Building disaster resilience amidst rampant poverty

Of the thousands of landslide-prone villages he has visited and worked with, R M S Bandara, a high-ranking official from Sri Lanka’s National Building Resources Organisation (NBRO), says only one has made him sit up and take note.

Keribathgala, located in the Ratnapura District about 120 km southeast of the capital, Colombo, is the only village out of thousands that keeps a regular tab on the rain gauge donated by the Disaster Management Ministry’s NBRO, the focal point for all landslide-related services in the country.

“It is the only village that calls us back to discuss the information they have and get advice from us. We have distributed thousands of rain gauges, and this has been the only interactive relationship,” Bandara, who heads the NBRO’s Landside Risk Research and Management Division, tells IPS.

The official said that most villages pay no heed to NBRO advice and training.

“A deadly landslide will occur maybe once every 10 years, so people don’t take notice of them or the dangers they pose,” he explains.

But such negligence can be deadly. On Oct. 29, at 7:15 in the morning, a large section of a hillside in the village of Meeriyabedda in the Badulla District, about 220 km from Colombo, caved in.

Two weeks later, when rescue workers finally gave up looking for victims, 12 bodies had been recovered and 25 were listed as missing.

This was a tragedy that could have been avoided, according to experts like Bandara. There had been two minor landslides in the village in 2005 and 2011. On both occasions the NBRO carried out surveys and recommended that the village be relocated.

In 2009 the NBRO carried out a large-scale community awareness programme that included conducting mock drills and handing a rain gauge over to the village. Bandara says another such programme was carried out last year as well.

All signs at Meeriyabedda prior to the landslide pointed to a disaster waiting to happen. Warnings for relocation had come as early as 2005 and the night before the disaster villagers were alerted to the possibility of a catastrophe. Very few moved out.

Though there is no evidence left of the reading on the rain gauge at Meeriyabedda, a similar device maintained by the NBRO at a nearby school indicated that at least 125 mm of rain had fallen overnight. That information, however, never reached the village.

“People really don’t pay attention to the equipment or the signs, partly [because] disasters don’t occur every day,” Bandara asserts, adding that despite the infrequency of natural hazards, daily vigilance is essential.

Testimony from villagers in Meeriyabedda supports his assessment.

“No one was looking at a rain gauge or other signs,” admits B Mahendran, a resident of the unhappy village. “People in these parts are more worried about where their next meal will come from.”

Villagers here travel 60 km daily to make a wage of about 400 rupees (a little over three dollars). Such hardships are not unusual in this region, home to many of Sri Lanka’s vast plantations. Government data indicate that poverty levels here are over twice the national average of 6.7 percent.

The literacy level in the estate sector is around 70 percent, roughly 20 percent below the national average, and U.N. data indicate that 10 percent of children living on plantations drop out of school before Grade Five, five times the national average dropout rate of just over two percent.

Most victims of this latest landslide were working at a sugarcane plantation about 30 km away, after they lost their jobs in nearby tea plantations, villagers tell IPS.

“Poverty here is a generational issue,” explains Arumugam Selvarani, who has worked as a child health official in Meeriyabedda since 2004. “Government and outside interventions are needed to lessen the impact.” She feels that the government needs to put in more effort to ensure the sector is linked to national planning and systems, and monitor such linkages continuously.

She herself has worked to improve nutrition levels among children for nearly a decade, but she believes that such efforts have “zero impact if they are ad-hoc and infrequent”.

Such initiatives need to be sustained over a long period of time in order to be really effective.

This is especially true in the arena of disaster preparedness, experts say, where government support is needed to keep early warning systems fine-tuned all year round, particularly in poverty-stricken areas where the fallout from natural disasters is always magnified by socio-economic factors like poor housing and food insecurity.

Sri Lanka has made some strides in this regard. Eight months after the 2004 Asian tsunami slammed the country’s coastal areas, the government established the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) to oversee preparedness levels around the island.

The 25 DMC district offices coordinate all alerts and evacuations with assistance from the police, the armed forces and the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS). In fact a village in the same district where the landslide occurred had a mock drill conducted by the DMC just six days before the disaster.

But DMC officials themselves admit there is an urgent need for a uniform country-wide disaster preparedness mechanism.

“Along the coast we are pretty prepared, because of all the work we have done since 2005, but we need such levels of action now to spread to the rest of the country,” says DMC spokesperson Sarath Lal Kumara.

NBRO’s Bandara has other ideas on how to strengthen disaster resilience. Effective utilisation of available data is topmost on his list. For instance, the NBRO has developed hazard maps for all 10 landslide-prone districts in the island. The map for the Badulla District, accessible online, clearly identifies Meeriyabedda as a high-risk area.

The problem is that no one is using this important information.

Bandara says these maps should form the basis of building codes and evacuation routes. Sadly, this is not the case.

DMC’s Kumara tells IPS that in a country comprising 65,000 sq km, land is at a premium and land management is a delicate issue. “There are so many overlapping concerns and agencies.”

He says it is not easy to follow each hazard map to the letter. The houses hit by the landslide, for instance, were built years before the maps were developed – relocating them would be a huge challenge, and efforts to do so sometimes run into resistance from the villagers themselves.

What experts and villagers can agree on is the need to have a dedicated government official overseeing disaster preparedness levels. Some experts suggest using the Divisional Secretariats, Sri Lanka’s lowest administrative units, to monitor their respective areas and feed into the DMC’s national network.

“All the drills, all the preparations will be useless unless there is an official or an office that is unambiguously tasked with coordinating such efforts in real time,” according to Indu Abeyratne, who heads SLRCS’s early warning systems.

In Meeriyabedda, such ambiguity cost three-dozen lives. Perhaps it is time to realign the system, to ensure that a trained official is present at the village level to carry information to the proper authorities.

Monday 17 November 2014

http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/11/building-disaster-resilience-amidst-rampant-poverty/

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Two more bodies found 21 days after Ermenek coal mine disaster

The bodies of two more miners were discovered on Monday in the Ermenek coal mine where flooding on Oct. 28 trapped a total of 18 workers. The Prime Ministry's Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD) announced that search and rescue efforts are under way to recover the two bodies, which were located after weeks of searching.

The bodies of two others, Kerim Haznedar and İsa Gözbaşı were recovered by rescue teams on Nov. 6, causing hope to fade that the other 16 miners would be found alive. The AFAD teams are still working to locate and retrieve the 14 remaining bodies.

The Karaman mine accident left 18 people trapped underground on Oct. 28 after the mine was flooded with water that did not drain from one of the shafts in the mine.

Claims of negligence have characterized discussions of the accident, as some say water inside the mine was not drained in time, which caused the flooding. According to regulations, this water should have been drained every other week.

The company had not allowed workers to take their lunch outside the mine, which is a violation of the miners' right to a one-hour lunch break. The workers would have survived the disaster if they had been outside the mine at lunchtime.

The company owner, Uyar, had argued that not enforcing lunch break regulation is a countrywide practice at all mines and refused to take responsibility for the incident.

It has been revealed that the company was previously fined for failing a series of inspections. In addition, mining was stopped at the mine two weeks ago after flooding occurred due to a water leak. The leak was fixed, but water left in the mine's gallery was not removed.

Another issue that commentators believe indicates company negligence is its failure to heed the advice of a report by the Turkish Foundation for Reforestation, Protection of Natural Habitats and Combating Soil Erosion (TEMA), which said the region is not appropriate for mining and that continuing to mine at the site could eventually cause flooding and lead to possible deaths.

Monday 17 November 2014

http://www.todayszaman.com/national_two-more-bodies-found-21-days-after-ermenek-coal-mine-disaster_364578.html

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Asbury Park: 160 years ago, a tragedy offshore

Most Jersey Shore residents know the story of the SS Morro Castle, the doomed ocean liner whose smoking hulk burned off an Asbury Park beach in 1934.

But far fewer know the story of a much deadlier shipwreck, which happened 80 years before, in almost the exact same spot where the Morro Castle ran aground — a disaster so profound that it helped lead to the expansion of the United States Lifesaving Service, which eventually morphed into the U.S. Coast Guard.

The clipper ship New Era was carrying nearly 400 men, women and children — mostly German emigrants — when it struck a sandbar during a nor’easter off a desolate section of what was then called Deal Beach on Nov. 13, 1854. Last week marked the 160th anniversary of the tragedy.

So high were the ocean swells and so ineffective was the life-saving equipment at the time that 240 people were lost in the disaster, which happened very close to where Convention Hall now stands. Nearly 200 were trapped on the ship overnight, and many died of exposure as wind-whipped waves washed over them and crew members abandoned ship, leaving the passengers alone.

Frustrated rescuers, stymied by heavy swells that prevented rescue boats from reaching the sinking ship, built bonfires on the beach to let the survivors know they were still there.

“One author refers to it as a perfect wreck,” said Dr. Richard G. Fernicola, an Allenhurst resident and local historian who has studied the New Era tragedy. “The ship was more or less totaled, and unsalvageable.”

The hull of the sailing ship lies buried beneath at least 15 feet of sand off Seventh Avenue, Fernicola and other researchers believe. So far, attempts to find it have proven fruitless, although some artifacts from the New Era have been recovered.

