Update Costa Concordia: Divers discover human remains in shipwreck

Divers have discovered what they believe to be two bodies amid the wreckage of the Costa Concordia.

A 19-hour salvage operation began to upright the wreckage last week after the ship struck rocks on 13 January 2012, capsizing and killing 32 people.

Bodies of two of the dead were never retrieved from the vessel, which lay submerged on it's side for 20 months. The side of the ship is badly smashed in after taking the impact of the crash.

Specialised police divers were going into the sea to remove the remains, which will be examined by forensic experts on the mainland in Tuscany.

Four thousand holidaymakers and crew were aboard when it was steered into rocks after coming dangerously close to the rocky coast of Giglio, Italy.

Ship Captain Francesco Schettino is charged with manslaughter, causing the shipwreck and abandoning ship before the cruise liner's passengers and crew could be evacuated.

Schettino is now the only person currently standing trial over the tragedy in Italy and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

The head of the civil protection agency Franco Gabrielli told reporters the remains were “absolutely consistent” with the two missing people, an Indian man and an Italian woman.

The remains were spotted in the sea near the central part of the ship, where survivors had said the two were last seen.

However, their identities can only be definitively confirmed after DNA testing is conducted.

Now the ship is resting upright and sitting upon a man made platform on the seabed, it is expected to be towed away from the Italian island in early 2014.

Thursday 26 September 2013

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/costa-concordia-divers-discover-human-remains-in-shipwreck-8841847.html

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Remains found on Costa Concordia

Human remains have been found on the wrecked Costa Concordia, possibly answering what happened to the last two missing passengers of the cruise liner that ran aground off Italy's Giglio Island in 2012, a spokesman for the head of Italy's civil protection agency said Thursday.

Divers will try to recover the remains, which were found on deck 4, on Thursday afternoon, the spokesman said.

During a search in the water near the central part of the ship, coast guard and police divers found remains which still have to be identified with DNA," Italy's civil protection agency said in a statement on Thursday.

An Indian waiter, Russel Rebello, and Italian passenger Maria Grazia Trecarichi were reported missing, presumed dead, after the disaster.

Civil protection chief Franco Gabrielli told reporters on Giglio that relatives of the two were notified after divers saw remains on Thursday morning, the Associated Press news agency reports.

The remains were spotted in the sea near the central part of the ship, where survivors had said the two were last seen, the agency adds.

The discovery comes a week after engineers finally righted the ship, which capsized when it ran aground in January 2012, killing 32 of the 4,200 people on board.

The toll of 32 includes two people whose bodies have yet to be recovered: Russel Rebello of India and Maria Grazia Trecarichi of Sicily.

Thursday 26 September 2013

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/26/world/europe/italy-costa-concordia-remains/?hpt=hp_t2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24286183

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BiH: Remains of 13 bodies found near Visegrad

The remains of 13 bodies, most likely Bosnian civilians killed in 1992, were exhumed from secondary mass graves at the site Hrtar, near Visegrad.

Spokeswoman for the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lejla Cengic, said that with the remains documents of two persons were found – Sahman Kadric and Suljo Vila.

“Parts of their skeletons were found in the mass graves Kurtalici 12 years ago and Perucac 3 years ago. This is a secondary mass grave that is most probably moved from the primary site Kurtalici,” said Cengic.

According to her, large number of bullet casings was found in the graves.

After the exhumation the remains were transported to the Center for autopsy and identification Gorazde. The exhumation was led by Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

< Thursday 26 September 2013

http://inserbia.info/news/2013/09/bih-remains-of-13-bodies-found-near-visegrad/

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700 may be dead in Pakistan earthquake, doctors warn

Up to 700 people may have been killed in an earthquake which destroyed thousands of homes and wiped out entire villages in a remote province in Pakistan, doctors have warned.

The doctor in charge of the largest hospital close to the epicentre in Balochistan province told The Daily Telegraph his staff were working in chaotic conditions and with poor facilities to save lives but many victims remain stranded in remote villages beyond the reach of the rescue services.

