Sec’bad Hotel collapse: Scar helps father identify dead son

Imagine the prospect of having to look at disfigured and decomposed bodies in a morgue and then struggling to identify their own children.

On Wednesday, Hanumantha Rao found himself lost in the middle of unclaimed bodies retrieved from the debris of City Light Hotel. He was looking for the familiar surgical scar on the right side of his son’s head, the only discernable mark that could have helped him identify the body.

In the end he found the scar and when the harsh reality of having lost his young son forever set in, the father lost control. Tears started to roll.

“He was just 20 years old and I still don’t understand why he deserved this. His body was disfigured and the scar on the head was the only way we could identify him,” he cried, on identifying his son Sai Suresh Kumar.

The youngster worked at a nearby textile showroom and ventured into the hotel at around 5.30 a.m. on Monday to have a cup of tea.

“I still wonder why he had to wake up so early and go to the hotel. This is like a bad dream. Although he was my elder brother, we were like friends because he was older to me by just three minutes,” said Sai Likhitha, Suresh’s twin sister.

Along with his sister, Suresh did his schooling in a private school in Saroornagar before moving to Guntur, when his father, a government employee, was transferred.

“He was not interested in studies and was restless. He had dreams and wanted to move on, start from scratch. He always told me that he will become a successful businessman,” recalls Likhitha.

Cell phone found

After retrieving the body of Suresh, the authorities managed to get hold of his cell phone, which he was carrying on person. Later, the police also managed to recover phone numbers and immediately contacted Hanumantha Rao.

“We received the call on Tuesday evening and immediately rushed to Hyderabad. Despite my efforts, Suresh was never interested in studies. He left Guntur and came to Hyderabad four years ago for work. I never thought that one day I will have to come to take his body,” said the disconsolate man.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/secbad-hotel-collapse-scar-helps-father-identify-dead-son/article4902576.ece

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China Sichuan landslide 'buries up to 40 people'

A landslide has buried between 30 and 40 people in China's Sichuan province, state media say.

The landslide occurred in Zhongxing town on Wednesday morning. More than 100 rescuers with rescue dogs were at the scene, Xinhua news agency said.

The landslide followed days of torrential rain across parts of China that has caused floods in some areas.

On Tuesday, a bridge in Sichuan's Jiangyou collapsed, with at least 12 people missing.

Footage from Chinese state media, meanwhile, showed the dramatic rescue of a Deyang factory worker, who was stranded by the floods after the factory was washed away.

"The water level is so high that vehicles, forklifts and excavators have all been washed away," Wei Xiao, another factory worker, told Reuters news agency.

'Evacuated'

Zhongxing is in Dujiangyan city, one of the places badly hit by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

The landslide, which spanned around two square kilometres, damaged at least 11 homes, Xinhua reported.

"So far we only know 11 families were buried and more than 200 residents have been evacuated," a local official told AFP news agency.

Patrol members in Dujiangyan told local media that by the time they arrived at the scene, a few hours after the landslide, "everything was already a vast expanse of water".

Eyewitnesses described seeing stones and debris running down the hill, covering around eight holiday homes in less than three minutes, local media reported.

Meanwhile, rescue teams had been deployed in Jiangyou to search for those missing after Qinglian bridge collapsed, state media said.

At least six vehicles were reported to have plunged into the river when it came down after days of heavy rain.

Jiangyou's local government said that the river volume had suddenly increased to a 50-year high on Tuesday.

"The high levels of flood sediment, and strong and destructive force of the water, caused the Qinglian bridge to collapse," it said.

Two other bridges, one in Jiangyou and one in Deyang city, were also washed away, officials said.

Chinese officials said that the heavy rain had affected more than 508,000 people in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, damaged around 300 homes, and forced the evacuation of 36,800 people, Xinhua reported.

For the worst affected areas, it appears that there is going to be little respite, says the BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing.

Heavy rainfall is forecast in Sichuan province over the next 24 hours, our correspondent adds.

In 2011, over five million people were reported to be affected by deadly floods in eastern China.

In 2008, Sichuan was hit by a devastating earthquake which led to almost 90,000 people dead or missing.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23251188

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Uganda tanker fire - Two bodies remain unidentified

The DNA results of the victims of the Namugoona inferno have been processed, with the results of eight unidentified bodies positively matching, while two bodies remain unknown due to non-matching results.

"Two bodies of a woman and a man are still unidentified in the mortuary following non-matching DNA results," said Ibn Ssenkumbi the Kampala metropolitan police spokesman.

Ssenkumbi added that one of the bodies had been claimed by two families. Resty Nabbona, a resident of Kinoni, Masaka, who lost a relative, said they started the funeral arrangements last week and are only waiting to bury the deceased.

She said doctors have now advised them to bring the mother of the deceased and if the DNA results match, then they will take the body. The family has been advised to return for the final results after two days.