The ship’s massive anchor, discovered in 1999, now sits at the corner of Elberon and Norwood avenues in Allenhurst, along with a plaque memorializing the victims. And a large wooden section of what is believed to be the New Era recently was found off the Eighth Avenue jetty in Asbury Park.

Those are all the artifacts that remain from a ship that Fernicola said seemed star-crossed almost from the start of its journey in 1854.

An economic downturn in the German states and civil unrest following the revolutions that happened in parts of Europe in 1848 led more than 1 million Germans to leave for America between 1845 and 1855. Emigrant recruiters would travel from town to town, trying to convince people to leave for America.

The New Era sailed from Bremen on Sept. 28, 1854, heading for New York. Even in the best of times, it was not an easy crossing. Passage to the U.S. in the 1850s took an average of 43 days, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Most passengers traveled in steerage, below decks, and lived in damp, unsanitary conditions. Rats, insects and disease were common.

In the case of the New Era, the disease was cholera, an infection of the small intestine that’s typically transmitted through contaminated food and water. One person died in Bremen before the ship had even left port, Fernicola said. Another 39 died of the disease during the crossing.

Rough seas dogged the ship, according to Capt. Thomas J. Henry. Henry, whose statement was included in a history of the New Era that was published in 1907 by the Pennsylvania German Society, said on Oct. 20, huge waves swept everything from the deck, killing “two or three” passengers and injuring several others.

The ship began leaking, and passengers were called on to help pump water, the captain said. By the time the New Era grounded on the sandbar, it had been at sea for 46 days.

The Jersey Shore area near where the New Era ran aground was a rural, almost desolate place in 1854, the beaches covered with sand dunes and scrub pines. Asbury Park did not yet exist, and the area was sparsely populated by farmers and fishermen. Farmer Abner Allen, whose farm makes up most of what is today Allenhurst, was the only local resident who occasionally would take in summer visitors.

The waters off the Jersey Shore were known to be treacherous. There are thought to be as many as 7,200 shipwrecks off New Jersey’s coast, some dating from colonial times, according to Dan Lieb of the New Jersey Historical Divers Association.

Margaret Thomas Buchholz called the Jersey Shore the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” in her 2004 book, “Shipwrecks of the Jersey Shore.” Vicious nor’easters, roiling fog and shifting sandbars are among the natural hazards that have made the Jersey coast one of the most difficult to navigate in the world.

Rescuers respond

Allen was also the volunteer keeper of the local lifesaving station, located north of Deal Lake in what is now Loch Arbour. Hearing the ship’s bells and the firing of its distress rocket, along with the screams of hundreds of passengers, Allen was on the beach within minutes, Fernicola said.

It was around 6 a.m. on Nov. 13. Through the mist and rain, Allen could see that the New Era had run aground at least 300 yards from shore. A driving wind turned the ship around, as waves broke over the vessel. The New Era sank rapidly, and panicked passengers clung to the ship’s rigging in an attempt to keep from being washed overboard.

The news of the wreck spread quickly and men came from Long Branch, Freehold, Red Bank and near what is now Manasquan to attempt a rescue. Unfortunately the seas were too high for them to reach the boat, so they used a life-car, a buoyant metal, pod-shaped vehicle that could securely carry people from a shipwreck to shore.

Allen and other men on shore used a cannon-life gun to shoot sturdy lines in the direction of the New Era. If the lines could reach the ship they would have been tied to the mast, allowing passengers to enter the life-car and be pulled to shore by those on land.

But repeated attempts to fire the lines to the ship failed; they either missed, or the lines broke. About noon, a line did make it to ship, and a lifeboat was launched from the ship, to be pulled ashore by the rescuers. The captain jumped into the boat along with part of the remaining crew. When 10 or 12 passengers jumped in after them, most were beaten back by the crew. All but four of them drowned.

Having run out of powder to fire the small cannon, the men on the beach had to send for more in Avon. Meanwhile, a portion of the ship had collapsed, sweeping 80 to 100 people into the cold, wild sea.

Rescuers thwarted

A lifeboat was lowered by crew members who were supposed to help bring a rescue line from the New Era to shore. Instead, they cast off the line, abandoned the ship and rowed toward shore. Other crew members lowered another boat and cut the line so no passengers could get on board.

By now, it was almost dark. Unable to reach the remaining 170 New Era passengers, the frustrated men on the beach lit bonfires to encourage the people on the ship. The night was cold, with a westerly wind, and the waves pounded against the ship as the passengers clung desperately to any bit of rigging they could find.

Before daybreak, the seas began to calm a bit and the rescuers at last reached the New Era with their surf boats. As waves broke over the deck of the ship, which was now almost level with the sand, the local men worked tirelessly to rescue those who were still alive.

Only 135 passengers — almost all men — were found alive. Within 2½ hours, all of them had been rescued and brought ashore. Those who helped rescue people from the wreck of the New Era were appalled at what they saw.

“Multiple writers at the time of the New Era used almost the same one-line statement when writing about the shipwreck, basically stating that never before in the experience of the writers had they ever seen, or ever hoped to see again, the gruesome sight they beheld when they boarded the New Era,” Fernicola said. The passengers had been on the deck, exposed to the elements, for more than 24 hours.

Author Stephen Crane, who later lived in Asbury Park, would mention the passengers of the New Era in a ghost story.

Abner Allen and his wife helped care for many of the survivors, while the bodies of the dead were taken to Allen’s boarding house. “If they didn’t live close by and were not of that character, who knows what would have happened,” Fernicola said of the Allens.

Not all at the Shore were as charitable as Allen. For years, stories persisted of residents taking jewelry, coins and clothing from the bodies of the dead.

Most of the bodies could not be identified. They were buried in a mass grave at the Old First United Methodist Church cemetery in what is now West Long Branch. A marker was erected over the gravesite in 1892.

The next year, the founder of Asbury Park, James Bradley, erected a 12-foot-high granite monument to the New Era shipwreck on the boardwalk, probably at Seventh Avenue. But the monument, like the New Era, was ill-fated. The next year, a powerful storm knocked the granite obelisk off its boardwalk perch and buried it in the sand.

It has never been found, in spite of the Asbury Park Historical Society’s efforts to find it in 2012, using ground-penetrating radar.

The wreck of the New Era, along with that of the Powhattan, another emigrant ship that ran aground off Beach Haven earlier in 1854, killing everyone aboard, helped pave the way for a paid lifesaving service along the coast.

“There was a formalized effort to get a permanent crew and facilities to house the man and the equipment,” Fernicola said.

Saturday 15 November 2014

http://www.app.com/story/news/history/2014/11/14/shipwreck-asbury-park-helped-create-coast-guard/19045359/

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Synagogue house collapse: Lagos releases bodies of 54 South Africans

The Lagos State government has released to South Africa the bodies of 54 South Africans who died in the collapsed building at the Synagogue of All Nations, after the bodies had been sorted out through DNA.

At least, 70 dead bodies had been identified through the DNA out of the 116 people who perished in the tragedy. While 54 of those cleared so far were South Africans, 16 others are Nigerians, Togolese, Beninoise and others.

Lagos Governor, Babatunde Fashola at the State House Marina on Wednesday approved the release of the 54 bodies to the South African Government for repatriation after the South African Government complained that the bodies were being held for too long.

According to Fashola, “We regret that this has happened here. Unfortunately, I have managed such issue during the Dana plane crash and I understand the anxiety of families who want the closure and the religious undertone as well. Our responsibility is to ensure that families get closure. And those culture exist here. I know that this is an issue that has attracted global attention.”

“I understand the call by South Africans to get the bodies of their relatives but we cannot at this time get the process wrong because if we release a body, we want to ensure that each family takes the body of their relative. It will be unpardonable for us to make mistake.

“And the choice of South Africa for the test was a special decision to make the process easier for South Africans who bore the bigger brunt of the tragedy. So since the relatives were in South Africa, it was easier to use a laboratory in the country, where we could easily take samples from the deceased families for the test. It was meant to further demonstrate what our intentions were,” he explained.

Fashola said the state government had no reason to deny South Africa the right to take those 54 bodies, saying: “You have my word, you can take them whenever you are ready to do so. It is left for you to decide whether to take them in batches or wait until we conclude the exercise. But if you are ready, my team will ensure that you take them without any delay,” Fashola said.

He said the corona’s inquest is still on going, to investigate the disaster and to prosecute those responsible.

Chief Medical Examiner for the State, Prof. John Obafunwa said 116 bodies were recovered and had been subjected to post-mortem examination, such as finger printing, photography, collection of samples, among others. Obafunwa disclosed that of the 116, 70 bodies had been identified through the DNA laboratory in South Africa, explaining that 54 out of the 70 were South Africans while the rest were Nigerians, Benin Republic, Togolese, among others.

According to him, “We had to collect additional DNA samples to assist the laboratory. We’ve been working together and talking to the lab. It is expected that more results will come in more than the 70 we have identified.”

Leader of the South African delegation to Nigeria, Special Envoy and Minister at the Presidency, Jeff Radebe, had said that South-African culture and traditions demand burial within a week of bereavement.

“But today makes it two-month since the incident, so I did pay a condolence visit to President Goodluck Jonathan two days ago, to convey the message of our president and find ways of speeding up the processes and repatriation of the mortal remains of those 85 (81 S/Africans) including those four who carry S/African passports even though they are not nationals of our country,” he stated.

