface, equivalent to about 10 percent of the number of legal employees in the industry. Survival Instinct

Shabangu’s ministry didn’t respond to questions first sent on March 13 on the number of illegal miners killed and convicted in 2014 compared with previous years. She won’t be available until after national elections on May 7, spokeswoman Ayanda Shezi said.

For Sithole, it’s about survival.

Using hand tools, a head torch and rope, he and three friends can mine three grams (0.1 ounce) to four grams of gold in a week, earning the group 960 rand to 1,280 rand. That equates to about $4.60 daily each, enough to buy a cabbage and an 11-pound bag of corn meal. The sum is 82 percent lower than the average black South African household’s income of $26 a day, according to government statistics.

With shafts extending down from the surface as many as 2.4 miles, South Africa’s gold mines are the world’s deepest, and it takes Sithole as long as two hours walking through a labyrinth of tunnels to get to the ore. He spends a week below ground at a time, living in the dark, often flooded shafts.

Good Money Kenny Mashiane, 34, another illegal miner who works independently of Sithole, said in a productive week in a rich seam of gold ore he can make as much as 3,000 rand.

“It’s risky but you can make good money, if you’re lucky,” said Mashiane, who is South African. “You need to study and know where to go.”

Mashiane, who wore a ragged white shirt held together by strands of material, blue overall pants and a Nike (NKE) baseball cap, said he used to mine platinum for Lonmin Plc (LMI), the world’s third-biggest producer of the metal, before losing his job in 2004 in Rustenburg, 106 miles northwest of Johannesburg.

Goliath Gold Mining (GGM) Ltd. owns prospecting rights to the land where Mashiane and Sithole mine. The company bought them from the liquidators of Pamodzi Gold East Rand Ltd. in 2012, according to spokesman Grant Stuart.

Those who have died this year include a group of 20 people, predominantly Zimbabweans, who were poisoned by carbon monoxide in a mine near Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg, according to Paul Ramaloko, a spokesman for Hawks, the South African Police Service’s anti-corruption unit. That mine is not owned by Goliath.

Rising Incidence

Unlawful mining and associated violence is increasing due to “poverty, unemployment and large numbers of illegal immigrants in South Africa,” the Chamber of Mines, which represents producers including AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (ANG), said in an e-mailed statement on March 31.

Security guards, policemen and legal mine workers take bribes from zama-zamas, allowing them access to ore-bearing shafts and fueling the illicit industry, according to Nash Lutchman, senior vice president at Sibanye Gold Ltd., the biggest producer of gold from South African mines.

Legal operators are also falling victim to the zama-zamas, who recruit fired laborers and steal equipment, the chamber said. Sithole and Mashiane said they mine in abandoned shafts with no guards and buy their equipment.

“While we’ve certainly seen reports of illegal mining activities, the careful securing of entrances to our operational sites has thus far worked for us,” said David Noko, AngloGold’s executive vice president for sustainability.

Buried Bodies

The chamber is establishing a precious-metal fingerprinting system that can trace where gold and platinum comes from and working with government and international bodies such as the United Nations to target criminals who trade illegally mined metal across national borders.

Rockfalls are often caused by the mining of gold-rich rock pillars that were left behind by companies to prevent shafts from collapsing, according to Herbert Sogoni, 61, a retired legal miner from Sithole’s shanty town.

“There are still a lot of bodies captured by the rockfalls that are never brought to the surface,” he said.

Rival gangs are just as dangerous as rockfalls. Murders happen during turf wars between groups fighting for rich mining areas, according to the police’s Ramaloko. Women often work below ground as prostitutes, he said.

‘Not Safe’

As many as 200 people were allegedly trapped underground after a gang of zama-zamas blocked the entrance to a shaft in February near Brakpan, where Sithole lives. ER24 emergency-rescue service helped haul 24 people out while others refused to surface for fear of being arrested. The 200 figure may have been exaggerated by the miners to guarantee rescue, or they fled through tunnels to escape via other shafts, ER24 said.

Violence and intimidation have caused Thompson Ngobeni from Mozambique and Abednico Mkhize from South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province to say they won’t go underground again. The pair, both 25, were digging for gold in waste material from a mine dump near Brakpan when interviewed.

“It’s not safe, people are killing each other and robbing each other,” said Ngobeni as he shoveled gray waste rock into a plastic bucket. “They shoot each other sometimes.”

While the gold content of the waste rock is less than a third of what they could mine underground, it’s much safer to work on the surface, Mkhize said.

No Excuse Once the rock is ground into a fine powder, the men pour it into a sieve and add water, making a paste that they then drip onto a towel placed on a plank of wood. They scrape the slush into a bowl and add mercury.

Gold particles cling to the mercury and the men take the substance and put it in a cloth. They squeeze the cloth to extract the mercury and form a small ball of gold concentrate.

“Back home if you’re stuck, you’re stuck,” Ngobeni said. “At least here you can get something yourself.”

Shabangu, the mining minister, said people forging a living from abandoned mines and waste materials are contributing to a proliferation in crime including burglaries and assaults committed by zama-zamas. “Poverty is no excuse for criminality,” she said on Feb. 21.

This happened at Blyvooruitzicht, a 72-year-old gold operation 50 miles southwest of Johannesburg that closed in July last year. Residents and former workers in the mine’s neighboring village have been robbed, beaten and raped by some of the illegal miners, according to the National Union of Mineworkers.

Rising Convictions

Many are living without water and electricity after cables, pumps and generators were stolen, said Richard Xati, a spokesman for the NUM in the area.

Convictions for illegal mining are increasing, with 100 people sentenced already this year, according the Hawks’s Ramaloko. While prison terms can range from three years to five years, miners are often caught without ore, which they process underground, so can only be charged with trespassing. The police are now focusing on the dealers who buy the gold, he said.

Thursday 24 April 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-23/deadly-illegal-mining-booms-below-south-africa-s-city-of-gold.html

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Families protest opencast mine plans on site of Diglake disaster burial ground


Outraged descendants of miners who drowned in a colliery disaster staged a protest against plans to build an opencast mine on the site.

The group waved banners outside the civic offices before Newcastle councillors decided whether to support or oppose a scheme to extract 450,000 tonnes of coal from a site at Great Oak, Bignall End over 15 months.

Campaigners say the proposal is disrespectful to those who died in the 1895 Diglake disaster as dozens of bodies are still trapped beneath the ground.

Staffordshire County Council will make the final decision.

Judith Edgeley’s great-great grandfather William Roberts was killed in the Diglake disaster.

The 48-year-old of Red Street, near Audley, said: “This is effectively a burial ground, we have no idea where those bodies are.

“I have asked UK Coal countless times about how they would make sure that they are not going to disturb the bodies and I’ve had nothing to reassure me. All they say is they’re not digging in the area where the disaster happened – but no-one can say where they actually are.

“If you look at the size of the lorries and equipment to dig up other sites, there’s no way they would be able to tell and we could have a situation were UK Coal are ferrying the remains of 40 miners up the A34.”

A total of 77 men and boys died in the Diglake Collliery flooding on January 14, 1895, when water from an underground reservoir burst into the pit.

Three unidentified skeletons that were recovered from the mine in the 1930s. The remaining bodies have never been recovered.

Claire Barnish, chairman, of the Campaign Against Great Oak Opencast (CAGOO) organised the protest outside the civic offices.

The 33-year-old, of Raven’s Lane, Bignall End, said: “There are so many reasons to object to this mine.

“The site is an unofficial graveyard for the families of the Bignall End area.

“Not only that but the mine would destroy a beautiful area of greenbelt and cause noise and air pollution for people in the village.

“I’m pleased that the borough and parish councils have sided with us on the matter. I hope the county see it our way too.”

Newcastle Borough Council unanimously objected to the plans at Tuesday’s meeting.

Councillors added recommendations to their planning officer’s report that UK Coal must set up a fund to reinstate the area back to its former glory if the plans are approved – after concerns were raised over the financial security of the company.

Councillor Sophia Baker, said: “We need to make it clear to the county council that Newcastle Borough Council objects to these plans in the strongest possible terms.”

Councillor David Stringer added: “I’m quite sure if we would refuse this application tonight if we could.

“If it does go through, we have got to make sure that restoration fund is in place to protect the people living in the area.”

Thursday 24 April 2014

Read more: http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Families-protest-opencast-plans-site-Diglake/story-20999572-detail/story.html

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More typhoon ‘Yolanda’ bodies found


Five months after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” leveled large swathes of the Eastern Visayas, dead bodies continue to turn up.

Seven bodies were recovered in Tacloban City over the weekend as government workers scoured the area for victims of one of the most destructive typhoons to hit the country, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said Tuesday.

The NDRRMC said the death toll from Yolanda now stood at exactly 6,300, most of them still unidentified, while the typhoon left almost P89.6 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage.

It said 1,061 persons remain missing and a total of 28,689 were injured in different typhoon-related incidents.

The typhoon, which made landfall six times before leaving the Philippine area of responsibility, affected some 3.4 million families composed of 16 million individuals in nine regions.

The NDRRMC said Yolanda, which triggered storm surges several meters high, displaced four million individuals as it knocked down one million houses.

Thursday 24 April 2014

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/596636/more-yolanda-bodies-found

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Mount Everest has claimed many lives


Mount Everest has recently claimed 16 lives from a deadly avalanche, which makes this the deadliest disaster that the mountain has ever seen in one day. Though this is a larger-than-usual tragedy, death on Mount Everest is not a rare occurrence. Since 1922 people from all over the world have attempted the grueling climb to the top. Climbers all attempt to stay alive for the totality of the climb, though Mount Everest often has a different fate in mind, continually adding victims to its huge list.

The first climbers in 1922, General Charles Granville Bruce and George Mallory, were the first in history to make it past 8,000 meters on a mountain climb. This group was the second in recorded history to attempt Mount Everest, the first made it just past 7,000 meters one year prior. Since this first record-setting climb many people have tested their endurance and skills by climbing the mountain.

Mount Everest reaches just over 29,000 feet in height, proving to be disastrously hard on the human body due to its lack of oxygen and frigid temperatures. Many climbers experience bodily rejection to the altitude, suffering from headaches and extreme frostbite if not properly prepared. The snowstorms on the mountain are extreme, often causing avalanches like the deadly one earlier this month. Throughout history Mount Everest has added victims to its already huge list, with a total that causes many to wonder why so many attempt the dangerous stunt.

By the year 2005 a recorded total of 186 people died from attempting to climb Everest. This is not counting the many unidentified or lost victims. While the recent avalanche claimed 13 victims in one fell swoop, Everest has a few years where the cumulative death toll rose higher than this. In 1996 Mount Everest stole 15 lives and in 1982 the mountain laid claim to 11. Some of the most iconic landmarks of the mountain are dead bodies. Green boots, an unidentified climber who froze to death on the mountain in 1996, marks a close proximity to the summit. At 8,000 meters high, ironically the height reached by record-breakers in 1922, is what climbers call the “death zone;” 200 plus bodies of Everest’s victims are littered here.