"It's a complete chaos here at the hospital. And we do not have 4x4 ambulances, so its really tough to reach out to the affected areas, to bring the injured or even the dead bodies to the hospital," said Dr. Noor Baksh Bizenjo, medical superintendent of the district hospital in Arawan.

He was speaking as Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) confirmed the official death toll had reached 328, with 445 injured being treated at medical facilities, 190 of whom are in a critical condition.




Brigadier Mirza Kamran Zia, director of the MDMA, said it would be three days before rescue specialists were able to reach all the affected areas and assess the full scale of the destruction. Army rescue units are trying to cover 8,000 square miles of one of Pakistan's most remote regions, while satellite and other images will locate the worst hit areas.

"We just can't say how many homes were destroyed. Most of the homes were very small mud houses. In some areas entire villages of a 100 or 200 houses have been razed to the ground. Telecommunications have suffered pretty badly," he said.

The earthquake was of greater magnitude – 7.8 – than the 2005 quake which killed 100,000 people and displaced 3.5 million from their homes along Pakistan's North West frontier and into India's Jammu and Kashmir state.

The first tremors were felt at 4.29pm on Tuesday and caused buildings to shake in Karachi, the Baloch capital Quetta, towns throughout Balochistan and Sindhi and as far away as New Delhi and Dubai. In both Karachi and Ahmedabad in India's Gujarat state office, workers fled buildings in panic.

Casualties are expected to be far fewer than in 2005 because the affected area is remote and sparsely populated with little infrastructure. Officials expect the final number of injured and displaced to be thousands.

Many of them are being treated in small hospitals and clinics in Balochistan's Awaran, Kech and Panchgur districts. An emergency was declared in each of them and in a further three neighbouring districts.

Officials said 30 per cent of homes in Awaran district had been destroyed, but some districts had lost 90 per cent of their buildings.

Pictures and video taken with mobile phones were broadcast on Pakistan's television channels showing lifeless children laid out on the back of a truck, homes reduced to mud bricks and dust blowing in the wind.

Survivors at Arawan's district hospital said they had left people trapped in the rubble of their homes.

"We fear there are people still trapped under the rubble", one resident, Rehmatullah Muhammad Hassani, told Dawn newspaper.

He added that authorities had yet to launch an effective rescue operation to retrieve people stuck under the rubble and that there were too few doctors or surgical facilities to treat those injured.

"There is nothing, patients are dying ... There are no doctors and paramedics," he said.

Villagers in Dalbedi were found by the AFP news agency desperately digging through the rubble with their hands to recover their possessions.

"We have lost everything, even our food is now buried under mud and water from underground channels is now undrinkable because of excessive mud in it due to the earthquake," Noor Ahmed, a 45-year-old farmer, said.

Sayed Essa Nori, a Balochistan member of the National Assembly said the full scale of the Disaster had yet to emerge.

"We are having difficulty reaching all the affected areas. Most of the destruction has happened in far-flung villages in the border area, where there are hundreds still missing, with many villages completely destroyed. Many of the injured already being treated are in critical condition.

Thursday 26 September 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/10334538/700-may-be-dead-in-Pakistan-earthquake-doctors-warn.html

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NASA's New FINDER Scans for Breathing Bodies in Disaster Rubble

NASA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are collaborating on a first-of-its-kind portable radar device to detect the heartbeats and breathing patterns of victims trapped in large piles of rubble resulting from a disaster.

The prototype technology, called Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response (FINDER) can locate individuals buried as deep as 30 feet (about 9 meters) in crushed materials, hidden behind 20 feet (about 6 meters) of solid concrete, and from a distance of 100 feet (about 30 meters) in open spaces.

Developed in conjunction with Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, FINDER is based on remote-sensing radar technology developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to monitor the location of spacecraft JPL manages for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

"FINDER is bringing NASA technology that explores other planets to the effort to save lives on ours," said Mason Peck, chief technologist for NASA and principal advisor on technology policy and programs. "This is a prime example of intergovernmental collaboration and expertise that has a direct benefit to the American taxpayer."