He said that arrangement had been made to include the four, and take them to Pretoria, from where they would be taken to Harare and one to Kinshasa, adding that “the whole nation of South Africa is in mourning, especially the families that have to endure these two months of waiting in order to bring closure to this whole incident. We are ready to repatriate them as soon as we get the green light from the State government.

The Director in the South African Presidency, Cassius Lubisi explained that all necessary machinery were already in place for smooth return of the bodies to South Africa, disclosing that two flights were ready for the exercise, with one to convey medical session of the Department of Defence, while mortuary trucks would arrive in the second flight.

Saturday 15 November 2014

http://thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2014/11/12/synagogue-house-collapse-lagos-releases-bodies-of-54-south-africans/

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Rescue efforts in 14th day after Ermenek mine disaster

Search and rescue efforts are continuing on their 14th day in a flooded mine in the Emernek district of Karaman province, with little hope of finding trapped miners alive.

Rescue units last week found the bodies of two of the 18 miners who became trapped in the mine when it flooded on Oct. 28. The efforts to reach the miners has proven harder than expected due to the fact that the level of carbon dioxide in the mine is increasing while the amount of oxygen is decreasing.

Speaking at the second anniversary reception of Hazar Strategy Institute (HASEN) on Tuesday, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yıldız said the accident occurred because excavations began very close to an abandoned mining site that had been filled with water.

Yıldız said mines operating underground are supposed to be at least 50 meters away from each other, and stated that everyone who holds responsibility in the accident, no matter who they are, will be brought to justice.

Eight people have been detained by the police for suspected negligence in the accident.

Wednesday 12 November 2014

http://en.cihan.com.tr/news/Rescue-efforts-in-14th-day-in-Ermenek_1495-CHMTU4MTQ5NS8yMDA3

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21 miners confirmed dead from August mine explosion in China

The search for 21 miners trapped in a collapsed mine in east China's Anhui Province was concluded and all the missing were confirmed dead, authorities said.

An explosion ripped through the Dongfang coal mine in Huainan City on Aug. 19 and 39 workers were caught in mine shafts hundreds of meters underground. Twelve managed to escape. By Aug. 29, six bodies had been found and 21 remained missing.

According to officials with the Huainan city government on Tuesday, the search was hampered by collapsed mine shafts and gas pockets. Experts said more explosions were possible if the search continued while they also concluded that the trapped miners were dead due to the conditions underground.

The families of the 21 missing miners received 910,000 yuan (14,841 U. S. dollars) compensation for each miner.

The provincial coal mine safety inspection bureau revoked the privately-owned Dongfang coal mine's production permit in August. The mine has an annual production capacity of 90,000 tonnes.

Although officially licensed, the city government had issued production suspension orders for all coal mines beginning June 30 as part of flood prevention efforts.

The search for the missing miners was hampered by collapsed shafts and gas pockets. Chinese authorities determined that the mine was operating illegally.

Wednesday 12 November 2014

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/xinhua-news-agency/141112/21-missing-miners-confirmed-dead-after-e-china-mine-accident

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57 die as bus collides with truck near Khairpur

Fifty-seven people, 17 women and 19 children among them, were killed when a Karachi-bound bus collided head-on with a coal-laden truck near the Therhi bypass on Gambhir Road a little before dawn on Tuesday.

Twenty-five people were injured, many of them seriously, in the crash. The bus driver was among the dead.

Residents of nearby villages and some of the injured told reporters and police that the speeding vehicles collided with a bang, which was heard miles away.

A large number of victims died on the spot and the screams of the injured attracted people to the accident site.

The villagers and some travellers took some of the injured to nearby health facilities.

The truck driver and some other seriously injured people were rushed to the Khairpur Civil Hospital. All 57 bodies were kept at the same hospital.

The bus was coming from Swat and most of the passengers reportedly hailed from Bahrain.

According to some injured people, the bus was overloaded and many passengers were travelling on the roof. They said the collision was so powerful that it blew away the roof of the bus.

Many of the victims were taken out from the wreckage by prising open the body of the bus with gas cutters.

An injured man told newsmen that he and six other members of his family were travelling in the bus and he was the lone survivor.

An official report released late in the evening said that the bus was carrying 77 passengers, a driver and a conductor. It said that 57 of them died and 22 were under treatment at the Khairpur Civil Hospital. The condition of 13 injured people was stated to be serious and two of them were referred to a Karachi hospital, it added.

Meanwhile, a C-130 plane sent to Sukkur in the afternoon transported 46 bodies to Risalpur.

According to an ISPR release, the bodies would be sent to the hometowns of victims by ambulances. Eleven bodies were dispatched to various destinations by Edhi air ambulances.

The casualties were driven to hospitals in Khairpur and Sukkur. Doctor Jaffer Soomro of the Khairpur Civil Hospital confirmed the death toll. “The accident was so severe that all of them died at the spot,” except for one child who died undergoing treatment in the hospital, Dr Soomro told AFP by phone. “I have never seen a road accident of such a horrible magnitude.” Police said there were 17 women and 18 children among the dead.

The bus was carrying families from Swat to Karachi, and medical staff were struggling to communicate with some of the injured, who spoke only Pashto. “We have called translators to communicate with the surviving people especially the children who are in very miserable condition,” Dr Soomro said.

A D Khawaja, the Motorway Police chief of Sindh, told AFP that the poor condition of the road may have been a factor, as well as bad driving. “There was a deep ditch on the road which we call ‘rutting’ some 30 to 40 yards before the place where the bus hit the truck,” he said. “We have learned that the bus went out of control after it hit the rutting and it landed on the opposite side of the road and then hit the truck which was coming from Karachi.”

Sukkur Commissioner Muhammad Abbas Baloch blamed reckless driving for the fatal accident. “Such accidents usually take place in the morning when after night-long drives it’s difficult for the fatigued drivers to keep their eyes on the road.”

However, he added that the poor condition of the road was also responsible for frequent accidents in the same area. “They should have made proper diversions while construction work on the highway is ongoing,” he told The Express Tribune.

The first to reach the crash site were Edhi ambulances, followed by the police and rangers. Mechanical cranes and cutters were called to cut through the body of the bus to get to the passengers trapped among the seats. Witnesses recounted harrowing scenes at the site before the arrival of the machinery, of trapped passengers crying for help while rescuers stood by helplessly.

“I’ve never seen such an accident in my life,” an elderly man, Shaban, told The Express Tribune. “The highway has been under construction for the past three-odd years and there is neither any proper diversion nor deployment of motorway police or traffic police to guide the heavy traffic,” he added.

After identification, 42 bodies were sent to Sukkur, from where they will be flown to Swat or Risalpur, while the remaining bodies were sent to Karachi by road for burial. Commissioner Baloch said they have announced monetary compensation of Rs30,000 for each of the injured, and recommended to the provincial chief minister compensation for the heirs of the deceased passengers.

Officials at the hospital said that some of the dead and the injured were yet to be identified.

Wednesday 12 November 2014

http://www.dawn.com/news/1143922/57-die-as-bus-collides-with-truck-near-khairpur

http://tribune.com.pk/story/789601/collision-in-khairpur-horror-on-the-highway/

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South Korea ends Sewol ferry wreckage searches

South Korea on Tuesday ended underwater searches for nine bodies still missing from April's ferry disaster that killed more than 300 people in one of the country's deadliest disasters in decades.

The announcement came hours before a South Korean court issues verdicts on the ship's crew members charged with negligence and abandonment of passengers in the disaster. Prosecutors have demanded a death penalty for the ship's captain and life sentences for three other crew members.

Searches for bodies and ferry wreckage have been underway since the Sewol sank on April 16 on a trip to a resort island. About seven months after the sinking, 295 bodies have been retrieved but nine people are still missing. Most of the dead were teenage students on a school trip.

Oceans and Fisheries Minister Lee Ju-young told a televised news conference that the searches will stop as of Tuesday as there was only a remote chance of finding the missing bodies. "The government's conclusion is that searches by divers have reached its limit," he said.

Lee said cabins in the ferry have collapsed and winter is coming, placing divers in a "very dangerous situation." Lee said family members of the missing people have asked the government to stop the underwater searches.

"As our loved ones remain trapped in the cold waters, this decision is unbearably painful for us.

But we request that the search operations to be stopped from now" because of safety concerns, a relative of one of the missing tearfully told a separate news conference Tuesday, according to report from the YTN television station.

Two civilian divers died after falling unconscious during searches, according to Lee's ministry. Lee said he feels sorry for failing to keep a government promise to find all the missing bodies.

He said the government will decide whether to raise the ship after discussing it with experts and the family members. The families have worried that raising the ship would damage the bodies or allow them to be swept away.

The ferry sinking has caused an outburst of national grief and anger, with authorities blaming the disaster on excessive cargo on the ship, poor rescue efforts, negligence by crew members and corruption by the ship's owners.

Wednesday 12 November 2014

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11356737

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Sri Lanka to suspend recovery in landslide hit village

Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Minister Mahindananda Amaraweera said recovery operations in landslide hit Meeriyabedda village would probably be halted from Sunday.

He said a final decision would be taken after discussions with President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Amaraweera, according to the Colombo Page web site, visited the landslide hit area on Saturday to meet survivors of the disaster and rescue workers. The relatives of the deceased people have demanded the rescue operations be suspended.