Dead bodies are not all one will find on a climb to the top of Everest. Unfortunately, many climbers leave behind trash and equipment; there is also remnants of a helicopter that crashed into the mountain years ago. Due to the dangerous nature and expenses of making a climb, no one follows after climbers to pick up left equipment or trash. Everest mostly sees wealthy individuals; a single climber will spend upwards of $30,000 to attempt the feat.

While the death toll of Mount Everest does not have an exact pattern, there are not more than one or two deaths a year for decades at a time in some cases. The first year saw 7 deaths; a number that high was not seen again until 1970, with eight lives claimed. The recent catastrophe has many wondering if Everest is becoming more dangerous than previous years to attempt. It is yet to be determined how much longer climbers will have the option to attempt Everest; the world may see a day where any attempt is not in a person’s best interest. Time will be the only indicator of whether or not Mount Everest will be able to continue adding to its huge list of total victims.

Thursday 24 April 2014

http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/mount-everest-total-victims-list-huge/

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Ideal procedure was not maintained in identifying Rana Plaza victims


Faced with an industrial disaster of an unprecedented scale, it was not possible to follow the ideal procedure of using DNA tests to identify the Rana Plaza victims, the chief of the national DNA lab has told the Dhaka Tribune.

Although more than 100 victims remain unidentified after a year, the identifications could still be made if the government took initiative to collect DNA samples from relatives of all the victims, he added.

Professor Dr Sharif Akteruzzaman, head of the National DNA Profiling Laboratory at the Dhaka Medical College (DMC), said they had received 322 DNA samples from unidentified bodies as well as collecting 556 samples from families of the victims. So far, 206 of the bodies have been identified in three phases, he added.

According to official government figures, a total of 1,134 bodies were recovered from under the collapsed building.

The DNA test was not a complete procedure but a partial one, Akteruzzaman admitted, adding that samples from only one-fourth of the victims had been sent to the DNA lab, while 812 bodies had been handed over to relatives without collecting any DNA sample.

As such a large-scale incident was unprecedented; the bodies were improperly handed over to those claiming to be family members, after identification was made only through clothes, ornaments, or objects found in the pocket.

Although the national DNA lab had experience in carrying out DNA tests with a low-capacity machine, it needed the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Combined DNA Index System (Codis) to carry out such a large-scale test, the lab chief said.

The lab carried out 1,000 tests a year on an average, but was forced to conduct a similar number of tests within only a five-month period after the Rana Plaza collapse, he added.

It was still possible to identify the rest of bodies, if people who were yet to locate their relatives would submit DNA samples, Dr Akteruzzaman said, adding that the government could advertise in the mass media in this regard.

The government could also take an initiative to exhume the victims and collect DNA samples, in order to cross-check and confirm their identities based on other DNA samples collected from the relatives, he added.

Dr Akteruzzaman also slammed the BGMEA, claiming that the apex body of apparel makers did not contribute anything to the DNA testing efforts, and added that more family members of victims would have come forward to provide samples if the BGMEA had been more serious on the issue.

To ensure better services for any future disaster, the DNA lab chief said no dead body should be handed over to relatives without preserving DNA samples. A temporary morgue should be set up beside the disaster site, Dr Akteruzzaman said, adding that all garment workers along with public and private organisation workers who faced risks of a disaster should be brought under a DNA database.

Confusion over the total number of missing workers

Even though one year has already elapsed, there is no fully comprehensive list of the Rana Plaza victims while many of them are awaiting compensation.

Still there is an utter confusion over the total number of missing workers, buried after identification, rescued and injured workers because of lack of a complete report by the government.

According to the Labour Ministry, 180 people were still unaccounted for. But the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) report said it was 88 while Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS) put the figure at 379 and Rana Plaza Coordination Cell at 146.

The ministry said 127 people were buried unidentified, while the CPD said it was 27, ActionAid 137 and Rana Plaza Coordination Cell 136.

The CPD revealed the findings in its report titled “One Year after the Rana Plaza Tragedy: Where Do We Stand? The Victims, the Sector and the Value Chain”. The report was released at a programme held at Brac Centre Inn yesterday.

Lawmaker Shirin Akter said: “A list should be posted immediately on the website.” She added: “If there was a trade union in the factory, it was not possible to force the workers to work there.”

Shireen Haq, founder member of Naripokkho, said: “We have noticed lack of coordination in rescuing the victims and publishing a comprehensive report. Are we ready enough to handle another disaster like Rana Plaza?”

Thursday 24 April 2014

http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2014/apr/24/%E2%80%98ideal-procedure-was-not-maintained-identifying-rana-plaza-victims%E2%80%99

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Indian Air Force to set up high-risk crew’s DNA database


In a first, the Indian Air Force has initiated a project for DNA profiling of its personnel, selecting a high-risk group of aircrew that undertakes dangerous missions for the first round. A database of the DNA records will be established in Pune.

The DNA samples of nearly 2,500 crew members who face “potential threat to life” during everyday operations are being collected. The project, initiated by the Directorate General of Medical Services (Air), was accelerated after last year’s helicopter crash in Uttarakhand in which 20 people died. It took several days before some of the bodies could be handed over to the families as they could not be identified.

A similar crash that took place in a high altitude area in the Northeast in 2011 also posed several difficulties for the medical teams in identifying the remains.

“Establishing identity of the deceased is not only a legal necessity but also a moral responsibility as it has emotional implications for the family members. DNA profiling of the available body parts is the only foolproof scientific method of establishing identity of the deceased,” said an IAF official.

“In the first phase, the samples of crew members who undertake dangerous missions are being collected, but this could expand across the force later,” said an official said. For the past few weeks, blood samples of all

IAF air crew in the high-risk group are being collected and the project is likely to be completed by July-end. “The blood samples being collected by single prick method will be recorded in FTA (Fluorescent Treponemal Antibody) cards, the process by which such a profiling is stored, to be part of the repository at the Forensic Department of the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) in Pune,” said an official.

The DNA profiling of air crew from the Army and Navy has also been given priority. Over the next few years, once the project includes the entire armed forces, the FTA cards for nearly 1.5 million personnel are likely to be generated, making it the largest repository of DNA profiles in the country.

Thursday 24 April 2014

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/iaf-to-set-up-high-risk-crews-dna-database/

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South Korea's ferry crash: 159 bodies found, 143 still missing


The death toll from South Korea’s ferry crash has reached 159, with 143 people still missing, the coastal guard of the Chindo island said. The search and rescue team say that the bodies of the missing people are most likely in the 4th level and in the cabins.

Though the weather conditions have improved, the divers are prevented from making further advances by poor visibility.

More than a week after a South Korean ferry carrying 476 people capsized and sank, North Korea finally voiced its condolences Wednesday for the victims of the disaster, including the many schoolchildren who died.

The message was sent between the two Koreas' Red Cross organisations who regularly handle official cross-border communications, the South's Unification Ministry said.

"The North said in the message that it conveys deep condolences that so many passengers, including young students, died or went missing due to the sinking of the ferry Sewol," the ministry said.

Until now, North Korea had been the glaring exception among the messages of sympathy, condolence and support that have poured in from around the world after the Sewol sank with devastating loss of life last Wednesday.

North Korea's state media has barely commented on the tragedy that has dominated global headlines for the past seven days.

The confirmed death toll stood at 150 on Wednesday, but 152 were still unaccounted for, their bodies believed trapped in the inverted, submerged ship.

Heads of state across the political and geographical spectrum have sent personal messages, including US President Barack Obama, Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping.

Not a word, however, from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un who, the North's official KCNA news agency reported, had thoroughly "enjoyed" a performance by the popular, all-female Moranbong Band on the evening of April 16, around the time the full scale of the ferry disaster was emerging.

North and South Korea technically remain in a state of war, as the hostilities of the 1950-53 Korean War were concluded with a ceasefire rather than a formal peace treaty.

Their heavily militarised border remains one of extreme Cold War sensitivity, but declarations of sympathy at times of national grief are not unprecedented.

When North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il - Kim Jong-Un's father - died in December 2011, the South Korean government offered its condolences to the North Korean people

The death toll in the South Korea's ferry crash has risen to 150 people, as the search and rescue team had recovered more bodies overnight, the coastal guard reported on Wednesday. The underwater robots have been employed in the operation for two days, and rescuers mainly concentrate their efforts on the third and fourth levels of the ferry.

A 16-year-old Russian citizen who died in the sinking of South Korean ferry Sewol will be buried on Wednesday in the South Korean city of Ansan where he studied and where his family lives, the consular department of the Russian embassy said, Itar-Tass reports.

The young man was in a large group of senior students from the Danwon high school of the city of Ansan who went by ferry from the port Inchon to the resort island of Jeju last Wednesday.

Along with the Russian teenager, divers lifted two dead Chinese nationals from the hull of the sunken ferry on Monday. According to reports of the Chinese embassy in Seoul, other two Chinese citizens reported missing were on board the ferry.

Two Philippine female citizens were saved from the wrecked ferry.

Crew members detained over South Korea's ferry disaster said Tuesday they had done their best to launch life rafts, and one suggested possible technical reasons for the ship capsizing. The 6,825-tonne Sewol had 29 crew, including its captain Lee Jeon-Sook. Twenty of them escaped the ferry as it sank last Wednesday morning, and there has been public outrage at reports they were among the first to evacuate while hundreds remained trapped in the vessel.

Lee and two crew members were arrested over the weekend and charged with criminal negligence, while another four crew were taken into police custody on Monday.

Those four were paraded, heads bowed and hiding their faces, before TV cameras on Tuesday.

Asked why only one of the Sewol's 46 life rafts had been used, one said conditions had made their deployment impossible.

"We tried to gain access to the rafts but the whole ship was already tilted too much," he said.

"We tried to launch the life rafts but it was hard to get to where they were," another said.

The official death toll stood at 108 Tuesday, with 194 still missing.Most of the passengers were high school students on a holiday trip.

One crew member, apparently an officer, suggested the ferry had a structural flaw that made it difficult to regain equilibrium once it had been lost.

The ship was built in 1994 in Japan and purchased by the Cheonghaejin Marine Company in 2012.

The officer also mentioned "some errors" with the steering system.

The Sewol capsized after making a sharp right turn.

This led experts to suggest its cargo manifest might have shifted, causing it to list beyond a critical point of return.

The confirmed death toll in South Korea's ferry disaster crossed 100 on Tuesday, but almost twice that number remained unaccounted for nearly a week into the rescue and recovery effort.

The official toll provided by the coastguard stood at 104, with 198 still missing. The 6,825-tonne Sewol was carrying 476 people, most of them schoolchildren, when it capsized and sank last Wednesday.

Some 174 people, including the captain and most of his crew, were rescued.

The expected final death toll of around 300 would make this one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters., AFP reports

A Seoul department store collapsed in 1995, killing more than 500 people, while nearly 300 people died when a ferry capsized off the west coast in 1993.