The technology was demonstrated to the media today at the DHS's Virginia Task Force 1 Training Facility in Lorton, Va. Media participated in demonstrations that featured the device locating volunteers hiding under heaps of debris. FINDER also will be tested further by the Federal Emergency Management Agency this year and next.

"The ultimate goal of FINDER is to help emergency responders efficiently rescue victims of disasters," said John Price, program manager for the First Responders Group in Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate in Washington. "The technology has the potential to quickly identify the presence of living victims, allowing rescue workers to more precisely deploy their limited resources."

The technology works by beaming microwave radar signals into the piles of debris and analyzing the patterns of signals that bounce back. NASA's Deep Space Network regularly uses similar radar technology to locate spacecraft. A light wave is sent to a spacecraft, and the time it takes for the signal to get back reveals how far away the spacecraft is. This technique is used for science research, too. For example, the Deep Space Network monitors the location of the Cassini mission's orbit around Saturn to learn about the ringed planet's internal structure.

"Detecting small motions from the victim's heartbeat and breathing from a distance uses the same kind of signal processing as detecting the small changes in motion of spacecraft like Cassini as it orbits Saturn," said James Lux, task manager for FINDER at JPL.

In disaster scenarios, the use of radar signals can be particularly complex. Earthquakes and tornadoes produce twisted and shattered wreckage, such that any radar signals bouncing back from these piles are tangled and hard to decipher. JPL's expertise in data processing helped with this challenge. Advanced algorithms isolate the tiny signals from a person's moving chest by filtering out other signals, such as those from moving trees and animals.

Similar technology has potential applications in NASA's future human missions to space habitats. The astronauts' vital signs could be monitored without the need for wires.

The Deep Space Network, managed by JPL, is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.

Thursday 26 September 2013

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-290

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Cebu ferry disaster: Unknown casualties buried

White balloons and butterflies were released by relatives of the missing passengers of the ill-fated MV St Thomas Aquinas as the remains of the 46 unidentified casualties of the Aug. 16 sea tragedy were laid to rest yesterday at the Carreta Public Cemetery in Cebu City.

A total of 733 survived the collision between the St Thomas Aquinas and the MV Sulpicio Express Siete, a freighter owned by the Philippine Span Carriers Corp. in waters near Lauis Ledge in Talisay City. The Aquinas, which was en route to Cebu City from Nasipit, Agusan del Norte, was carrying 870 passengers and crew.

Divers retrieved 72 bodies from the Aquinas which sunk after colliding with the bulk carrier while 44 others were retrieved from other areas.

According to Luz Torevillas, 2GO passage manager, the bodies of the 70 identified passengers were transported to their respective hometowns.

A total of 21 passengers and crew remain unaccounted for, according to the coast guard.

The 46 bodies were transported from the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes to the cemetery Tuesday night and were placed in individual vaults near the burial site of the victims of the 2008 sinking of the MV Princess of the Stars.

Sulpicio Lines was renamed Philippine Span Asia Carrier Corp. following the sinking of the Princess of the Stars.

Labels were placed on each coffin for easy identification once the results of the DNA tests conducted by forensic experts from the PNP Crime Laboratory become available. The results are expected to be released within three months, officials said.

An official of 2GO shipping lines, the operator of the MV St Thomas Aquinas told Cebu Daily News that relatives of the casualties may opt to have the remains of their kin exhumed.

Some of the relatives of the 21 missing passengers who attended yesterday’s interment ceremony, together with city officials led by Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama and Talisay City Mayor Johnny delos Reyes, coast guard, police and fire officials were ushered to tents set up by funeral coordinators from Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes and representatives of 2GO shortly before 8 a.m yesterday. Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III arrived after the ceremony ended.

The 21 may be still within the wreck of the Aquinas, which sank after the accident.

There was no representative from the Philippine Span Asia Carrier Corp.

Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, who presided over the Requiem Mass, comforted the grieving families and prayed that similar tragedies will not happen.

After the speeches, Palma blessed the burial site. White balloons and butterflies were released as the song “I will be here” played in the background.

Thursday 26 September 2013

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/495643/unknown-casualties-buried

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