So far, 11 dead bodies have been recovered from the landslide site. The government has removed 201 people belonged to 47 families over fears of further land slips.

Sunday 9 November 2014

http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/sri-lanka-to-suspend-recovery-in-landslide-hit-village-114110900218_1.html

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Flight MH17: More human remains recovered

More remains of victims were recovered at the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash site in eastern Ukraine Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Times. Fighting has kept investigators from conducting a thorough probe of the crash site -- where MH17 landed in pieces after being shot down July 17 as it traveled from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. The crash killed all 298 passengers and crew on board. Remains of nine have yet to be identified.

“Several bodies of victims were found there yesterday. It was therefore decided to temporarily suspend work to remove the plane’s wreckage,” Ella Zhuranskaya, a representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, told Russia’s TASS news agency Friday. Donetsk emergency and transport ministry representatives, Dutch investigators, and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observers are expected to arrive at the crash site Sunday to continue inspection, Zhuranskaya said.

The Dutch investigators had arrived this week to collect debris from the downed Boeing 777, which fell from an altitude of more than 33,000 feet after being struck by “high-energy objects,” according to a preliminary report by the Dutch government. Many of the passengers aboard were Dutch citizens. A final report on the fate of MH17 by the Dutch Safety Board is due out by the middle of 2015.

Barriers marked "forbidden area - there could be remains of victims of the MH17 crash here" could be seen at the site in Grabove on Friday, AFP journalists said.

The Netherlands is leading a probe into the downing of the Malaysia Airlines jet on July 17, in which all 298 on board, including 193 Dutch nationals, were killed.

So far 289 victims had been identified among body parts recovered from the site, but no wreckage has been retrieved due to safety issues.

The Dutch-led investigation was threatened this week by reports of intensified fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk region. Violent fighting near the crash site had previously forced Dutch investigators to suspend work in mid-August, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Sunday 9 November 2014

http://www.ibtimes.com/flight-mh17-more-human-remains-recovered-1721142

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NYC's first 'Missing Persons Day' lets families expand DNA search

On Saturday New York City held a Missing Persons Day at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) at 421 26th Street and 1st Avenue, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. There has been a statewide event in Albany for the past 13 years, but this is the first focused on the Metropolitan area.

Over 100,000 people are actively missing nationwide, and last year 13,000 went missing from New York City alone. Bodies can often end up in the custody of nearby medical examiners, but in New York City, the unclaimed can have a grimmer fate and end up on Hart Island, the potter's grave where over 800,000 unidentified bodies are buried.

Families have previously had trouble accessing the island, which sits across from City Island in the Bronx, because it's controlled strictly by the Department of Correction; inmates from Rikers Island dig the graves. Groups like the Hart Island Project, a non-profit run by Melinda Hunt, have been advocating for families to be granted access to records and graves since 1976, when the island was closed to the public.

Using updated DNA technology, the OCME has been able to reevaluate over a thousand cases dating as far back as 1990. Julie Bolcer, the Director of Public Affairs at the OCME, said they are in the process of collecting DNA samples from 1,200 bodies and they now operate one of the nation's few DNA Missing Persons Units. But, she said, one DNA sample isn't enough.

"Even if we get finally get the DNA, it's no good alone," Bolcer said. "We still need the missing link."

Tomorrow, families will have the opportunity to give DNA samples to the OCME to be compared with the DNA collected from the unidentified bodies. They will also be matched with DNA collections nationwide, in the hopes of finding a match. They have dental records and fingerprints that can be analyzed. The OCME can also send home DNA kits, for those unable to attend, and will be continuing their DNA project beyond tomorrow's event. Bolcer stressed that while collecting DNA is a draw of Missing Persons Day, it's just a small part of the day planned.

"It's also about support," she said. "The National Institute of Justice calls this the 'nation's silent mass disaster.' There will also be emotional support for people who have long missing family members and loved ones."

Sunday 9 November 2014

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/11/08/loved-ones-hold-onto-hope-at-nycs-first-missing-persons-day/

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12 children feared drowned as boat capsizes in Rae Bareli

12 children are feared drowned after their boat capsized in the Ganga river at Raalpur Ghat in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli district today.

The boat was ferrying 18 people from Kanjas village when it sank in the river. Six of the occupants of the boat swam to safety, Superintendent of Police N Kolanchi said. Divers managed to rescue six children from drowning.

As per the information, these children went to had bath in Ganga on Saturday afternoon. When they were returning from boat, it capsized. On getting the information, all top officials of the village reached the spot. Divers were pressed to service and five dead bodies of children were recovered.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who represents Rae Bareli in Lok Sabha, rushed to the village and met the bereaved families, assuring them of assistance from her party.

Uttar Pradesh government has declared an ex-gratia of Rs two lakh to the kin of each of the deceased, district magistrate Mahendra Kumar said. UPA president Sonia Gandhi and cabinet minister Manoj Pandey reached the Kanjas village and offered their condolence. State government led by Samajwadi Party announced Rs. 2 lakh for the family of those who died, Rs. 50,000 for seriously injured and 25,000 for minor injured.

Two of the bodies have been recovered, while a hunt is on for the others, Mr Kolanchi said.

The family members of the victims alleged that the district administration had shown laxity in looking for the missing children.

Gandhi's aide Dheeraj Srivastava took up the matter with the district magistrate who asserted that rigorous search efforts were on.

Sunday 9 November 2014

http://daily.bhaskar.com/news-ht/UP-boat-carrying-children-capsizes-17-dead-6-rescued-4801206-PHO.html

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/12-children-feared-drowned-as-boat-capsizes-in-rae-bareli-617548

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Bodies of two miners recovered from Ermenek identified following DNA tests

The bodies of two of the 18 workers who were trapped in a flooded mine in central Turkey last week have been identified following DNA tests.

Officials have confirmed the names of the two deceased workers.

The two miners will be buried on Saturday with a ceremony to which also Turkey's Minister of Energy, Taner Yıldız, and Minister of Transport, Lütfi Elvan will attend.

Search and rescue teams found the bodies of two workers on Thursday. Operations for the remaining 16 workers are continuing.

The workers stayed trapped inside the mine located some 400 kilometers south of the capital, Ankara, in Karaman's Ermenek district, when a water pipe exploded and caused flooding on October 28.

Sunday 9 November 2014

http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2014/11/08/bodies-of-two-miners-recovered-from-ermenek-identified-following-dna-tests

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11 dead and 39 injured in coach crash in Murcia

11 people—at least nine women and one man—have been killed in a coach crash that happened at 11 p.m. on Saturday night in Venta del Olivo, in the south-eastern region of Murcia.

More than 50 people were travelling in the coach.

Cadena Ser reported a total of 37 passengers had been rushed to hospital, 13 admitted to hospital in the town of Cieza, 4 in the village of Hellín and 20 more in hospitals in the regional capital Murcia.

One person died on the way to hospital.

The radio station also reported that the driver had been injured in the crash, and had told emergency service workers that “the brakes had failed”.

Javier Ruiz Martínez, a journalist for regional radio station SER Murcia, tweeted from the scene that the coach had fallen down a 10-15 metre-high embankment.

The coach, belonging to Autocares Ruiz in the village of Calasparra, was on its way back from a trip to Madrid having been hired by a parish group from the nearby town of Bullas, which set up an emergency information centre for relatives and friends.

The Arrixaca Hospital in the regional capital Murcia told The Spain Report that two “very serious” casualties had been admitted, “and more are expected shortly”.

30 ambulances and all of the region’s hospitals were put on standby to deal with the casualties.

Sunday 9 November 2014

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2827109/Crash-horror-Spain-12-people-killed-bus-carrying-50-passengers-careered-embankment.html

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Fatal bus accident in Damanhur near Egypt Nile Delta

At least 18 people were killed when a bus packed with high school students collided with three other vehicles, including a tanker truck, in northern Egypt on Wednesday, medics said.

The crash, near the Nile Delta city of Damanhur, 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Cairo, also injured 18 people, some of them seriously, police and hospital officials said.

Medics were not immediately able to say how many of the dead were children because the bodies were so badly burned after the vehicles burst into flames.

The fire completely gutted the bus which had been transporting the teenagers to school. Scorched text books were scattered near the wreckage, shown in footage aired by Egyptian television.

Medics said three charred bodies, including that of a police officer, were pulled out of a sedan which was also involved in the crash. Provincial governor Mustafa Hadhud told Egyptian television that the bus had skidded after torrential rains struck the region.

One of the pupils who survived the crash said that the bus had arrived late and that the driver had explained "there had been a problem" with the vehicle.

"I was sitting in the back of the bus when the accident happened, and I jumped out of a window," the child told the private Egyptian CBC Extra in a telephone call from hospital.

Roads in Egypt are often poorly maintained and traffic regulations little enforced.

On Sunday, 11 female university students were killed in a collision in the south of Egypt. That accident sparked protests by fellow students in Sohag province.

Road accidents are responsible for an average of nearly 12,000 deaths a year in Egypt, according to the World Health Organization. Some of the deadliest accidents have sparked protests and accusations of government negligence.

After Wednesday's crash, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered the prime minister to visit the scene. He also gave instructions for the injured to be treated in military hospitals.

A cabinet statement promised "decisive measures to confront road accidents."