Russian Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov is ready to assist South Korea in the search-and-rescue operation evolving on the site of the April 16 ferry wreck in the Yellow Sea.

"We sympathize with the people of the Republic of Korea and are ready to render comprehensive support to the victims. The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry can assign specialized diving equipment and proficient divers at any minute," a report posted on the ministry website quoted Puchkov as saying.

The minister extended his condolences to the South Korean government over the ferry sinking.

"We mourn the missing people together with their families and hope that the efforts of search-and-rescue units will bear fruit," Puchkov said.

The ferry Sewol sank off the southwestern coast of South Korea on April 16. According to the latest updates, the death toll has grown to 64 and 238 passengers are missing. There were 476 people, mostly high school students going to a seaside resort, aboard the ferry at the moment of the wreck. Search-and-rescue operations continue on the wreck site.

Thursday 24 April 2014

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_04_24/S-Koreas-ferry-crash-159-bodies-found-143-still-missing-5349/

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Wednesday 23 April 2014

Tanzania: Simiyu accident toll rises to 15


The death toll from the road accident that involved a bus christened Lehuye Express Bus on the Tarime-Mwanza Highway on Monday has increased to 15, with the number of those injured standing at 44, the police force confirmed yesterday.

Simiyu Regional Police Commander (RPC) Charles Mkumbo told the 'Daily News' that nine bodies out of 15 have been identified.

Mr Mkumbo said that 33 casualties have been admitted at Bugando Referral Hospital in Mwanza, while 11 others are being attended at Magu District Hospital. Their condition has been described as 'still appalling.'

Mr Mkumbo noted that the owner of the bus, with registration number T 410 AWQ was arrested at around 10am yesterday while the driver is still missing.

"We have held the owner of the bus, Masalu Jackson (37). He is under police custody for interrogation.

We are still doing our best to ensure that the driver is also brought to book," he said.

The bus that was travelling from Tarime to Mwanza veered off the road before hitting a house at Ichimira in Itwimila village, Busega District in Simiyu Region, killing at least ten people on the spot.

Wednesday 23 April 2014

http://allafrica.com/stories/201404230611.html

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12 perish in road accident in Edo


No fewer than 12 persons were Tuesday feared death in a multiple road accident and scores of others sustained various degree of injuries as a truck conveying granite rammed into three vehicles and four motorcycles popularly called Okada at the ever busy AP filling station in Auchi, headquarters of Estako West Local Government of Edo State.

The accident, which occurred at about 7.45p.m., was attributed to break failure by a truck with registration number Kaduna: XA173KG.

According to an eyewitness account, the truck was said to have lost control and rammed into three vehicles, killing all the occupants while other road users and pedestrians including beggars were affected. Vehicles affected were a Honda car with registration number MC 942EKY, Honda Odyssey bus marked Ben 346 AS and a Toyota Sienna car marked AAA 568AZ and four unregistered motorbikes.

At the time of filing this report, men of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Auchi command were on ground on rescue mission conveying the dead bodies of the victims to an undisclosed morgue while the injured were being rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Wednesday 23 April 2014

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/12-perish-in-road-accident-in-edo/176817/

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63 killed, 80 injured in Congo train crash


At least 63 people were killed and 80 were seriously injured in Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga province when a train speeding too fast round a bend derailed.

Fifty others were trapped inside the goods train after 12 of its carriages flipped off the track in the accident near Likasi, a mining town between Lubumbashi and Kolwezi in the copper and cobalt-rich southeast.

"Evidently the train was going too fast, the driver came to a curve and had to break suddenly leading to the accident," said Dikanga Kazadi, Katanga's interior minister.

He said the priority was rescuing those still trapped and a team had been sent to investigate the cause of the accident.

A witness said he counted 37 bodies at the scene.

"There were two train engines and two carriages overturned," he told Reuters, asking not to be named.

The DRC's antiquated train network is currently undergoing a refurbishment programme paid for by the World Bank.

Train accidents are fairly common in the restive country, and there has been only scant investment in the system -- which was originally built by Belgian colonisers -- since the country gained independence in 1960.

In September 2012, four people were killed and another 37 injured after an accident north of the second largest city Lubumbashi.

More than 100 people were killed in a 2007 accident involving people travelling onboard a goods train in the province of Kasai Occidential.

Wednesday 23 April 2014

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0423/610539-congo-train-crash/

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Suspected mass grave excavated


Experts have started excavation on a mass grave in Serbia believed to contain at least 250 bodies of ethnic Albanians who were killed during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

The Serbian government official dealing with the wartime missing, Veljko Odalovic, said that the excavation in the village of Rudnica, near Serbia's border with Kosovo, will take about 60 days.

A house had to be torn down before the work could begin. A nearby site was excavated earlier, but no bodies were found. International peacekeepers believe Serbs hid the real location.

Some 10,000 people were killed during the conflict between Serbian security troops and Kosovo separatists, and hundreds of bodies were transferred to central Serbia to hide evidence of atrocities.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

Wednesday 23 April 2014

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/international/suspected-mass-grave-excavated-1.333135

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Rescuers find 121 bodies from sunken ship, 181 still missing


Authorities Tuesday confirmed that the death toll in the South Korean ferry capsize is 121 as rescue divers continued their searches for more bodies from the sunken vessel in which over 180 passengers are still unaccounted for.

Rescuers were able to take advantage of better weather on Tuesday to retrieve 30 bodies from the wreck of the ferry Sewol off the southwest coast.

Officials said that 181 passengers still missing are presumed trapped inside the vessel and hopes of finding them alive have already diminished to zero.

The ferry tipped over and sank within two hours last Wednesday while it was carrying hundreds of high school students to a holiday destination. But it is not yet clear what caused the accident.

The crew has been criticised for allegedly failing to save passengers. Failure to deploy lifeboats is said to be one of a series of problems that beset those on board.

The CNN said a transcript of a radio conversation released by authorities over the weekend suggested that passengers on the ship couldn't reach lifeboats to escape because the ship tilted so quickly that it left many of them unable to move.

A crew member from the sunken ferry Tuesday said they slipped and were unable to reach life rafts as the ship rolled over and began to sink.

Crew members made attempts to get to the lifeboats, the crew member said. "But we slipped so we could not do that."

Five of the crew members have been charged with not fulfilling their duty to evacuate passengers safely, South Korean Yonhap news agency said.

At least six other crew members are reported to have been detained and face charges of dereliction of duty.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday condemned the conduct of some of the crew, calling it "akin to murder".

Meanwhile, the families of the missing have pleaded with rescue headquarters to wrap up the search operations by Wednesday or Thursday, when tidal waters are expected to become fierce again.

Earlier on Monday, families met with representatives from the government and military rescue teams to ask them to speed up search operations.

South Korean divers swam though dark, cold waters into a sunken ferry today, feeling for children's bodies with their hands in a maze of cabins, corridors and upturned decks. Also in this section

The divers, with oxygen and communications lines trailing, can only see a few inches in front of them in the wreckage of the ship that started sinking a week ago after a sharp turn. Most of the victims were high school children, who were told to stay where they were for their own safety and were trapped.

Most of the bodies found in the last two days had broken fingers, presumably from the children frantically trying to climb the walls or floors to escape in their last moments, media said.

"We are trained for hostile environments, but it's hard to be brave when we meet bodies in dark water," diver Hwang Dae-sik said, as the funerals of 25 students were held near the capital, Seoul.

Wednesday 23 April 2014

http://www.malaysiasun.com/index.php/sid/221326165/scat/26e7946dced8f2bc/ht/Rescuers-find-121-bodies-from-sunken-ship-181-still-missing

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/asia-pacific/childrens-corpses-in-korean-ferry-reveal-desperate-attempts-to-escape-30211020.html

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The Ghosts of Rana Plaza


In Bangladesh, one year after the worst accident in the history of the garment industry, recovery remains a fragile process, justice seems elusive, and reform has a long way to go.

Lutfer Rahman holds the document that his daughter found next to the body of his wife, Rina Rahman, confirming her death in the collapse. (All photographs by Jason Motlagh)Lutfer Rahman holds the document that his daughter found next to the body of his wife, Rina Rahman, confirming her death in the collapse.

On the morning of Thursday, April 24, 2013, traffic on the Dhaka–Aricha Highway was lighter than usual. On most days, the industrial artery that connects the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka to suburbs in the northwest is choked with Suzuki hatchbacks, scooters, and banged-​up buses that honk and belch incessantly as they carry commuters to construction sites and factories in towns like Dhamrai, Gakulnagor, and Savar, a subdistrict of the capital dominated by garment makers. But on that morning, they were in the third day of another nationwide hartal, or strike, called by opponents of the ruling Awami League party, the latest in a never-​ending cycle of political brinkmanship that had paralyzed the country on and off for years. Like power outages and flash floods, strikes are a fact of life in Bangladesh. In Savar and other manufacturing hubs, the protocol among working-​class people generally is to heed them or be prepared for trouble.

Rana Plaza, a hulking commercial complex that fronts the highway, was an exception that day. The building’s owner, Sohel Rana, insisted that employees report for work as usual, in defiance of the opposition, with plans to mobilize them for a possible street protest. This was not an empty gesture: On any given day, the plaza’s eight stories held as many as five thousand people, most of whom were employed by garment-​making companies linked to well-​known Western brands.

At his pastry shop across the street from the plaza, Saiful Islam was reading about the strike in the morning paper when he heard a shriek of breaking glass cut the air. He looked up to see shards of blue glass from the building that adjoined the plaza raining onto the far sidewalk, cutting several people waiting at the bus stand below. For a moment Islam assumed it was sabotage, a brick through a window, until the ground started to quake. Rana Plaza seemed to be imploding.

As the quake intensified, more panels blasted out onto the street, and several workers jumped to their deaths. Then the upper floors fell in quick succession, one after another, causing the bottom half of the building to pancake under their weight. In a matter of seconds, the eight-​story building was reduced to a heap of slabs and iron.

As the cloud of concrete dust began to settle on the rubble, Islam and others bolted across the street to look for survivors. Police and the fire brigade were called to the scene, but word of the collapse spread even faster through nearby bastis—​dense neighborhoods of concrete and tin barracks where poor garment-​making families live. By the time fire-​brigade officers showed up ten minutes later, an agitated crowd of hundreds had already gathered and was quickly swelling into a crowd of thousands, hindering authorities’ ability to access the site. “It was a human sea,” says Islam.

Lutfer Rahman, whose wife, Rina, worked at Rana Plaza, was sipping tea in their damp one-​room home when a neighbor yelled through his doorway: The plaza was gone. Lutfer and Rina had married in their hard-​bitten farming village and, like legions of people, moved to Dhaka for better prospects. They soon had two daughters, Arifa and Latifa, and Lutfer had supported the family by pulling a rickshaw until asthma forced him to quit. So Rina had become the breadwinner, a factory helper passing materials to sewing operators for 5,000 taka ($62) a month. Now, for the first time since he’d given up his rickshaw, Lutfer ran: about half a mile through the winding labyrinth of dirt lanes and workshops, past blacksmiths and brick kilns, trailed by his daughters. They reached the site just as two bodies were pulled from the wreckage, neither of them Rina’s. Lutfer, overwhelmed by the rising din of sirens and shouting, bent over to catch his breath.