The inferno, which resulted from a leaking fuel tanker, has so far claimed 41 lives, while a few are nursing wounds at Mulago hospital.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

http://allafrica.com/stories/201307100677.html

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Bodies at Lala Lajpta Rai Hospital's mortuary become food for mongoose

Slackness on part of the health personnel and guards on duty at the mortuary of Lajpta Rai Hospital (LLR) has proved unfortunate for the kin of a woman whose body had been kept in the mortuary from past few days.

When the relatives reached the mortuary to take the body they found that it was eaten-up by mongoose. It is the fourth incident of its kind in the last two days when the bodies kept in the morgue of LLR were eaten-up by mongoose.

The body of Moni Singh (35), from Shyam Nagar was kept at the mortuary of LLR from past few days. According to the sources, Moni died last week after she met an accident near Kali Mathiya crossing and breathed her last during the treatment.

On Tuesday, when kin of the woman came to identify the body, the same was found in mutilated state. Major portions of the body were found eaten-up by mongoose. Some portions of the body, including her eyes, ears and nose, were so badly eaten that they were not even visible.

"To our dismay, when we went to take back the body on July 9 after keeping it in the mortuary for around five days, it was found in a decomposed state with a foul odour emanating from it. The hospital staff has played a cruel joke with our sentiments by not taking proper care of the body for which they must be taken to task," lamented the distraught relatives of Moni Singh.

This was not the lone case as cruelty of mongoose and lackadaisical approach of the medical staff on duty at mortuary remained pathetic for Mitrani (53) also. She was also brought to the LLR mortuary for postmortem but turned into a food for mongoose. Flesh from nose, chin, shoulders was missing from the body of Mitrani.

The matter came into light when the mortuary staff took all the bodies into an account after the incident on Monday in which mongoose had eaten-up the body of an 11 year old girl, Durga, from Panki ,who died by drowning.

Her body was brought to the mortuary on Sunday. As the postmortem was conducted late on Sunday night, the body of Durga was kept at mortuary. On Monday, when the relatives of Durga reached the mortuary to claim the body it was fount mutilated. The hospital staff claimed that the body was eaten-up by mongoose.

Chief medical superintendent (CMS) of LLR hospital, Dr SB Mishra, while confirming that the body had got decomposed, cited the large number of mongoose in the mortuary as the cause behind the incident. However, the officials were unable to explain why the bodies were kept in the mortuary without taking any precautionary measures against mongoose present there.

He added that he would ask municipal corporation to catch mongoose on Wednesday. He also assured to take frequent rounds at mortuary so that the security machinery remained active.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kanpur/Bodies-at-Lala-Lajpta-Rai-Hospitals-mortuary-become-food-for-mongoose/articleshow/20994231.cms

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City Light Hotel collapse toll rises to 17

The death toll in the City Light Hotel mishap rose to 17 as four more bodies were dug out on Tuesday from the debris of the hotel on RP Road in Secunderabad that collapsed on Monday morning.

The four victims were identified as Ali Raza Tarayakar alias Ali Raza Kirmani, 55, the hotel manager, R. Venkatesh, 35, the tea master, K. Kiran Kumar, 26, the biryani master, and K. Suresh, 24, who worked as a salesman in a textile shop.

One hotel employee was alive when he was pulled out on Monday midnight. The 34-hour rescue operation came to an end on Tuesday evening.

The fire department and police were reinforced by the Nation Disaster Rescue Force and Quick Reaction Team.

NDRF officials said on Tuesday evening that the rescue operation was finished as there were unlikely to be any survivors still trapped beneath the rubble.

“The NDRF officials informed us that it is highly unlikely that anyone is still trapped under the debris. Thus the rescue operation is finished. However, cleaning up the debris will go on,” said North Zone deputy commissioner of police R. Jayalakshmi.

The owner of the hotel, Syed Hassan Boluki, against whom a case has been booked for negligence, is yet to be arrested.

Jayalakshmi said that the rescue mission was the priority. “On Wednesday, the full fledged investigation into the matter will begin. After detailed investigation, we will see if he has to be arrested.”

Syed Hassan, who lost his son and another relative in the building collapse, is undergoing treatment in a private hospital after suffering a heart stroke.

Relatives of the deceased took possession of the bodies after the post-mortem examination. “We have handed over 12 bodies so far after post-mortem examination. The three remaining bodies are yet to be identified,” said an official from the Gandhi Hospital mortuary.

Among the injured people, all are said to be stable except for one Nagesh, who has undergone major surgery and is said to be critical.

Though rescue operations have been ended, two people are still missing. Ashok. K, a resident of Warasiguda, and Ramesh from Maharashtra, both City Light Hotel employees, are not yet traced. The family members of Ashok have lodged a complaint with the Mahankali police.

Officials said that there is no possibility to find any more dead bodies.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130710/news-current-affairs/article/city-light-crash-toll-17

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Thais spot four more bodies

Local fishermen have said they saw four bodies in life jackets off Koh Rok, off the coast of Krabi, south of Phuket, the Phuket Gazette says, but whether those were of the missing Bangladesh ship crew was not clear.