With roads poorly maintained and traffic rules often unenforced, Egypt can prove a dangerous place for transit. Road accidents cause an average of nearly 12,000 deaths a year in Egypt, according to the World Health Organization.

Wednesday 5 November 2014

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/egypt-school-bus-collides-tanker-18-dead-101755019.html#XQXUJVE

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Search continues for those missing from migrant boat

The death toll, which was initially announced as 20, climbed to 24 when more bodies were retrieved from the sea hours after the boat sank early Monday.

Ten of the 24 bodies retrieved from Monday's Bosporus boat accident belonged to children, according to a new statement by the Directorate General of Coastal Safety.

The 24 dead also included 10 men and four women, the statement said, adding that six migrants were safely rescued. A total of 43 people, including the boat's Turkish captain, were on board when the boat sank at the Black Sea entrance to the Bosporus Strait in İstanbul on Monday -- implying that 13 people remain missing. All 42 passengers were of Afghan origin. Search and rescue squads are still combing the waters to find the remaining 13.

The statement also said that Turkish authorities were alerted of the incident at 2:51 a.m. on Nov. 3 and search and rescue boats were immediately dispatched to the scene. They failed to find the endangered boat and returned to their base, however.

Five hours later, the directorate received a new call from fishermen regarding the same boat, which was three miles out at sea. Search and rescue efforts were once again initiated after the second call, according to the statement.

Local fishermen complained that their initial calls to the authorities for assistance were not fully investigated. They said rescue teams were dispatched to the area at around 8 a.m., after they made a second call saying there were multiple bodies in the water.

Darkness posed a challenge to efforts to locate those still missing and a Coast Guard vessel equipped to operate at night was the only ship used in search efforts on Monday night. More crews resumed the operations yesterday morning, combing the sea in the company of local fishermen and helicopters.

Many illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East pass through Turkey to get into the European Union, often traveling in unsafe boats.

The Bosporus strait, which bisects İstanbul, is one of the world's busiest waterways; it's a vital route for Russian oil and other commodities as it is the only outlet to the world's oceans from the Black Sea.

Turkish media reports that an aggressive crackdown by the Coast Guard against human traffickers and illegal immigrants in the Aegean Sea in Turkey's west coast has forced both groups to change their course and set out from Istanbul, a rarely preferred route. A large number of illegal immigrants were captured before they left several Istanbul ports aboard shoddy boats in the past month, but the 12-meter long boat that sank off Rumelifeneri managed to evade authorities. The media reported that smugglers were paid TL 7,000 ($3,153) for each person aboard and they charged migrants with extra fees for lifejackets. However, they turned out to be faulty, as corpses were found with lifejackets that were not inflated, according to accounts of eyewitnesses.

Experts and eyewitnesses attribute a number of causes to the accident, primarily overcrowding. Citing cracks on the boat's hull, some claim a bigger vessel crushed the boat since it was traveling without lights to avoid detection by the Coast Guard. On the other hand, locals claim smugglers deliberately sink boats after safely fleeing aboard another boat tailing the one carrying the illegal immigrants.

As the search continued, another case of migrants escaping death was reported yesterday in Marmaris, a southwestern Turkish town in the province of Muğla. Twelve illegal Syrian immigrants that were attempting to cross to nearby Greek islands aboard a small boat were stranded at sea, clinging onto the wreckage of their capsized boat, before Coast Guard officials rescued them. Turkish authorities also captured 33 illegal immigrants from Iraq, Syria and Myanmar yesterday in border villages of the northwestern Turkish province of Edirne as they attempted to cross into Greece and Bulgaria on foot.

Turkey, located in a region connecting Asia and Europe, is a main gateway for illegal immigrants pursuing a better life in European countries. Although strict security measures are taken on the borders, it still faces an influx of migrants who risk their lives and pay their scarce, hard-earned cash to smugglers for entry into Greece and Bulgaria, which border Turkey. Those who lost their lives in Monday's accident on the Bosporus were reportedly heading to Romania, located further away from Turkey's two neighbors.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said after the accident that illegal immigration was one of the basic problems facing both Turkey and the entirety of Europe, especially countries with coastlines facing the Mediterranean Sea. He said they would take all measures to stop illegal immigration so to prevent people from losing their lives.

Wednesday 5 November 2014

http://www.todayszaman.com/latest-news_10-children-among-victims-in-migrant-boat-tragedy-say-authorities_363629.html

http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2014/11/05/search-continues-for-those-missing-from-migrant-boat

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Cyprus: Buried airplane must be dug up says ECHR

Cyprus must dig up the Nord Noratlas military transport plane buried at the Makedonitissa military cemetery in Nicosia or face sanctions from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), according to a memo sent by the Legal Services last week.

Per an out-of-court settlement with the relatives of Greek commandos Stefanos Tzilivakis and Kosmas Yiannakakis – who both lost their lives during the Turkish invasion in 1974 – the state agreed to recover the airplane to determine whether their remains were buried with it.

The plane was brought down by friendly fire while trying to land at Nicosia airport and all but one of the soldiers on board died. The soldiers were buried at the Lakatamia military cemetery in Nicosia and in 1979 their remains were sent back to their families in Greece.

DNA testing in 2003 showed that many of the remains were misidentified and that some of the bodies were never accounted for.

It is believed that some of the soldiers may be buried along with the plane.

Both the commandos’ families took Cyprus to the ECHR but settled out of court when the state said it would recover the plane and determine whether anyone was buried with it.

The matter became a cause of alarm for the Legal Services when the families’ lawyer contacted them asking that the recovery work starts immediately. According to the settlement, excavation should begin in 2014.

In a meeting that took place last week, chaired by Commissioner for Humanitarian and Overseas Affairs Fotos Fotiou, it was decided that the state go forth with recovery and that the Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ETEK) come up with ways of carrying out the recovery but limiting the damage in Makedonitissa.

The Makedonitissa cemetery is a war memorial, built on top of the Nord Noratlas plane.

“This is a totally manageable problem. We still have time to comply and state officials are very aware of the time limitations,” a government source told the Cyprus Mail.

Thanasis Zafeiriou was the only survivor of the plane that was shot down. According to his account, he managed to pry the plane door open before the plane was completely engulfed in flames and jumped out. He was later found unconscious by National Guard soldiers and taken to a hospital.

Wednesday 5 November 2014

http://cyprus-mail.com/2014/11/05/buried-airplane-must-be-dug-up-says-echr/

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Bone by bone, Ukraine identifies its war dead

Before the war, Oksana Biryukova’s lab helped investigators connect criminals to crime scenes. Now her equipment is buzzing around the clock trying to identify the charred remains of Ukrainian soldiers.

The DNA laboratory in the southeastern city of Zaporizhia is the only one in the country charged with creating genetic profiles for the unidentified bodies of Ukrainian servicemen killed in the conflict with pro-Russian separatists.

“These samples arrive every day,” Biryukova, the chief analyst at the interior ministry lab told AFP, nodding at brown boxes stacked in the corner of her gleaming white workplace.

“The full picture -- nobody knows it,” she said. “The 400 that we have handled is just some of the work.”

Trying to put a name to the remains of those killed in the seven months of brutal fighting in east Ukraine can be a difficult task.

Body fragments sent to Biryukova’s lab are often so degraded that specialists have to run tests several times, she said, showing vacuum-packed bones and a piece of jaw lying in an unassuming refrigerator.

“Most of the time we can only use bone tissue (to run tests) because samples come from people who have burnt almost completely.”

Even then, family clinging to hope that their loved ones are still alive sometimes refuse to give their DNA for testing.

Getting the bodies of those killed from the battlefield to the laboratory takes a lot of hard work. Commanding officers can no longer do it if the area has passed to hands of separatists.

Volunteer group Narodnaya Pamyat -- which works with the authorities to try to recover and return the remains of those missing -- estimates that more than 500 soldiers remain unaccounted for.

As military casualty figures spiked at the end of the summer, members from the organisation who have experience searching for World War II remains offered to help Ukraine’s overwhelmed military find those left behind.

But their operations are makeshift at best.

“The vehicles we have are junk on wheels, and de facto people do this work on their own money, on their own time,” says Konstantin, an army officer who helps put together search parties to scour rebel territory for the dead.

So far his groups have helped to recover some 160 bodies from the conflict zone.

Once a body is found the first obstacle is often the lack of any identification as Ukraine’s cash-strapped military cannot even furnish dog tags.

“Servicemen don’t have enough tags, and volunteer (fighters) never had them at all,” military expert Ivan Yakubets said.

Along with many other supplies, dog tags are now being made through crowd-funding initiatives.

The entire military operation in the east is so ill-equipped, it is “for the most part a partisan campaign,” Yakubets said.

When the bodies are finally brought in for analysis the morgues in cities closest to conflict zones often struggle with the scale of the job.

In Zaporizhia, about 170 kilometres west of rebel stronghold Donetsk, some of the bodies had to be buried before they could be identified last month after the morgue ran out of room, says Evgeniy Ksenzov, who works at the morgue’s forensic department.

Since then Ksenzov has received four giant refrigerators to keep the remains until they are claimed by their relatives after a genetic match.

At the cemetery in the outskirts of Zaporizhia, 54 anonymous graves lie in a dusty field, marked “unknown soldier” and adorned with wreaths, Ukrainian flags and children’s drawings.