At the edge of the plaza, Islam saw a passage that led to a public prayer room and could hear voices calling from within, but he did not dare go inside; he was too shaken by the destruction he’d just witnessed and figured he would be of better use by simply opening up his shop as a place rescuers could use. Within minutes a sixth-​floor worker with a broken back was brought in. Islam gave her a drink and washed her head wounds until an ambulance was ready. Outside, victims with minor injuries were sliding down repurposed bolts of fabric to safer ground while packs of rescuers, including Islam’s younger brother, climbed the stairs of the building next door, hammering through walls to access crawl spaces where survivors might be trapped.

Deep inside the rubble, entombed in pitch black, Paki Begum awoke to a stabbing pain that seemed to swallow her whole. She could hear others nearby. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the massive concrete beam that pinned her down and a man’s head crushed between the beam and her thigh. She looked to her right and saw the clothing of her sewing assistant, only to find his stomach organs spilling out. Another man lay to her left, his hand bent underneath her back. She wrenched the hand out to see if he was still alive but felt no life.

Farther off, she could just make out the panicked voices of rescuers and tried to call to them, but her voice was muted by the concrete that enclosed her. Debris fell on her face. The jagged slab that hung above her, angled like a reaper’s blade, seemed poised to slide downward. She started screaming, choking with each breath. The heat was stifling. In between calls for help, she would pass out. At one point, she pulled the leg of a dead body under her head for support. In the minutes she used to catch her breath, she prayed to Allah.

The previous afternoon, when she and hundreds of fellow workers returned to Rana Plaza from their lunch break, they were prevented from entering the building. Cracks two inches deep had formed in the walls spanning several floors, prompting the bosses of the five garment factories housed inside to send employees home for the day. The break was sudden and welcome. Since starting work at Ether Tex Ltd. eight months before, Paki had been pulling twelve-​ to fourteen-​hour shifts six days a week at her sewing machine for 8,500 taka ($110) a month, with the rare day off. After she and other workers were sent home that day, a local engineer was called in to inspect the cracks and had declared the building “vulnerable,” recommending that it be sealed off and examined by experts from Bangladesh’s leading technical university. Word of the cracked columns reached a local TV station, which sent a crew to the site. A cameraman slipped inside and filmed for just a few minutes before being driven off by Rana’s men. A story about the cracks was broadcast later that evening.

The next day, Rana Plaza was open for business. On returning to work, Paki was nervous; she’d heard about the cracks, as had almost everyone else in the bastis, and was unsure about what to do. Some workers didn’t bother to show up, while scores of others gathered in front of the building but refused to go inside. Next door, the bank that normally would have been open for business was locked and closed. At Rana’s behest, factory managers ordered workers inside.

Up on the fifth story, amid Ether Tex’s sprawling rows of electric sewing machines and fluorescent lights, the mood was charged with anxious chatter over how bad the cracks really were. Paki and her coworkers approached a supervisor to voice their worries but were reminded of a fast-​approaching shipment deadline for an important Western client: If they protested any further, he told them, they would lose a month’s wages.

At 8:45 a.m. the power abruptly cut off, a common occurrence in greater Dhaka; with a power-​starved population of more than 15 million, disruptions are known to happen up to fifty times in a single day. Within seconds, four diesel generators, stationed at the rear of the building near the main staircase, automatically started up, and the factory lights flickered on again. The generators weighed several metric tons each, and their relentless vibrations pulsed through the building, now filled with more than three thousand workers spread from end to end and across the weak points at its core.

Paki was attaching a zipper to a pair of denim jeans when the floor and pillars began to shake all around her. A deafening clap echoed across the floor that sent throngs of workers, most of them women, scrambling for the stairwells. At less than five feet tall and weighing no more than eighty pounds, Paki was knocked down as soon as she made her move. The floor below her heaved, then fell away as she plunged headlong into a cascade of calving concrete and machinery, where everything went black.

The collapse is thought to have started with a column near the southwest corner of the seventh floor, triggering a chain reaction that took less than a minute from start to finish. Before army soldiers arrived to lead the rescue, locals with little more than plastic sandals and bare hands emerged as first responders.

One of them, Faisal Muhid, showed up with simple tools—​a flashlight, a hammer, and pliers. It was the first time the twenty-​nine-​year-​old high-​school teacher had seen a dead body, and the mound of concrete slabs and twisted rebar was far more intimidating than he had thought while watching the live broadcast that had stirred him to action. He scoped the front of the building and saw a passage that appeared to offer a way inside, but it was shifting under the weight of other rescuers. Walking, then scrambling on all fours, Muhid traversed to the backside of the building, where he found a dark cleft. No authorities were around, so he ducked inside. Muhid turned on his flashlight and spotted two bodies, a man and a woman with their arms entangled. The sight froze him in place, and for a moment he wondered if they were related. Walking under a beam, he could see the outline of several more bodies whose limbs dangled from between two collapsed slabs. One of them, a man caked in blood-​soaked debris, seemed to stir. Muhid reached for the man’s hair and the scalp slid away. As jarring as this was, Muhid didn’t retreat. Over the next three days, he would only go deeper into the wreckage, coming to know and care for the dead in a way he never could have predicted.

Another rescuer, a wiry bricklayer named Rafiqul Islam, was working at a nearby construction site when the plaza went down. By noon he’d brought six people out on his back, and for the better part of the next few weeks he would pull the living and the dead out by any means—​digging them out at first, then cutting them out. When there were no more people left to save, he set about unearthing what remains he could find.

At first, everybody was taken to the same place, hustled into ambulances and requisitioned flatbed trucks that sped off to the Enam Medical College & Hospital, less than a mile away. For four days, a torrent of dead and wounded kept rolling into the hospital’s parking lot. Dozens of first-​year medical students, called in to support the staff, moved survivors relay-​style, off-​loading them onto gurneys and wheelchairs and wheeling them as fast as they could up to the sixth-​ and seventh-​floor wards, where sheets blanketed the floor to accommodate the crush of patients. Within a day, the 750-​bed facility was slammed to capacity.

Among those trying to make order out of the chaos was Taslima Akhter. A photographer by profession and activist by impulse, she’d spent years documenting the lives of garment workers, many of whom she’d befriended. Her camera was slung around her shoulder when she turned up at Rana Plaza, but she was too preoccupied with the rescue to snap a single image. Along with members from her People’s Solidarity Movement, the self-​described Communist walked to Enam to help with the blood drive and counsel relatives of Rana Plaza workers who were flooding the hospital lobby, desperate for answers. She began compiling a list of the missing in her notebook. At dusk, Akhter returned to the factory site with friends who had set up a tent to collect food and supplies for families and rescuers. Social media was fast emerging as a parallel channel for mustering relief, and Akhter had more than a thousand followers with whom she kept in touch via status updates and calls for provisions.

Akhter preferred to record the daily lives of women garment workers—​at home brushing their hair, striding to the factories in the morning, protesting for better wages, fists in the air, or back at home putting their children to sleep. In Bangladesh’s male-​dominated culture, she admired how women found a new identity through industry, earning a living in spite of the harsh labor conditions that kept them perpetually at risk. Her photographs, taken in cramped slum dwellings and tenements, captured a quiet dignity invisible to most outsiders. Yet a responsibility to record the more familiar horrors gnawed at her conscience. Five months before, at the Tazreen Fashions factory in Dhaka, where a fire killed some 117 workers, she had spent long hours photographing bodies charred beyond recognition; Rana Plaza demanded even more attention. Around 2 a.m. on Friday, two friends insisted she follow them to see bodies they’d discovered at the rear. Akhter relented.

The ground beneath her feet trembled as local rescuers led the group to the back of the site, still absent any authorities. She was hesitant, but, seeing her camera, the locals insisted she get a closer look. Climbing up into a narrow passage, Akhter peered inside. Flashlights illuminated a man and woman locked in an embrace, their faces powdered with dust. Akhter paused for a minute, maybe two. Then she raised her camera. It was the last picture she took that night. Consumed by the rescue effort, it wasn’t until a couple of days later that she uploaded the images to her Facebook page, at which point they quickly went viral.

By Friday morning, the death toll had risen to 142, making the Rana Plaza collapse already one of the worst manufacturing disasters on record. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina declared April 25 a national day of mourning, ordering the arrest of Sohel Rana and the owners of the five garment factories that leased the building. Within days, two owners and a pair of government engineers were taken into custody, while Rana’s father and wife were arrested and questioned on his whereabouts. Rana himself was nowhere to be found.

As army soldiers, firefighters, police, and volunteers sorted through the wreckage, outrage multiplied throughout the city and beyond. A 1,500-​strong mob in central Dhaka threw rocks at the headquarters of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the country’s powerful trade body; another mob attacked a building where garment factories remained open despite Hasina’s proclamation. Elsewhere in Savar and in the garment-​making industrial zones of Gazipur, Ashulia, and Narayanganj, at least two factories were torched while scores of workers smashed vehicles and clashed with police, demanding the death penalty for Rana.

Though government agencies and the police knew about the cracks the day before the plaza collapsed and could have shut the building down, Rana was roundly blamed for convincing factory managers that the building was safe. Speaking to the media, an official with Dhaka’s development authority ticked off a list of building-​code violations, including substandard materials and two illegally constructed floors, but failed to mention that Bangladesh’s Fire Service & Civil Defense had signed off on Rana Plaza’s building and safety compliance multiple times—​giving it an “A” rating as recently as April 4, according to a BGMEA official.

As in previous factory disasters, including the fire at Tazreen Fashions, activists scouring the rubble found connections to well-​known brands: At Rana Plaza they found tags for Italy’s Benetton and Spain’s Mango, Canada’s Joe Fresh and Ireland’s Primark. And from the US, Walmart. Some of those companies, such as Primark and Loblaw Companies Limited (which owns Joe Fresh), quickly acknowledged their reliance on the fallen factories and offered condolences, with a pledge to help families and improve working conditions. Others, such as Benetton and Walmart, issued flat denials, saying that no orders were being filled at the time of the collapse, or that orders had been sub​contracted without their authorization. (Benetton has since entered negotiations for compensation, and Walmart has begun studies to analyze its impact in Bangladesh.)

Western diplomats, for their part, concluded that Bangladeshi authorities were ill prepared for an urban-​rescue operation of this magnitude. Hours after the collapse, a senior UN official in Dhaka reminded the director general of the fire brigade that the government was part of a network of disaster-​prone countries eligible for international search-​and-​rescue assistance. The UK followed up with an offer to dispatch an urban-​rescue team equipped with potentially life-​saving micro cameras and scanners that could detect body heat under the rubble. The offer went ignored. Internal documents obtained by London’s Daily Telegraph later revealed that Bangladesh rejected outside help, fearing damage to national pride. The documents reportedly noted “face-​saving” measures suggested by foreign diplomats to help avoid offending Bangladeshi officials.