The Bangladeshi cargo ship MV Hope, which titled to one side in heavy seas south of Phuket last Thursday night, is expected to arrive at Langkawi, Malaysia, on Tuesday after being towed from its position south of Racha Noi Island overnight.

“After we called off our search mission (on Monday), we received a report from a fishing boat that four bodies were spotted near Koh Rok (Monday afternoon),” the Gazette quoted Captain Thammawat Malaisukkarin, Director of the Naval Civil Affairs of the Royal Thai Navy, as saying.

Chittagong ship owners’ P&I Club representative Mahiuddin Abdul Kader told bdnews24.com they heard about the bodies being spotted. "We are not sure if they are the missing sailors of MV Hope.”

The Koh Rok Islands, a popular day-trip destination for tourist snorkellers and divers, are located about 100 kilometres southeast of Phuket.

Langkawi, Malaysia’s northernmost island along the Andaman Coast, lies a further 100km south of Koh Rok.

“The crew said the bodies they saw were wearing life jackets, but they did not recover them because they were afraid they would become involved in a crime that had been committed,” he explained.

The Royal Thai Navy alerted the local Marine Police and the Thailand Maritime Enforcement Coordinating Centers (Thai-MECC), which effectively operates as the naval coast guard unit, along the southern Andaman coast.

However, the Navy said it will not dispatc any ships or aircraft to recover the four bodies.

“We will not be dispatching a search and rescue team. If we did, by the time we reached the site, the wind and current could have moved the bodies far from where they were last seen,” Capt Thammawat said.

Nine of the 17 people on board the MV Hope were rescued during the four-day search for survivors.

The two bodies recovered during the search and rescue efforts on Friday have yet to be identified, staff at Vachira Phuket Hospital on Tuesday morning confirmed to the Gazette.

Capt Thammawat explained that the MV Confidence, commissioned by insurance company responsible for MV Hope to recover the stricken vessel, began towing MV Hope toward Langkawi at about 10:30pm on Monday.

“It should be there by now,” he said.

“The Royal Thai Navy will not be involved in any further efforts involving the MV Hope as it is now out of Thai waters,” the Gazatte quoted Capt Thammawat as further saying.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2013/07/09/thais-spot-four-more-bodies

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Uttarakhand missing declared dead tomorrow

Nearly 4,000 people missing in the Uttarakhand disaster will be declared dead by the state tomorrow, a senior official said this evening.

“There are 3,975 people missing, including 975 locals. The number of dead (after the missing are included) is likely to be between 4,000 and 5,000,” the official said.

The missing count — and hence the casualty figure — contrasts sharply with a recent report by a UN disaster management team that put the number at 11,600.

Of the over 3,000 people from other states who have not been traced, 35 are from Bengal, according to an official from the eastern state who confirmed one death.

Over 700 of the missing are from Uttar Pradesh — among the largest batches of victims from outside the hill state. Death certificates have to be issued by Uttarakhand government agencies.

With wood dropped in Kedarnath and other affected areas soaked in the rain, debris is not being removed as cremation of bodies found underneath the debris cannot take place in this climate.

To help National Disaster Response Force and state government teams, the army is opening an alternative route to Kedarnath from Sonprayag via Gomkar, Dev Vishnu and Dhungaj Giri.

Away from the number crunching, the task of rebuilding loomed. Power has been restored to over 1,000 villages near Kedarnath and Badrinath. The connections were snapped by flash floods from the Mandakini and Alaknanda rivers.

The next step for the government is reconstruction of the state’s devastated infrastructure. The Uttarakhand government has announced the establishment of a Punarvas and Punarnirman Pradhikaran (Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority) which will be financed by the Centre. The Planning Commission is estimating losses through state’s inputs.

The Vijay Bahuguna-led Congress government had earlier set the July 10 cut-off to officially declare those missing as dead.

Officially, the number of dead stands at 580, including the 20 air force and other personnel who died in the crash of the Mi-17 V5 rescue helicopter near Kedarnath days after the June 15-17 calamity.

Officials said the number of dead may also include names of people included in the list of missing.

The findings on the missing have been mentioned in a report sent to Union home minister Sushil Shinde and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi by V.K. Duggal, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) that is part of the rescue and relief operations.

The figure has been collated after reconciling 10 sets of numbers on missing people gathered by various agencies. This includes Google, which created one such database by collecting details from loggers as well as reports from officials of various states.

But many names have figured on the lists of those missing as well as dead, posing a needle-in-a-haystack challenge for the officials trawling through the minefield of data.

A team of software experts removed duplications from the databases before reaching the figure of the nearly 4,000 people missing, home ministry sources said today.

One way of checking information was making a list of all mobile numbers used on the Kedarnath and Badrinath routes. “The state government has made one lakh calls to collect information about missing people or those who have reached their destinations safely,” said an official.

Duggal, the NDMA member, said around 170 bodies had been cremated so far. Sources said fresh rain had hampered the process of clearing debris and extricating bodies

Wednesday 10 July 2013

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130710/jsp/nation/story_17100916.jsp#.Ud0a_ndy5uQ

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