Of the first 200 bodies that arrived in Zaporizhia in September -- many of them from the army’s defeat in the town of Ilovaisk -- these had not been claimed by relatives, Ksenzov said.

In total the United Nations says more than 4,000 people have been killed in the conflict since Apri.

Also still out in the fields are thought to be the remains of some 10 of the victims from downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 that was blasted out of the sky on in July over rebel territory, killing all 298 people on board. The others have been recovered.

While the burials of some of the unidentified servicemen have at least afforded them some dignity, the volunteers still searching for more remains fear for the other soldiers left lying in rebel-held areas.

Konstantin, who helps trying to track down remains, says there are areas that the recovery teams cannot enter.

Uppermost in his worries are those soldiers who perished on the territory of the so-called “Lugansk People’s Republic” (LNR), the smaller of the two rebel enclaves in the east.

There the insurgent leaders have refused to let volunteers take out the dead for more than a month, claiming they cannot guarantee security.

“In another month or two, there will only be bones that remain of the LNR bodies,” he said, approximating that there are between 100 and 200 bodies in LNR-controlled territory.

Wednesday 5 November 2014

http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=World&title=bone-by-bone-ukraine-identifies-its-dead&id=97311

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MH17: more human remains found at crash site

A Dutch team took advantage of a pause in fighting between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine on Friday to recover human remains from the Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash site, the Dutch prime minister said.

The remains were brought to the city of Kharkiv for a preliminary forensic check, after which they will be transferred to the Netherlands for further identification.

The findings were made after a mission in cooperation with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SES).

Mark Rutte said “the team recovered human remains from the so-called burn site” where the plane hit the ground, but he gave no more details.

It was the first time in weeks that Dutch authorities had been able to reach the area.

All 298 passengers and crew, two-thirds of them Dutch, died on 17 July when the aircraft was downed.

Kiev blames pro-Russian separatists for the airliner’s destruction. Russia says a Ukrainian military aircraft shot it down.

So far, 289 victims have been identified.

Security conditions were good enough on Friday for a small Dutch team, accompanied by members of the Ukrainian fire brigade and officials with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) officials, to search part of the crash site, Rutte said.

The remains would be sent back to the Netherlands for identification.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/01/mh17-more-human-remains-found-at-crash-site-says-dutch-pm

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Dead bodies in the ocean: What happens to these corpses?

Sometimes corpses are found at sea, with the cause of death ruled a suicide, homicide or an accidental death. Sometimes figuring out if a mark on a body was pre or post-mortem can be a challenge for forensic teams.

To figure out what happens to a human body, forensic entomologist Gail Anderson from Simon Fraser University in Canada experimented by dropping pig carcasses into the sea, according to Live Science.

"Pigs are the best models for humans," Anderson told Live Science. "They're roughly the right size for a human body; they have the same kind of gut bacteria, and they're relatively hairless."

During the experiment, Anderson and her team used a remote submarine to drop three pig carcasses in the Saanich Inlet, a body of salt water near Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The pigs landed about 330 feet below the water.



An underwater laboratory called Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea, or VENUS, allowed scientists to observe via video and take measurements via the internet. Sensors measured oxygen levels, water temperature, pressure and salt content, according to the study.

"It didn't take long for scavengers to find the pigs. Shrimp, Dungeness crabs and squat lobsters all arrived and started munching on the bodies; a shark even came to feed on one of the pig corpses," according to Live Science.

The first two bodies were eaten clean to the bone within a month, but the oxygen levels weren't ideal for the third body. The researchers found that the inlet is typically lower in oxygen, but the spot where the third corpse was dropped had exceptionally low oxygen, and big scavengers need more oxygen, explained Live Science. Larger feeders need to open the corpse up so the smaller scavengers that can't break the skin can get into the openings.

"Now we have a very good idea of how bodies break down underwater," Anderson told Live Science.

"These studies have provided valuable information for underwater death investigations, describing conditions of bodies over time in hypoxic and anoxic environments...They provide information to recovery divers and families as to the expectations of body conditions when in similar water conditions which will all assist in water recoveries," study authors wrote.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

http://www.hngn.com/articles/48010/20141104/dead-bodies-in-the-ocean-what-happens-to-these-corpses-watch.htm

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At least 24 drown, dozen missing in Istanbul migrant boat sinking

At least 24 people including children drowned and a dozen were missing on Monday when an overloaded boat taking migrants towards EU waters sank in the Black Sea just off Istanbul, Turkish officials said.

Those on board were mainly Afghans seeking a better life in Europe. They had reportedly paid thousands of euros each to people smugglers for a seat.

The boat, described as a small cruiser, was carrying around 40 people -- over four times its maximum capacity -- including 12 children. Six people were rescued and 24 corpses recovered, the coastguard said in a statement. It added that search operations were continuing for the dozen still missing.

The boat sank three nautical miles north of the northern entrance to the Bosphorus, one of the busiest shipping thoroughfares in the world. They had set off earlier from Bakirkoy, an Istanbul suburb. Turkish media said at least one of those who died could have been a crew member or a smuggler.

Some reports said Syrians and Turkmen could also have been on board as well as Afghans. Television pictures showed survivors draped in blankets and sobbing as rescue workers offered them soup.

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said the tragedy highlights "the urgency to take concrete action to save lives, to address irregular migration".

"It is imperative to improve cooperation on this matter with countries that function as departure points for migrants seeking to reach EU countries," he said in a statement.

The boat was already half-submerged when rescuers, who had been alerted by fishermen, arrived at the scene, according to the Anatolia news agency.

The media said overloading, bad weather or a collision with another vessel were all possible causes of the disaster. Anatolia said prosecutors believed the vessel could have had leaks and have opened an investigation.

"There were lots of children on board. The wind is having a bad effect on the rescue efforts. The boat was very, very small, not enough for 40 people," a captain involved in the rescue efforts, Ali Saruhan, told CNN-Turk television.

Emre Can Kolcu, a member of a fishing crew, told NTV that after the accident "bags, shoes, coats and discarded life jackets covered the sea". He said it was likely that the children on board had been given adult life jackets that were too big and they had simply slipped out of them once in the water.

The stricken boat "was not a fishing boat, it was a tour boat for seven to eight people, not for 40," he added. Turkey has become a hub for illegal immigrants who aspire to reach Europe.

NTV television said the migrants had paid 7,000 euros ($8,750) each to travel to Romania and onwards to wealthier western European countries. Thousands of immigrants have drowned trying to make the perilous journey in recent years.

The accident comes at a time of intense debate in the EU over whether to continue migrant rescue missions, which some argue are encouraging more people to risk the hazardous voyages.

Britain said last week it will not support planned EU search and rescue operations to save migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. And Italy confirmed on Friday that it is calling off its year-old search and rescue operation "Mare Nostrum", which has saved tens of thousands of lives in the Mediterranean.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/dozens-drown-migrant-boat-sinking-off-istanbul-112324592.html

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Koslanda tradegy: 9 bodies recovered; 29 missing

According to Disaster Management Center (DMC), nine people confirmed to be dead, while 29 remains missing, a significantly lower number than their earlier 190. It is highly unlikely to finding anyone alive under the debris, as mud would have been too weak to create air pockets for people to stay alive.

Over 3,000 families who lived in areas identified as risky, have been moved to safe camps.

Rescuers continue to dig into about 10 meters of mud with the help of sniffer dogs. But their operations are hampered by continues heavy rains.

The tragic landslide completely destroyed a line of workers houses in Meeriyabedda tea plantation near the town of Haldummulla, on Wednesday (29) morning. According to officials the line house complex houses more than 300 people, but most of them were out for work or school, when the landslide collapsed.

Over 13,000 people are affected by the inclement weather, DMC said. Over 3,000 families who lived in areas identified as risky, have been moved to safe camps.

The meteorology department says showers or thundershowers are likely to continue due to the atmospheric disturbance located to the northeast of Sri Lanka be widespread with very heavy rain falls more than 150 mili meters in the Northern, North Central, Eastern and Uva provinces.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

http://nidahasa.com/news/news.php?go=fullnews&newsid=1358

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Workers find body of last missing victim while dismantling Costa Concordia

Russel Rebello, the final victim to be recovered from the Costa Concordia disaster, will receive a “hero’s welcome” when his body is returned home to India, his brother said Monday.

Salvage workers from Ship Recycling, the consortium dismantling the Concordia, said they found the remains believed to be of Mr Rebello, a 32-year-old waiter from Mumbai, inside a cabin on the ship’s eighth deck in Genoa.

A spokeswoman for Ship Recycling, the consortium breaking the ship at a yard in Genoa, told the Guardian that on Monday morning “human remains were found that are presumed to be those of Mr Rebello”. She said the remains were discovered in a cabin on the eighth deck of the giant liner. “All work on the ship came to a halt and the authorities are now carrying the necessary procedures.”

Workers found his badly decomposed body crushed beneath overturned furniture with an identity card including his name and photograph in his trousers. They notified Genoa prosecutors who ordered DNA tests to be conducted.

The surprise discovery ends a heart-wrenching search by Mr Rebello’s brother Kevin, who spent four months on Giglio after the Concordia struck rocks near the island off the coast of Tuscany in January 13 2012.