More than a day had passed, fading in and out of consciousness, before Paki Begum heard a man’s voice booming down from above: a passage. She called back with what she could muster. A bottle of water tumbled down the shaft and rolled within reach. Paki shared it with two others nearby, a middle-​aged woman and a girl she had assumed were dead but who were instead knocked out by the fall. The water was a cool respite from sucking the sweat from their clothing.

A pair of doctors reached them several hours later. A beam was lifted off the older woman’s leg, and the girl’s arm was freed from where it had been trapped. But Paki was stuck; they could scarcely move the beam that pinned her down, and she could feel the bones in her thighs grinding under their added weight as they tried. “It’s too much,” she pleaded with them. “I can’t stand it anymore.” Within minutes, a third man shimmied down the shaft, hacksaw in hand.

Paki relented. “Please cut off my legs, but don’t delay anymore,” she said. “You are pulling out dead bodies, but I am still alive. Rescue me. I beg you, brothers.”

One of the doctors produced a syringe of anesthetic before pausing to ask if she had any legal guardians. Paki named her husband, Jahangir, but could not remember his cell-​phone number. “If your legs are cut off, you will get crippled,” the doctor warned. “Your husband and family will no longer want you.”

“I don’t care!” Paki shot back at him. “I have two children—​I want to see them again.”

The doctor, a large man, took the hacksaw and set to work, but he couldn’t get enough leverage in the cramped space to drive through the bone. The newcomer, Hira, took his place, bearing down as Paki screamed, until finally she passed out. Some time later, the wail of an ambulance stirred her awake.

As survivors were rushed from the rubble to Enam Hospital, the dead were carried off to a different station, shuttled on flatbed trucks past the hospital to Adhar Chandra High School. The sprawling cricket grounds in front of the school were thronged with workers’ relatives, some of them milling around in nervous groups, some camped out on tarps with documents and pictures. Food had been brought in: rice, biscuits, bananas, juice, and other donated goods (which later included body bags and air fresheners to mask the rank odor of the corpses). Whenever a vehicle arrived with more bodies, scrums of people rushed forward, yanking at limbs. Unclaimed bodies were lined up cheek by jowl under the white colonnade that rings the school, left to fester in the heat.

City officials later admitted that a lack of oversight and a gross underestimation of the scale of the disaster allowed people to make off with the wrong bodies in the days that followed. Some of those seizures may have been unintentional; many of the victims’ features were damaged beyond recognition, and in their haste to bury bodies in accord with Islamic custom, overwrought families made rushed decisions. The lure of cash may have also played a part, since authorities were doling out 20,000-taka payments to help cover burial costs. In at least ten instances, bodies wrongfully taken had to be exhumed from distant villages and returned to family members.

Hunched over in a makeshift passage, Faisal Muhid gazed into a mess of hanging limbs that brought to mind a roadside meat stand. Behind him, a voice called out: “Brother, please save me. I need my mother.” He turned around to find a man pinned under a beam, barely breathing, his legs swollen and purple. The man asked for painkillers, but all Muhid had to offer was water. A woman called to him from the far side of the beam. “Brother, please save us,” she cried out. “For god’s sake. Don’t go without me. I have two children.” She added that there were three others trapped with her.

Muhid could feel the building shift. He climbed back out from the passage and onto the top floor, where he spotted a group of official personnel below. He called down to them, holding up his fingers and placing them on his heart to signify the people still alive inside. “Panch jon,”he shouted—​five people. They turned away. Incensed by their apathy, Muhid still took care as he climbed down so as not to unsettle the broken concrete, and walked over to the command tent and made his case with a presiding officer, who was disinterested. “That part of the building is collapsing,” he said flatly. “It’s time to get out.”

Soon Muhid was back in the hole, calling into the darkness. No one responded. Shaken, he walked home to rest and vowed never to return to the site. But sleeping was impossible; Muhid’s interlude in the plaza’s horrific underworld had struck some inner chord that he couldn’t fully understand—​a strange kind of comfort in the presence of the most desperate, the dying and the dead. “It was scary,” he said, “but it was like an addiction. I spoke with them and said I felt their pain. My feeling was that their spirits were coming over me.”

Rafiqul Islam, the bricklayer, had likewise found a sense of purpose that he’d never known before. At one point he became trapped and spent seven stifling hours in the black, gasping for air. Four other men were with him; one who was too large to be extracted died in the hole. The incident made Rafiqul second-​guess his choice to volunteer—​and his friends encouraged him to quit—​but a dogged compulsion to extract survivors sent him back into the rubble the next day, this time with a hacksaw. “I was only thinking that I have a great responsibility to pull out bodies, even if it kills me,” he says. “I had no choice.”

He knew that time was running out. The combined effects of dehydration, rapid blood loss, and low oxygen meant that most victims who’d survived the collapse would not live beyond the seventy-​two-​hour mark. Fewer people were being pulled out alive, and an animal intensity had overcome the living: The first man Rafiqul attempted to extricate by hacksaw tried to bite him. His left arm and leg were pinned down, so Rafiqul bound the man’s free arm and covered his mouth with a piece of cloth before using his blade without anesthetic. It was the first of eight people he would cut out by hand.

At Enam Hospital, doctors worked around the clock to mend the hack jobs of volunteer rescuers. The number of wounded tested the endurance and expertise of the staff, but they found a rhythm. “The place was oversaturated,” says Dr. Khalilur Rahman, the head of orthopedic surgery who led triage, “but we never stopped working together.” Medical students maintained reasonable order in the jam-​packed wards as relatives tried to push through; supplies from other hospitals multiplied over the days. But the support barely kept pace with the mounting pile of corpses in a white-​tiled basement washing room: dead Rana Plaza garment workers mistakenly delivered to the hospital for treatment.

Though her bleeding had slowed to a drip, Paki was in severe shock when nurses hauled her onto Rahman’s operating table. To create a prosthetic-​ready stump, he trimmed back the femur bones protruding from her thighs to allow muscle and tissue to heal over them like a cushion. By now her right thigh was infected, necessitating a second operation and large amounts of blood transfusion. Luckily, the hospital’s blood bank was flush (by Saturday, deliveries from other hospitals had to be sent back).

When she awoke, several days after the collapse, her husband, Jahangir, was standing at her bedside. He flashed his betel-​stained teeth and held her hand firmly with both of his. “Everything will be fine,” he said. She thought about her children, the work she could no longer perform. She stared at where the bedsheet fell flat just past her thighs. But she was relieved to be alive.

Four days into the Rana Plaza rescue, Abul Khair was burnishing his reputation as a national hero. A veteran rescue firefighter with copper skin, close-​cropped, silver hair, and a raspy voice from smoking two packs a day, he’d made a living throwing himself into one disaster after another—​diving into fierce currents to retrieve the victims of overloaded ferry boats that frequently sink in the country’s 230-​odd waterways; staying underwater for six hours at a stretch to locate the body of a single missing boy; scaling multi-​story factories to free hundreds of workers trapped in a blaze—​all for several dollars an hour, no health insurance or overtime pay. At the disaster site, Khair was in his element: thirty-​seven, then twenty-​two, and another eleven people saved in succession. But the heat soon began to sap his strength, claiming more victims than he and rescuers could reach in time. By Sunday afternoon, only five people had been saved. The deeper Khair and his team descended, the more dead bodies they discovered.

Then, late on Sunday afternoon, Khair heard a woman’s voice in the depths: “Brother, save me, help.” He worked his way closer, keeping a conversation going—​her name was Shahina, she told him. Then supervisors ordered him to the surface: A section of roof appeared ready to fall at any moment, and the entire rescue was temporarily called off. Khair insisted on going deeper, and ordered the installation of bottle jacks and wood logs to stabilize the broken concrete. Saline water was funneled down to the woman below. Once the improvised supports were in place, he descended again, pulling himself through inches at a time. It took several hours for Khair to reach the concrete beam that separated him from Shahina. Though four oxygen lines had been run down into the pile to sustain the air-​starved workers, Khair found himself gasping by the time he reached her. He cracked apart the beam with a hammer, then took a hacksaw to the rebar inside. When Khair finally managed to cut out a hole large enough to squeeze through, he could see Shahina in her torn white and green kameez, a gash on her forehead. He poked his head through and saw that her two companions were dead.

Shahina tried to squeeze through the passage but couldn’t fit; her clothing snagged on the concrete. Khair insisted that she take off her clothes. “I’m your brother,” he assured her, “and your life is most important.” Shahina did so, and Khair, stretched out on his belly, pulled her by her arms. But the space was tight, and her breasts scraped the wall. “I’m poor—​I don’t have a husband, but I have an eighteen-​month-​old son,” she said. His name was Robin. “Please don’t damage my breasts,” she begged. “I must breastfeed him.”

Exhausted from hours of effort, Khair reluctantly went up for air. He procured some bottles of shampoo and suggested that his boss send someone else down; his hands could no longer grip. A volunteer rescuer, Mohammad Kaikobad, went down the hole with a cutter machine. In all the haste, everyone failed to remind him that the oxygen being pumped into the shaft had made it highly combustible. As Kaikobad began cutting into the rebar, a spark triggered a clap-​blast that shook the building. Smoke pushed the rescuers back. By the time they reached Kaikobad, dragging him out by his legs, then smothering his flaming clothes with a blanket, his body was a patchwork of third-​degree burns. (Kaikobad was rushed to a military hospital in Savar, then moved to Singapore, where he succumbed to his injuries. He was later buried with state honors.)

Firefighters doused nearly two-​dozen tunnels that wound from the roof to the lower floors. Though they couldn’t extinguish the fire, they did bring it under control and continued to send water down the shaft as Khair descended yet again. He found Shahina’s lifeless, unburned body a fair distance from where he’d left her: As the fire raged, she had pushed herself through the hole, only to asphyxiate in the smoke-​filled passage, where the oxygen levels were poor enough that Khair himself blacked out. He would regain consciousness at an area hospital later that day.

By Monday morning, the odds of finding anyone alive were slim. At around noon, Brigadier General Azmal Kabir, the rescue supervisor, told reporters that the second phase of work was underway, “assuming that there is no survivor.” Army engineers began using hydraulic cranes to cut and move large slabs, to ensure no secondary collapses. Meanwhile, relatives of the missing set about finding their dead.

The walls of Enam Hospital were soon plastered with posters of the missing—​a mishmash of old family photographs, ID cards, birth certificates, and fake documents used to secure jobs for underage workers, whatever families could muster. The faces extended down the street to the periphery of Adhar Chandra High School, where crowds of relatives held vigil from dawn until dusk.

The trucks from Rana Plaza were coming less frequently now, the families more craven each time a new one pulled up. Scuffles broke out among people competing for a closer look, though the combination of radical injuries and decomposition accelerated by near 100-​degree heat made identification difficult. People walking single file under the colonnade scanned the remains, bloated and decomposing under the slanting sun. Now and then the pall was worsened by the fitful screams of someone finding a loved one.

Short of breath, Lutfer Rahman sat under a tree while Arifa and Latifa searched for their mother. Initially the girls were horror-​stricken, crying hand in hand as they went. But numbness eventually set in, such that unzipping body bags seemed almost routine. If a face was too badly damaged, the girls looked for clues in the small plastic bags containing personal effects that were tucked next to the body.

This collecting of possessions was Faisal Muhid’s doing. When he first arrived at the high-​school grounds twelve days earlier, his anger over the Rana Plaza rescue was replaced by astonishment at the treatment of the dead. Though police were manning a table near the gate, there was no effort to maintain order among hundreds of people searching for victims’ bodies. As he stared in disbelief, an elderly woman grabbed his arm. “Give me some bones, please give me some bones so I can bury them,” she said.

The plea resonated with the right person. Along with a genuine sympathy for garment workers and their families, Muhid was possessed by a macabre yet unexplored fascination with death. He was a fan of Gunther von Hagens, an infamous German anatomist and promoter of Body Worlds, a traveling exhibition of corpses whose flesh is preserved by plastination, a technique he invented that pushes plastic directly into tissue cells. Muhid had watched him at work on a National Geographic Channel series, and it occurred to him that some of von Hagens’s more basic methods could be applied to the plaza victims. He called his brother, Saijul, and gave him a shopping list: paint brushes, tissue paper, gloves, air freshener, bleaching powder, and alcohol.

“Have you gone mad?” his brother exclaimed when Muhid started to clean the face of one of the bodies. Perhaps he had, but the circumstances were dire and Muhid was already consumed by the task. He developed a ritual to mitigate the decay: collecting anything that might help families with identification—​keys, cell phones, papers, teeth, nose pins, and tabij, a kind of prayer amulet—​then sealing it all in ziplocked bags that were tucked next to the bodies.

People kept their distance, not sure what to do. Touching women’s bodies was taboo, even more so when they were deceased. Yet Muhid knew his examinations were critical to bringing grieving families some closure. (He whispered apologies to dead women as he handled them, assuring them that they would be reunited with their families, that they had moved on to a better realm.) When a police officer walked over and denounced him, he asked bluntly: Who would take his place? The officer walked away. As the days wore on and temperatures soared, the rotting flesh grew harder to manage. At one point, while Muhid tried to straighten a head before cleaning it, a mandible came undone; another time, a sudden push from onlookers sent his forearm through the side of a face. Authorities verbally harassed him but never lingered, nor did they provide any supplies or monitor the crowds. Personal items were stolen, and the zippers of the body bags frayed from overuse, leaving some of the corpses exposed.

Muhid preferred to work at night, when things were quiet and fewer people were around. One night, heading off to rest in a classroom, Muhid was intercepted by a volunteer who’d rushed over to alert him—​dogs had arrived. Through a window, they could see a pack of five strays nipping at a body bag. Muhid ran out and cursed at the animals, but they refused to back off. He then called his friend, Iresh Zaker, a well-​known actor, and relayed what was happening. “There are still seventy here and there’s no one guarding the gate, no media around,” he said, pressing Zaker to get authorities to come. Zaker made some calls, and within the hour a team of police officers arrived and beat the animals back with batons.

Muhid’s diligence paid off. On May 10, after viewing well over 500 corpses, twelve-​year-​old Arifa Rahman found her mother. Her body was badly damaged; Arifa may have passed her by several times. But the newly added name on the body-​bag tag read: Rina Rahman, husband: Lutfer Rahman, district: Rangpur, taken from a stained document Muhid had removed from a pocket. The family’s search had ended. It also secured them a 200,000-taka ($2,500) check from an ad hoc relief fund administered by the prime minister. They received another 20,000 taka for burial costs.

The Rahmans loaded Rina onto a rickshaw bed and headed home. In the family compound, relatives washed the body and cloaked it in a cotton shroud. That same day, Rina was buried in a small graveyard near their house. The land is overgrown and no headstone marks her plot, but Lutfer knows the place.

Sohel Rana grew up the second son of a land broker named Abdul Khalek, who, with profits from the sale of a parcel in Savar, opened a mustard-​oil factory on the site where Rana Plaza was later built. Khalek cultivated ties with well-​known film actors and politicians, a wheeler-​dealer style that Rana would learn to emulate even more aggressively. He had a cold temperament well suited to the thuggery and intimidation tactics that are a mainstay of Bangladesh’s cutthroat local politics. In 1996, the Awami League party, chief rivals of the BNP, came to power, and the president of the party’s student wing tapped Rana, just a year after he’d dropped out of high school, to be his political aide. Two years later, Rana was promoted to secretary.

Rana’s profile grew after he befriended Murad Jong, an aspiring politician who became the Awami League leader of Savar in 2001, due in large part to Rana’s muscle. When the Awami League took back the government seven years later, Jong returned the favor by unilaterally naming Rana to a leadership post of the Jubo League, the party’s youth front. In parliament, Jong used his clout to manipulate police and extort protection money from business owners, with Rana as his faithful enforcer.

The rise of the country’s ready-​made garment industry caused land values around industrial suburbs like Savar to skyrocket. And when a dispute between Rana’s father and his Hindu business partner erupted over the plaza site, the Rana family dispatched thugs to seize the property by force. The partner complained to local authorities, and says that Rana threatened him for doing so. The police, meanwhile, did nothing. Flexing his connections in the Savar mayor’s office, Rana secured a construction permit and began laying the groundwork for the plaza, erecting the six-​story building on hastily filled-​in swampland, using cheap materials. At its August 2009 opening ceremony, Jong was the guest of honor.

On the wall behind Rana’s desk, in the basement office where he poured whiskey for local cops and political players alike, hung a framed photograph of Jong kissing Rana’s forehead, the same photograph he had plastered on walls around Savar. Their relationship was crucial to Rana’s ability to prosper in both open and underground markets. While presiding over a business portfolio that included brick kilns and the sale of garment overruns, officials say Rana and his associates kept a hand in the drug trade.

Most profitable of all were the garment-​factory rentals at Rana Plaza. By 2011, five floors were being leased out to garment manufacturers, contributing the bulk of the plaza’s 1.5 million euro annual rental income. Three years earlier, in March 2008, Mayor Refat Ullah granted Rana a permit to add additional stories to the building, without approval from the city development authority. By 2013, a ninth floor was in the works.

When the cracks appeared, on April 23, Rana was dismissive. “Don’t make my life miserable,” he told concerned factory owners, asserting the building was safe for another hundred years. He was also unmoved when the local engineer who’d been called in to inspect the site was shaken by the large cracks he’d found in the building’s pillars and walls. For days, Rana had been planning a counterprotest against the BNP-​ordered hartal, and his reputation in Savar hinged in large part on his ability to mobilize grassroots defiance. On the morning of April 24, he was in his basement office with colleagues calling people by phone, haranguing them to report for work. When workers outside refused, he joined the factory owners to bully them inside.

Oddly, the basement turned out to be one of the safest places in the building. After the building caved in, bodyguards called Rana’s cell phone, discovered he was trapped in his office, and dug him out. Three days later, he was arrested in the border town of Benapole while preparing to cross into India. His arrest was announced during a news conference at the disaster site, where weary crowds burst into raucous cheers and chanted for his hanging.

The menial workforce has always been susceptible to exploitation, and for nearly a century the garment industry’s sweatshops have acted as de facto laboratories for a variety of abuses and endangerment. Other than mining, it is difficult to name another industry that has produced so many public, large-​scale catastrophes. And yet, for all the lives damaged and lost in these sweatshops, little has been done in the way of reform.

When the rescue and recovery operations were called off at Rana Plaza on May 13, seventeen days after the collapse, at least 1,100 people had been killed and some 2,500 injured, making it the deadliest event in the history of the garment industry. Perhaps it was the scale of the disaster, or the timing, occurring so soon after the fire at Tazreen Fashions. Likely both factors forced the industry’s hand, so that by summer 2013, more than seventy companies, most of them European, adopted the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh—​a five-​year, legally binding commitment that subjects factories to independent inspections and public reports while requiring retailers to fund annual safety upgrades of up to $500,000. (As of March 2014, more than 150 companies have adopted the accord.) Participants include Swedish mega-​retailer H&M (the largest buyer of ready-​made garments from Bangladesh), France’s Carrefour, Britain’s Marks & Spencer, and the Inditex Group, the Spanish clothing giant that owns the Zara chain. Prior to the collapse, just two companies—​American PVH Corp (Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein) and Germany’s Tchibo—​had signed on.

The about-​face drew comparisons to the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City in 1911. On March 25 of that year, 146 garment workers, mainly immigrant women in their teens and twenties, perished in a factory that had been locked by owners. The horror of workers jumping several stories to their deaths sparked an unprecedented public outcry that ultimately led to improved safety standards, stronger unions, and limits on working hours—​a turning point for labor rights in the United States. Scott Nova, the executive director of the Washington, DC–based Worker Rights Consortium, hailed the post–Rana Plaza safety accord as a “sweeping transformation” that departs from the failed models and evasions shown by brands in the past.

American companies Walmart, Gap, J. C. Penney, Sears, Target, and others refused to commit to the accord and in early July announced an alternate five-​year plan, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. It parallels the Accord on Fire Safety but allows the retailer to “opt-​out” of the agreement if disaster strikes. Critics labeled their effort a foot-​dragging attempt to avoid costly, long-​term investments, expressing doubt over whether the companies could legitimately police themselves—​noting, for instance, how an audit conducted by Walmart at Tazreen Fashions the year before the accident pointed out obvious fire hazards, and yet the company subsequently approved a higher fire-​safety rating.

To some observers, the Accord-​Alliance divide was emblematic of clashing approaches in the way European and American companies do business abroad. But in the months after Rana Plaza fell, big-​box Western retailers linked to the complex were uniformly apathetic toward victims and their families. Statements of sympathy were concluded with denials. No long-​term payment packages were formalized, neither to the families of victims nor the rescue volunteers who were left traumatized by the experience. Only nine of twenty-​nine firms sourcing from the complex attended September compensation talks in Geneva. By the time the talks ended, only one company, the Irish budget-​fashion chain Primark, had agreed to provide short-​term aid. Since then, other brands have slowly begun to follow Primark’s lead, signing on to a proposed $40 million compensation fund, though none are American. And while these companies have indeed made contributions to the fund, there is no mechanism that guarantees it will reach $40 million. Nor is there a timetable for when families will begin receiving payments.

As rescue gave way to recovery, Rashida Begum returned to Rana Plaza almost every day with a photo of her daughter Nasima in a plastic sheath. Just sixteen, with almond features and a fair complexion that made the darker Rashida proud, Nasima had worked three years in garment factories, two at New Wave Bottoms, on the plaza’s third floor. In mourning, Rashida would kneel in front of the barbed wire that surrounded the disaster area and wait, along with other relatives of the missing, for the off chance that a government agent or brand representative would come and give them something for their loss. Most days were spent under a searing sun, staring at a dark pool of water that marked where the plaza once stood. The void was heartrending, and yet somehow, Rashida says, she felt solace lingering at the last place where her daughter was alive.