Mr Rebello was among the 32 passengers and crew who lost their lives after the Concordia’s captain, Francesco Schettino, attempted to perform a “salute” in front of the island. The 114,000-ton liner struck a reef in shallow waters and capsized just off shore from the island’s tiny port. Kevin Rebello, who runs a natural therapy business in Milan, said after 1,025 days of waiting his parents would breathe a “sigh of relief” hearing the news.

“Their constant prayers have been heard,” said Mr Rebello, whose family is Catholic with a Goan background. “Now we wait for the DNA test and procedures to give Russel his final resting place with honour, respect and a hero’s welcome. India we are coming.”

Russel Rebello is understood to have died after giving his life jacket to another passenger and helping terrified passengers into life boats. He was the last victim to be found. The remains of Italian passenger Maria Grazia Trecarichi, were found in October 2013 just three weeks after the massive liner was pulled upright in an unprecedented salvage operation.

In July this year the ship was towed away by tug boats in another dramatic exercise and is now moored in Genoa's port, where it is being dismantled.

Schettino is facing charges of multiple manslaughter and dereliction of duty and could face up to 20 years in prison if he is found guilty. He is due to appear in court again in December.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11205374/Costa-Concordia-body-of-final-victim-found-on-board.html

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Rains hamper Sri Lanka mudslide tragedy search effort

Heavy rains disrupted a massive search on Thursday for scores of people feared buried in a landslide on a Sri Lankan tea estate, further dimming prospects of finding anyone alive.

Hundreds of troops suspended their work as rains threatened more mudslides at the plantation in central Sri Lanka, a day after scores of tin-roofed homes were buried under tonnes of mud.

"We are suspending the search operation because it is not safe to work in this rain," the region's top military officer, Major General Mano Perera, told reporters.

"We hope to start work tomorrow morning if the weather improves."

Perera said they failed to find any survivors or bodies from the disaster site on Thursday. He did not hold out much hope of finding survivors as the site was covered in tonnes of mud.

"There were no concrete structures which could have acted as air traps for victims to survive," he added.

Shop keeper Vevaratnam Marathamuttu said he ran when tonnes of earth came crashing down the hill on Wednesday morning, fearing there had been an explosion.

"I thought it was some sort of a bomb blast and fled from my shop," Marathamuttu said. "I saved my life because I ran away."

Truck driver Sinniah Yogarajan, 48, said there was "no point in my living" after five members of his family along with his friends were buried in the disaster.

"The entire neighbourhood has vanished. Now there is a river of mud where our houses once stood," Yogarajan told AFP at a nearby school where survivors were sheltering.

"The soldiers are trying their best but every time they scoop out some of the mud the hole then just gets filled up again with more mud."

Although only a handful of bodies have been recovered so far, the government's disaster management minister voiced fears on Wednesday night that 100 people may have been buried after he visited the site.

There had been fears of an even higher toll when officials initially said that up to 300 people were unaccounted for, but the minister said most of those who were classified as missing were later found at work.

Some 75 children were already at their school nearby when their homes were buried, officials said, adding that they were checking on reports that at least two children had lost both parents.

Fears of more landslides

President Mahinda Rajapakse visited the disaster area in Koslanda on Thursday, speaking with survivors now sheltering at two schools. He later inspected the Meeriyabedda tea plantation which bore the full brunt of the mudslide.

During the day, soldiers were seen clearing debris from the mud, as curious onlookers as well as survivors whose relatives were missing gathered at the site despite appeals to stay away.

Labourer Arumugam Thyagarajah, 28, said his six-year-old daughter was washed away in the mudslide as she walked with her older brother to school.

At least 1,200 people from nearby tea plantations have also been evacuated from their homes amid fears that ongoing rains could lead to more mudslides, officials said adding that more people were expected at relief centres.

Sri Lanka's picturesque hill region is famed for producing Ceylon tea and has become a major tourist attraction with visitors able to stay on the plantations.

The number of homes destroyed was revised down to 63 on Thursday from 150 given earlier by the national Disaster Management Centre (DMC).

"We had difficulty communicating with our officers and sometimes rumours were reported to us as facts," the Colombo-based DMC spokesman Sarath Kumara told AFP.

An office where village records were maintained was also destroyed in the disaster, causing problems for the authorities in compiling reliable casualty figures.

Sri Lanka, a tropical island at the foot of India, is prone to weather-related disasters -- especially during the monsoon season when the rains are often welcomed by farmers.

If the death toll does reach three figures, the disaster would be the country's worst since the December 2004 tsunami when 31,000 people died.

Thursday 30 October 2014

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/rains-hamper-sri-lanka-mudslide-tragedy-search-effort-614128

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Shining Path victims' remains returned 30 years after their deaths

The remains of 65 victims of the Shining Path have been returned to their families 30 years after they were killed.

Men, women, and children who were killed by the Shining Path between 1989 and 1991 have finally been returned to their families for identification and burial. People came from 25 communities to Huamanga to bury their dead, whose bones and the clothes they died in were presented in small white coffins, just over a meter long, along with the few objects they had on them at the times of their deaths.

Relatives had traveled from their distant homes to identify the remains of their family members killed so many years before. The bodies had been hidden in clandestine graves until four years ago, when they were disinterred and the lengthy identification process began. Experts used DNA tests, dental records, and anthropological forensics to identify them. They had been killed by members of the Shining Path, as well as police and the military.

Prosecutor Carlos Américo Ramos Heredia presided over the handing over of the remains of the victims. The ceremony took three hours and was attended by around 200 relatives.

Adelina García, president of the Association of Families of Kidnapped, Arrested, and Disappeared of Peru, is the wife of a man who went missing in the Los Cabitos barracks in Ayacucho back in 1983. “It’s a satisfaction to give a Christian grave to loved ones after many years, others still have their hearts in pain for not finding them and not having accomplished that the guilty are punished,” she told Peruvian daily La República.

Ramos admitted that there was a long road ahead of them, saying that there were still a lot of makeshift graves to discover and that they needed more prosecutors specialized in human rights.

2,925 bodies were discovered from 2006 to July 2014, 1,689 of this number have been identified and 1,485 have been returned to their families. La República notes that these numbers are very small when compared to the number of people who are still missing. The 2003 Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that 15 thousand people disappeared in the years the Shining Path was active in Peru.

Thursday 30 October 2014

http://www.peruthisweek.com/news-shining-path-victims-remains-returned-30-years-after-their-deaths-104326

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Families of missing in Sewol ferry disaster demand new search plan after body find

The families of passengers still officially listed as missing from the sunken ferry Sewol demanded Wednesday that the government come up with a thorough plan to find and recover the bodies.

The call came after a badly decomposed body, presumed to be that of a woman, was found inside the submerged ship Tuesday afternoon, more than six months after the ferry sank in waters off the southwestern island of Jindo, leaving more than 300 people dead in one of the country's deadliest maritime disasters.

After running into obstacles, divers retrieved the body from the fourth-deck female bathroom a day after its discovery, officials at the site said. They said the remains will be sent to a mortuary for positive identification using DNA screening.

"We demand that the government review the search plan for November and come up with a new thorough search plan," the families said in a press release.

On Monday, the family members said they had voted against salvaging the ship and asked the government to continue its search operation.

The outcome of the vote was made public hours after a private diving company announced its decision to pull out of the joint operation with the government and military after three months, citing "various circumstances."

The 6,825-ton ferry Sewol sank on April 16 en route to the southern resort island of Jeju. Of the total number of people on board, most of whom were high school students, only 174 were rescued.

Wednesday 30 October 2014

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20141029001101

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Sri Lanka landslide: at least 16 dead, hundreds missing

Mudslides triggered by monsoon rains swept through a tea-growing region of Sri Lanka on Wednesday, killing at least 16 people and leaving around 300 more missing, disaster officials have said.

The landslides hit a tea plantation east of Colombo in the morning, with some homes buried in 9 metres (30ft) of mud, officials said.

Soldiers were trying to dig through debris for survivors, but rescue efforts were hampered by damage to roads in the area which blocked earth-moving and other heavy equipment from arriving.

“We have reports of 140 houses getting washed away in the mudslides,” Sarath Kumara, a spokesman for the national Disaster Management Centre (DMC), said.

“The latest we have got is that at least 300 people may be missing,” the official said, updating an earlier estimate of 200.

Kumara said 16 bodies had been recovered by noon after the disaster in the Koslanda region, about 125 miles east of the capital.

The victims were tea plantation workers and their families, whose homes were located on a mountain slope that came crashing down.

The top military official in the area, Major General Mano Perera, said around 20 units had been deployed for the rescue operation in an unstable mountainous area. But he said efforts were being hampered by poor visibility, with the area shrouded in mist.

The landslide started at about 7.45am (2.15am GMT) and lasted about 10 minutes, Perera said.

Perera said the air force as well as elite police commandos had been deployed for the rescue, and that they were hopeful of finding survivors.

“We have already rescued some people and they have been sent to hospital,” he said, without giving exact figures.

The main focus of the search is the Meeriyabedda tea plantation, which lies close to a beauty spot famous for its waterfalls.

Kumara said the mudslide occurred after schools opened and tea labourers were supposed to be at work, but bad weather may have prompted some to stay back.

“We are checking with nearby schools and other work places to establish how many villagers were [there] at the time,” Kumara said. “But our estimate at the moment is that about 300 people are missing.”

A local hospital source said two men and a woman rescued from the mud had been brought in for treatment.

Sections of several national highways have been washed away by the rains, slowing down the movement of search and rescue vehicles to the area, the DMC said.

The government’s disaster management minister said he was on his way to the area to assess the damage.

“We are coordinating with all agencies to ensure that relief is sent as quickly as possible, but the weather is a factor that is slowing us down,” the minister, Mahinda Amaraweera, said.

The disaster struck in an area prone to mudslides and residents had been repeatedly warned to move to safer areas as monsoon rains lashed the region, the DMC said.

Thirteen people were killed in mudslides in and around Colombo in June.

The annual monsoon brings vital rains for irrigation and electricity generation but also causes frequent loss of life and damage to property.

Cyclonic winds that accompanied the monsoon in June last year killed 54 people, mostly fishermen.

Wednesday 29 October 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/29/dead-hundreds-missing-sri-lanka-mudslides

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Divers suffer as search for ferry victims continues

More than 100 days have passed since divers found the last body in the ferry that sank off the southwest coast on April 16. But the search for the missing victims continues, and 32 divers go to work every days searching for bodies.

They brave strong currents, low visibility and hypothermia as water temperatures have dropped significantly.

The Sewol has moved around 5.3 m due to the strong currents and is partially embedded in the muddy floor. Its steel frame has collapsed from rust, closing off entry points to the hull.

One diver who has been searching for victims since April, said, "Various parts of the ship are filled with mud and the frame has collapsed in many parts of the ship, which means divers can't search them. We've only been able to dive properly for nine days this month."

As the ferry disaster fades from the headlines, the conditions divers face have also gotten worse. One Navy commander said, "I have kept asking my men to persevere for just one more month, but it's been six months now working aboard a cramped vessel."

The injuries divers suffer are sapping morale. Two divers have died searching for bodies and about 80 have been treated in hospital.

Another Navy commander at the scene of the search said, "Divers who have managed to avoid injuries are faced with the side effects of diving long periods under water including paralysis due to fatigue."

Hwang Dae-shik, a rescue official, said, "Divers have to rest for 16 hours after diving for more than 10 minutes, but nobody was able to abide by that safety guideline in April and May," during massive rescue efforts in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.

The side effects are emerging now.

One diver who had to rescue a fellow diver, said, "It is a noble objective to try and recover all of the bodies of the victims, but the actual people who are risking their lives are the divers and not the president or ministers. We risked our lives to achieve the impossible and now they think it’s just our job to carry on."

The families of the victims held a meeting on Sunday evening to vote on ending the search for bodies and raising the vessel. They will announce their decision on Monday.

Monday 27 October 2014

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2014/10/27/2014102701360.html

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A month after Japanese volcano eruption, six remain missing

Monday marks one month of the Ontake volcano eruption, the most deadly in Japan since 1926, which killed 57 people and left six others missing after search operations were suspended due to the first snowfall at the top.

Families of the victims and representatives of local authorities gathered and observed one minute of silence in the central regions of Kiso and Otaki neighbouring the Ontake, at the same time the volcano erupted Sep 27.

Residents of both towns also placed a wreath at the foot of the mountain to “sympathise with the inhabitants of the regions and pray for the volcano to calm down”, one of the organisers of the event said in statements to Kyodo agency.

On Oct 16, following the first snowfall at the top of the mountain, Japanese authorities decided to postpone the search for the six missing people until next spring, because of the risk of avalanches, landslides and low visibility.

The rescue teams had already combed most of the volcanic region and found 57 bodies.

Mount Ontake is the second highest volcano in Japan at 3,067 metres and is located about 100 km from Nagoya city.

It erupted Sep 27 when hundreds of people were hiking in the surrounding foothills and at the summit.

It is estimated that some 250 people were able to flee the area or were evacuated, 69 of whom suffered injuries, mostly bruises, fractures and burns.

The eruption was the country’s worst volcanic disaster since 1926 when Mount Tokachi in northern Hokkaido blew its top, killing 144 people and injuring another 210.

As the skiing season approaches, local authorities have also launched a campaign to ensure that tourism does not suffer in the mountainous region that is home to many ski resorts.

Meanwhile, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) maintains the level of volcanic alert for Ontake at three on a scale of five, meaning another eruption is possible, and access to the mountain and its surroundings is restricted.

Monday 27 October 2014

http://www.theindianrepublic.com/world/month-japanese-volcano-eruption-six-remain-missing-100052425.html

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Floods and heavy rains leave 22 dead in Nicaragua

Twenty-two people are dead and 32,000 are homeless after torrential rain caused flooding near Nicaragua's capital Managua.

Days of torrential rains in Nicaragua has left 22 people dead and 32,000 homeless.

Nine of the victims died when a retaining wall collapsed and flattened four shacks near the capital Managua, government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo said on Saturday.

The report said 4,544 homes were damaged or destroyed by floods or were evacuated due to flood risk.

The rains impacted 17 departments in the country and 5,630 people are in temporary shelters and receiving food aid, Murillo said.

The bodies of nine people died in the populous neighborhood, Barrio 18 de Mayo, in southeast Managua when a wall around a housing development collapsed because of the heavy rains

Sunday 26 October 2014

http://www.topworldheadlines.com/2014/10/flood-and-heavy-rains-leave-22-dead-in.html

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Government confirms Chinese boat with 15 people missing since July

A boat with a crew of 15 has been missing in the South China Sea since July, authorities in Shandong Province, where the boat is registered, said on Saturday.

The announcement came after a report on local TV station Qilu claiming widespread concern on social media.

The Rongcheng city government did not say why it had not revealed the incident until three months after the fact.

Owner of the boat numbered Lurongyu 2860 told the police he lost contact with his boat on July 9, according to the Rongcheng government. The boat embarked on its voyage on Feb. 26.

Fishery regulator and marine police are still investigating the boat's whereabouts.

Sunday 26 October 2014

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-10/25/c_133742390.htm

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16 killed in northwest China coal mine collapse

A coal mine shaft collapsed in northwestern China, killing 16 miners, an official said Saturday, highlighting the persistence of safety problems in the industry despite a leveling off of demand.

Another 11 miners were injured in the disaster, which struck just before midnight Friday in Tiechanggou township outside the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi.

Thirty-three miners were in the shaft when the accident occurred, six of whom were brought out by rescuers, said an official with the State Administration of Work Safety. The official, speaking on routine condition of anonymity, said that all of the injured were in stable condition and that the cause of the cave-in was under investigation.

State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of injured miners sitting up in their hospital beds and describing their experiences to a reporter.

A man who answered the phone at the mine's offices said he could not comment, and calls to the Xinjiang regional safety administration rang unanswered.

China's mines are among the most dangerous in the world, although improved safety measures have vastly lowered the number of fatalities in mine accidents in recent years.

The government's China National Coal Administration reported 1,067 deaths in 604 coal mining accidents in 2013, down 23 percent from the year before. That's down from more than 6,000 a decade ago, largely due to increased inspections and the closure of small and unregulated mines.

The decline has coincided with plateauing demand for coal as the Chinese economy cools from the dizzying heights of the last few years.

While China still produces and consumes almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined, the amount it burned in the first three quarters of 2014 was off by about 2 percent from the same period last year, according to Greenpeace energy analysts in China.

That came despite slower but still robust economic growth of 7.4 percent during the same period, showing that China's economy is becoming somewhat more efficient in its energy use.

Widespread use of coal is largely blamed for the choking smog that envelops major cities in the country. Beijing on Saturday was smothered in a toxic cloud that prompted many citizens to don air filtering masks when venturing outside.

Sunday 26 October 2014

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11348318

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One out of 26 bodies from Lake Kariba disaster retrieved

Only one body out of the 26 people who drowned Friday in Lake Kariba, Gwembe area has so far been retrieved.

And the Zambia Army and police are struggling to retrieve other bodies and may fail due to lack of marine equipment.

Meanwhile, some affected families were heard murmuring and complaining that had government provided modern water transport in Gwembe district, the deaths would not have occurred.

Zambia Reports understand that the Zambian government is trying to engage Zimbabwe to help retrieve the other 25 bodies.

This came to light when Vice-President Guy Scott visited the bereaved families in the rural area.

Inspector-General of Police Stella Libongani told Scott that the only body that had been retrieved by Saturday evening was that of a one-year-old child, which has since been buried.

Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit coordinator Patrick Kangwa was heard telling the Vice-President that the search is hampered by unsuitable equipment being used. He said his team was trying to ask Zimbabwe for help as he also thought the bodies may have floated to the Zimbabwean side.

Twenty-six people, most of them pupils of Henga Primary School in Gwembe died on Friday after the boat they were on capsized on Lake Kariba.

Vice-President Scott told mourners “your loss is our loss, too. Even if we cannot heal your emotions, as Government we will do everything possible to lighten this burden. We will make available coffins, food and all logistical needs.”

Earlier, Police inspector General Libongani explained to Vice-President Scott that the incident happened around 07:30hours on Independence Day as the victims were travelling to Kalelezhi, a school across the lake, for golden jubilee celebrations.

Libongani said 34 people were on a 14-seater banana boat.

Of the 34, eight survived aged between six and 16.

Sunday 26 October 2014

http://zambiareports.com/2014/10/26/one-26-bodies-lake-kariba-disaster-retrieved/

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