After dozens of amputee victims were paid large, well-​publicized settlements, some relatives of the confirmed dead received payments of about half as much, with promises of more. Hundreds of others without positive identification of recovered remains, like Rashida, got nothing. According to the Bangladesh Institute of Labor Studies, none of the four thousand families affected by the tragedy received the full payments promised by the government or the BGMEA. Protests over back pay and compensation broke out around the city, including one occasion when police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at former workers and victims’ relatives.

In mid-​September, Rashida and her husband traveled to the forensic lab on the campus of Dhaka University, where, in a sterile tenth-​floor chamber, bone samples were tested for the purposes of finding a match to the missing. Samples were stored in batches of test tubes that vibrated on metal trays, part of the process of decalcification that helped glean a genetic profile. This process was the couple’s last hope for any government compensation. They had submitted blood samples back in May. A match would qualify them for 100,000 taka (about $1,250)—​a pittance for a child’s life, but no small sum for a Savar family without a breadwinner; a negative result would spell the end of their fight for a settlement. After DNA samples were extracted, all unidentified remains were buried at a cemetery in south Dhaka, a stone’s throw from where unidentified victims of the Tazreen fire had been laid to rest.

After five months of waiting, Rashida was greeted by a technician with disappointing news: Final results would not be ready for at least several more weeks, at which time they would be published in local newspapers. The technician explained that software was on its way from the US to help sort through tens of thousands of possible DNA matches, but that more time was needed. In the end, many relatives would be left empty-​handed: Nearly 550 blood samples had been submitted for 322 unidentified victims.

Picking up her folder for the long trip back to Savar, Rashida was forlorn. “We go from place to place for some aid, but they all tell us to come back later,” she sighed. Tears carved a line down her dusted cheeks. “It was supposed to be that we would die and our kids would bury us, but it happened in reverse. We thought we’d see happiness when Nasima started work. But now she’s gone.”

Rashida Begum and her husband, Azad, wait outside the DNA lab in Dhaka in hopes of a positive genetic match confirming their daughter’s death.Rashida Begum and her husband, Azad, wait outside the DNA lab in Dhaka in hopes of a positive genetic match confirming their daughter’s death.

The headquarters of the BGMEA stands apart from the fray of downtown Dhaka. A tower of blue-​green glass surrounded by water, it is the preserve of the country’s garment barons, accessible via a single, guarded footbridge. As much as the trade body tries to project power and modernity, the building is also a symbol of a corrupt industry culture. In 2011, Bangladesh’s High Court ruled that the land had been illegally obtained and the building constructed without proper approvals, jeopardizing a natural drainage system that runs through the heart of the city. The court went on to call the headquarters “a scam of abysmal proportions” and ordered it demolished within ninety days.

Three years on, the building still stands. When I first arrived in August 2013, I had to push through a crowd of protesters clutching pictures of missing relatives. Rashida was not there, but Nasima’s picture was, held by an elderly woman on Rashida’s behalf. Riot police loitered in the parking lot below, flanked by rows of white SUVs being carefully wiped down by their drivers. I took the stairs up to the fourth floor, passing cracked windows that let in the odor of the stale water below.

Reaz Bin Mahmood, the BGMEA’s co-​vice president, was on time for our meeting, no small feat in Dhaka. A flurry of underlings came into his office with papers to sign, only to be dispatched in an authoritative baritone. Switching to crisp English, honed as an MBA student in Texas, he said he could give me fifteen minutes; an event was planned that afternoon in support of Rana Plaza orphans. And what of the protesters below? Mahmood said that compensation packages were still being worked out with the government, while extra money was raised by BGMEA members. Sohel Rana and the arrested factory owners should pay, he added, but the banks had frozen their money. “We are not a profitable organization, you know.”

Though technically true—​the BGMEA is a trade body—​the notion was disingenuous. Its members form the backbone of the national economy, with an outsized role in government, media, banking, and insurance sectors that gives it a degree of influence rarely seen in other countries. Of the national parliament’s 300 members, more than thirty own garment factories outright. These owners sit on high-​level committees that regulate and administer an industry that accounts for 80 percent of the country’s total exports, exceeding $20 billion per year. For labor activists, the association’s ongoing defiance of the court order against its headquarters is Exhibit A that Bangladesh is a government of garment-​factory owners, for garment-​factory owners.

When I pressed Mahmood about complaints that the BGMEA was not doing enough to clean up the industry, he countered that inspections were underway and that twenty at-​risk factories had already been shut down. “We want to do it sincerely and transparently,” he said, but the task was immense. The BGMEA had just ten inspectors on staff, the fire department a tenth of what it needed. The Labor Ministry was struggling to hire more than 200 inspectors by year’s end. This shortage in manpower was compounded by the absence of a central coordinating body that could ensure some factories weren’t being inspected twice while others got a pass.

Of the 5,000 registered factories around the capital, Mahmood said, about half were operational. Assessments took anywhere from several days to several months, after which owners had to make costly upgrades for re-​approval. All of these factors made compliance a sluggish campaign at best. What’s more, in addition to the export factories covered under the Accord and Alliance frameworks, there were also thousands of second-​tier facilities requiring inspection. “You have seen the traffic in Dhaka, our communications. Everything takes longer than planned,” he said. “But we must try.”

In late June, the United States announced it would suspend Bangladesh’s trade privileges, citing concerns over safety hazards and labor violations in the garment industry. The move was largely symbolic—​garments were excluded—​but it rattled garment-​factory owners, who feared a similar move by the European Union, Bangladesh’s top global customer, which buys 60 percent of the country’s exports duty-​free.

Mahmood blamed the measure on labor unions, a reckless attempt to bring jobs back to the US. “I am a manufacturer, but if I close down my factory I will still make a living,” he said. “But what about my workers? At the end of the day, if the factories are closed and the workers are unemployed, will the AFL-​CIO pay their salaries?” If there was an upshot to the “harsh” US decision, he added, it was to push owners to fast-​track safety reforms. A new workers’ rights law was on the books, and he expected the minimum wage to increase in the coming months. “There should be no more excuses,” he said.

My time was up, but Mahmood wasn’t finished. Grabbing the collar of his black tunic, he went on the offensive. “A shirt like this—​ c’mon, everyone knows how much it costs. Fabric, buttons, and trims”—​he did some quick calculations. “It’s very clear how much profit we’re making. The books are very open. But no one wants to pay more.” He recalled, for instance, an H&M executive who came to Bangladesh demanding a wage increase at a supplier while assuring shareholders in Stockholm beforehand that prices would not be raised.

“If you really care about the workers, you must have proper pricing,” he insisted. “If buyers paid a little bit more, they could make sure more money was going to wages and safety improvements—​they could check the books and talk to workers.” As a businessman with 1,500 employees, however, he was adamant that it was consumers who needed to assume greater responsibility. “When Rana Plaza collapsed, we saw lots of propaganda on the streets of London and New York. But when you’re selling three-​pound jeans, everybody loves it. So you have to come out of that mentality as a consumer. You have to stop and think: Where are these clothes coming from, and at what cost?” Aftermath

Although Lutfer Rahman is grateful for the government’s 200,000-taka settlement, and hopes to someday use it to help pay for his daughters’ weddings, the fact that injured victims have received greater compensation than the families of the dead doesn’t make sense to him. After all, Rina supported the whole family with her wages from Rana Plaza. “She took care of me, and made sure I had food for the day before she left for work— ​I doubt if modern-​day wives care for their husbands so much,” he said when I visited him in September. He shook his head. “The future is bleak with the burden of raising two girls on my shoulders.”

Asked what she missed most about her mother, twelve-​year-​old Arifa gave a blank stare. The silence lingered a few seconds until Latifa, not yet fourteen, interjected: “We are in trouble now. I don’t want to work in a garment factory. I’m afraid of that job. But we have to survive. My father is weak, and if I don’t earn money my sister will not be able to continue her studies, so I must leave school.”

For what kind of work?

“What job is there,” she shot back, “except in a garment factory?”

Paki Begum, meanwhile, considers herself one of the lucky ones. Two months after the accident, she was discharged with 2.2 million taka ($28,000) from the prime minister’s fund. While recovering in the hospital, she befriended two fellow amputees, Shahinur and Lovely. The women have since continued their physical therapy together at a rehabilitation clinic, where they practice walking along parallel bars, adjusting to the awkwardness of prosthetic limbs.

Taking a break, Paki massaged her stumps and winced from the residual pain. She blamed Sohel Rana for what happened, but didn’t want him to hang. “I want him to experience the suffering I’m going through—​of being a burden on others’ shoulders,” she said. Her husband, Jahangir, brushed off the thought and teased her playfully, stealing kisses and darting away when she tried to swat him. His affections hadn’t wavered.

Ironically, the family now has the financial security that first drew them to the capital in the first place. To Paki, the signs were clear: She wanted no more of the city. “I’m done with Dhaka,” she said. Once her therapy was completed, she hoped to move back to her village to open a small shop and raise her two children. Paki left school for good when she was eight years old and began garment work as a teenager. She swore her girls would not follow in her footsteps. “I want my children to grow up educated, but let’s see what Allah does,” she said.

For his heroic efforts, Abul Khair received a promotionand was once again thanked in person by the prime minister. But he saved credit for the civilians who stepped up during the crisis. “We worked shoulder to shoulder,” he told me in September, at the fire brigade headquarters in Dhaka. “A few got in our way, but largely the volunteer rescuers were of great help.” He still thinks of Shahina almost every day. “I spent nearly thirty hours close to her during the rescue effort—​she told me I was like her brother,” he told me. “I think that if I could have rescued her, I would have some peace of mind.” Before the Eid al-​Fitr holiday, Khair and his boss delivered clothing to Shahina’s son, Robin, who insisted she was still at work and would be back by the afternoon.

Like so many volunteer rescuers at Rana Plaza, Faisal Muhid and Rafiqul Islam have struggled to recover from the trauma of their experiences. For both men, the scars are obvious. Fitful nights give way to disorientation and sudden outbursts during waking hours. These days, Muhid collects documents from victims’ families to lobby the government to pay for those who have not received DNA confirmation. If a family calls him in need of money, he tries to raise funds from his network of friends, who also support him so he can afford a cocktail of prescription drugs to alleviate his sudden mood swings. “Am I going to be psycho?” he once asked me, wondering if he should seek clinical help.

Rafiqul, too, has never fully surfaced since he plunged into the rubble on April 24. Following three weeks in a hospital, he left to be with his wife before the birth of their fourth child, a son. Since then, his wife has been uneasy around him, and he’s had trouble holding down a job. The first time I went to the family home, deep in one of the bastis that recedes from the highway, I found Rafiqul standing alone in a baking-​hot tin room, bewildered in the dark. The only nod to his sacrifice was a medal from a local workers’ rights organization that rested on his nightstand. He confessed that thoughts of bodies he’d left behind made him angry and restless, and that he found himself wandering the alleys at odd hours, unable to silence the voices in his head. They often drew him back to Rana Plaza, where he said the cries grew louder.

On the day I followed him there, he stopped at the edge of the rubble and stared, glass-​eyed. A police officer nearby told him to leave. Rafiqul ignored him. When the officer seized his elbow to escort him out, Rafiqul flew into a rage: “Do you know what I did here? Do you know how many people I cut out? Touch me again and I’ll do the same for you!” He picked up a metal rod and cocked it back. A friend intervened, walking Rafiqul out to the street to cool off. Then another outburst—​one that silenced all the chatter at the corner tea stand nearby.

For a month or so after the disaster, Saiful Islam’s dreams were a tortuous loop of workers plunging from the plaza’s upper floors. These days the pastry-​shop owner grapples with what he calls a “building-​collapse phobia.” Backfiring vehicles trigger a momentary panic. A while back, he ran a snack bar inside the Rana Plaza complex and befriended several garment-​factory workers during his time there. Many of those same customers followed him to his store across the street. Their absence burns, as does his resentment over the “greed and negligence of a few men to make money at the expense of the poor.” And yet his grief is tempered by a deep admiration for his neighbors. “I had no idea the people of Savar were so helpful and generous, so sincere and sympathetic,” he said to me in his shop, recalling how teams of locals spent their own money to procure food, oxygen, and tools for the rescue. “These efforts were, for me, a never-​before-​seen example of goodness and humanity in Bangladesh.”

Despite the industry’s exploitive reputation, there are plenty of garment factories in Bangladesh where ethical management and profitability go hand in hand. At one six-​story facility I visited in Gazipur, the work floors were well lit and fan-​cooled, with multiple stairwells and emergency instructions posted at every exit. Working mothers dropped their children off at a child-​care center, free of charge, and regular tea breaks were allowed at a discount canteen. Though most of the supervisors were men, women were clearly climbing the ranks. When I asked one young woman who was recently promoted what her goal was, she didn’t miss a beat. “I want his job,” she said, pointing to the startled factory manager guiding me around. Such a direct challenge was hard to imagine elsewhere; here it was part of the company culture.

The factory owner, a top-​ten jeans producer who counts H&M and Zara among his clients, agreed to meet with me at his corporate headquarters in Banani, an upscale Dhaka neighborhood. In exchange for keeping his name out of print—​we’ll call him Tareq—​he poured me a coffee and offered an honest assessment of the industry that has made him very rich.

At the time of Bangladesh’s founding in 1971, tea and jute fiber were the top export sectors. But within a few years, its economic trajectory was forever altered by the Multi-​Fiber Arrangement, an international trade agreement intended to limit textile exports from the developing world. In 1977, entrepreneurs from South Korea seeking to expand their output through quota-​free partnerships established a joint venture with a Bangladeshi firm, Desh Garments Ltd. Within several years, more than a hundred Desh employees left to start their own companies or work with other emerging textile companies for better pay. Preferential market access to Europe accelerated the industry’s growth, so much so that by 1980 garments were the country’s main export.

Tareq’s break came two decades later. Under the terms of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, in effect from 1995 to 2005, more-​industrialized countries agreed to export fewer textiles while less-​industrialized countries saw their export quotas increase. The new regime was a boom for Bangladeshi garment makers, who enjoyed quota-​free access to Europe and higher exports to the US and Canada. Seeing the writing on the wall, Tareq and some college friends pooled their resources and started producing pants. In a highly unregulated industry with low start-​up and labor costs, dominated by unscrupulous players, he built a loyal client base by upholding higher quality and safety standards, which soon distinguished him among his competitors.

Today Bangladesh is the largest garment exporter behind China, where rising costs and the growth of a middle class are driving manufacturers to outsource more stages of production. Despite political unrest in early 2014 that has disrupted production and led to order cancellations, stoking fears that summer and fall exports may plummet, Tareq is confident that Bangladesh’s bottomless supply of cheap labor will remain a long-​term trump card against would-​be competitors like Vietnam and India. “They simply can’t compete with us on this level,” he contended. “Business is not leaving Bangladesh.”

Tareq’s high standing among factory owners has given him access to negotiations with top Western companies working to improve safety conditions post–Rana Plaza. More than 170 companies have signed the Accord and Alliance pacts combined; for those companies that fall outside the purview of the pacts, there is a third government-​sponsored program. The three groups have agreed to common inspections enforced by qualified inspectors, with support from the International Labor Organization.

While he thinks it is an important step toward better regulation, Tareq insists the “wild west” style of doing business is fundamentally the same today. Government inspections remain toothless, since agents have neither the resources nor the competence to conduct them thoroughly. What’s more, he said, bribery is rampant. Although auditing certificates on the walls of his factory attested to a sterling record on safety compliance, he was adamant: “Everybody is taking money.”

Then there is the murky matter of subcontracting, of thousands of lower-​level suppliers that are directly or indirectly involved in the export trade, making zippers and trimming threads, attaching buttons or brand labels. Located in basements, on rooftops, often sign-​less and buried deep inside teeming residential areas, they defy the notion of what a factory is and remain completely outside the purview of inspection, with no incentive to invest in safety. The truth is that no one knows how many of these operations actually exist. And with frequent political violence, worker strikes, shipping delays, and other variables that threaten to stymie production, subcontracting is the only reliable way to improvise around a work stoppage. “There will be subcontracting every day—​you cannot stop it,” Tareq said, conceding that he must occasionally farm out smaller stages of production to deliver orders on time or risk losing lucrative contracts. “Officially, the brands will say no more, that they are controlling it. But unofficially, it will always happen, and they know it.”

Late one afternoon in Dhaka’s Mirpur district, I went to see for myself. Without thinking twice, I walked past a security guard who must have assumed I was a foreign buyer, passing through a rusted gate and up a dark staircase thronged with boxes marked for shipment to Spain. The second floor was a windowless maze, full of workers ironing T-​shirts beneath fans and fluorescent lighting. The fire-​code violations were plenty: Evacuation maps were covered with flyers; hoses were missing from their hinges; stacks of boxes and piles of fabric blocked emergency exits.

To my left, a man was affixing labels to a set of pink children’s jumpsuits. The retail price tag read: five pounds sterling. Another woman was vacuuming glittery pants with hearts and suns printed on them. The workers who had initially looked at me with curiosity suddenly appeared more anxious. I turned around to face a supervisor, head low, eyes raised. “Please follow me,” he instructed.

In an office strewn with clothing samples, he asked what my business was. I lied that I was a wholesale buyer from the United States looking for new suppliers, that I’d come to meet with his boss on a friend’s recommendation. I posed some questions about their factory’s pricing and output capacity, which he said he could not answer. Instead, he took down my false name and contact information and advised me to call back tomorrow to set up a proper appointment. I thanked him for his time and walked out into the fading light, joining the stream of workers on their way home.

It was easy to presume that those strangers I encountered in the factory had difficult jobs, but it was also reasonable to wonder how long it would be before they found themselves in danger. Indeed, before the Rana Plaza collapse, fires were the most common killer of garment workers in Bangladesh, averaging two to three fires a week during some stretches. That choked stairwell wasn’t just a random hazard, but emblematic of the country’s more pervasive industrial horrors. Ten weeks before the Rana Plaza tragedy, on my first visit to a Bangladeshi garment factory, I saw a burnt-​out, second-​story facility on the outskirts of Dhaka, where eight people had died in a stairwell with a locked gate, just a few steps shy of daylight. The blackened walls were still streaked with hand marks.

On October 8, not six months after the Rana Plaza collapse, a late-​night blaze that tore through a garment factory in Gazipur killed seven workers. Once again, inspectors found the fire-​safety equipment lacking. Shipping records found at the scene tied a familiar cast of Western brands to the factory, as well as connections to producers at Rana Plaza. Spokesmen for Loblaw, the Canadian owner of the Joe Fresh label, denied that the company had placed any orders with the Gazipur factory and claimed to be investigating whether subcontractors had done so. Primark maintained that it had ceased using the factory several months before, as did Hudson’s Bay. A Walmart spokesperson responded that the company did not have “a direct contractual relationship” with the factory and was therefore not responsible for its safety protocols.

The Gazipur fire broke out amid a rising tide of wage protests, which in many cases turned violent. In Dhaka’s industrial zones, hundreds of factories were forced to close as thousands of workers turned out to demand a minimum wage of 8,100 taka ($104) a month, about triple the existing amount. Owners continued to resist, walking out of meetings with labor unions and threatening shutdowns until finally, last November, the BGMEA, under intense pressure from the government to acquiesce ahead of elections, agreed to raise the minimum wage to 5,300 taka ($68) a month.

In December 2013, another landmark was achieved: Delwar Hossain, the owner of Tazreen Fashions, was charged—​along with his wife and eleven factory managers—​with culpable homicide. Police initially said they did not have enough evidence to bring a case against them following the deadly 2012 fire; some even suggested that saboteurs were responsible. But a high-​level state investigation accused Hossain of “unpardonable negligence.” This marks the first time Bangladesh has tried to prosecute a factory owner in its garment industry. Activists hope the case will set a precedent. Sohel Rana, meanwhile, remains in jail ahead of his trial, which is expected to begin this year.

On the southern edge of Dhaka, the Jurain cemetery is walled off from the swarm of the old city. Under the shade of palms, attendants sweep around the graves of martyred fighters from Bangladesh’s 1971 war for independence, which freed the country from Pakistan’s control. Farther along a brick footpath, the crow calls fade and the cemetery becomes a field of overgrown grass rows that stretch under the open sky. It is here that the poor and anonymous are laid to rest, a repository for dead garment workers. It is where Rashida Begum’s search for her daughter ended early one morning last November, after the Bangladeshi government announced the first round of results from the DNA testing. Of the 157 confirmed identifications, 116 were female, and Nasima was among them.

Three days later, Rashida traveled to Jurain. Upon arriving, she was issued a number from a list. She then walked among the rows, looking for her daughter’s resting place. All around her, relatives wore their grief in different ways. Some wailed hysterically, others prayed, and others still stood motionless as photographers snapped pictures from a respectful distance. In a far corner of the field, a group of boys played cricket.

Rashida stopped in front of a black placard—​dna #155—​and dropped to her knees, hugging the plot mound with both arms. “My dear, look. I am here,” she said, sobbing. “You have gone too long without us, and I cannot live without you.” Then she offered a prayer: “Oh, Allah, please keep her in peace, for she suffered a lot in her life. We couldn’t provide her good care, education, or even food. We are very poor, and so we had to send her to work. Please, Allah, forgive us for our sins, and keep her in heaven.”

She lingered for an hour or so, surrounded by grazing goats and curious onlookers. Beyond her, receding into the hazy distance, most of Jurain’s burial plots were empty, a vast and foreboding number of them at the ready.

http://www.vqronline.org/reporting-articles/2014/04/ghosts-rana-plaza%E2%80%94part-2

Spring 2014

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