Relatives call mobiles to find missing in Latvia

Rescuers have been calling for silence at the scene of a collapsed supermarket in the Latvian capital Riga as they try to locate victims by calling their mobile phones.

At least 45 people have died and more are feared missing in the rubble after the building's roof fell in on Thursday.

Victoria Sembele from Latvia's State Fire and Rescue Service said the exact number of people still to be recovered was unknown.

Friday 22 November 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25051321

INTERPOL experts assist to identify typhoon victims

A group of forensic experts from the International Police (Interpol) will fly to Tacloban City this weekend to assist local authorities in identifying the remains of those who died during the onslaught of Super Typhoon Yolanda.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima made the announcement after meeting on Thursday with the Interpol’s disaster victim identification (DVI) team, which will help the National Bureau of Investigation forensic team identify thousands of cadavers.

The Interpol team is composed of experts from Canada, United Kingdom, Cameron, Jordan, Bosnia and South Africa.

“They said they’re willing to help and they’re willing to extend assistance and give advice to the whole process of DVI. This weekend, they will go to Tacloban City to make an initial assessment so that they will be able to craft or formulate proposals on how to go about the DVI given the magnitude of the casualties,” De Lima said, in an interview.

“That’s the initial team and depending on the exact process, I think more experts from the Interpol will fly to the country,” the Justice Secretary said.

De Lima said the Interpol’s assistance in the DVI operations would be very helpful, citing the same help extended by the international body during the “Princess of the Star” tragedy off Romblon in June 2008.

With this, the integrity of the whole process of identifying the casualties will be ensured with the help of the foreign forensics experts.

“They (Interpol) explained that identifying the corpses is a tedious process. You don’t determine the identity of the dead bodies on the basis of their shirt or their belongings. So what is needed here, according to the Interpol, is a scientific process of identifying the bodies, like DNA testing,” De Lima said.

“It will add further to the anguish of the family if you give them the wrong cadaver,” she added.

The first batch of NBI experts flew to Tacloban Tuesday last week. It was composed of 15 to 20 forensic experts. A second batch followed over the weekend.

According to De Lima, the NBI forensic team is planning to set up apartment-type tombs to be able to identify an initial batch of 700 collected cadavers.

She said the ideal setup – as agreed upon by the Department of Health and volunteer private pathologists - is to put 10 to 20 corpses in a tomb.

Friday 22 November 2013

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/11/22/interpol-gets-into-the-act-in-yolanda-s-wake/

US retrieval team finds more bodies in Tacloban

The team that helped in the search and retrieval of victims in the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the US was among those who retrieved 84 more bodies in typhoon-devastated Tacloban City on Wednesday.

The US team, along with their French counterparts, worked under the Joint Task Force led by Senior Superintendent Pablito Corbeta.

He said the Joint Task Force had recovered a total of 1,678 bodies on the sixth day of retrieval operations.

Corbeta said the latest retrieval came mostly from the areas of Sagkahan and Anibong in Tacloban.

With the mass graves already filled, Corbeta said the task force, in coordination with the city government, is digging another burial site in Barangay Suhi, an area located in the northern part of the city.

Corbeta said they are submitting a daily update to Interior and Local Government Secretary Manuel Roxas II and the Office of Civil Defense (OCD).

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) had already stopped counting the dead.

As of yesterday, for still unclear reasons, the NDRRMC’s fatality figure remained at 4,011 with 18,557 injured and 1,602 missing.

The NDRRMC only said the government’s 1,526 evacuation centers are now serving 929,893 families or 4,400,697 people displaced by Super Typhoon Yolanda.

The government, meanwhile, has tapped forensic experts from the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) in the identification of casualties.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said the Interpol team, who came from various countries, would meet with the NDRRMC to get official data and statistics before flying to Tacloban this weekend.

“The team will make initial assessment to be able to formulate proposals on how to go about the DVI (disaster victim identification), given the magnitude of casualties,” De Lima said.

She added more members of the Interpol team would arrive in the next days.

De Lima explained the DVI is a tedious and thorough process which cannot be rushed.

“They said we cannot just identify cadavers based on clothing. There will come a time when all the corpses will look alike, so there will be a need to use a scientific method like DNA sampling,” De Lima said.

On the other hand, a group promoting child rights said it will provide assistance in helping recover pertinent data or records of children of families affected by the typhoon.

Airah Cadiogan, Advocacy Officer of Plan International Philippines, said their staff can help in data recovery of documents such as birth registration, especially of children.

“While we are doing assessment of the birth registration status in the country, in our own little way, apart from data recovery... we are also helping in the rehabilitation efforts being conducted by the government and several other organizations to help victims of the super typhoon,” Cadiogan said.

She explained that in almost all emergencies – armed conflicts, natural or manmade disasters and mass population displacements – children can become separated from their families or caregivers.

“Without the protection and care of their families, they are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and recruitment into armed groups. Unregistered children are particularly at risk as there is no legal evidence of their existence, making them far harder to trace and perpetrators much more difficult to prosecute,” Cadiogan said.

Friday 22 November 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-25050300

Oil pipeline blasts in eastern China kill 35

Leaked oil from a ruptured pipeline in an eastern Chinese port city exploded Friday, killing at least 35 people, injuring 166 and contaminating the sea in one the country's worst industrial accidents of the year, authorities said.

The leaked oil triggered two huge blasts, one of them tearing up concrete along a city road in Qingdao. Photos posted online showed ripped slabs of pavement, bodies, overturned vehicles and shattered windows in nearby buildings. Black smoke rose above gigantic fuel silos and darkened much of the sky.

The pipeline owned by China's largest oil refiner, Sinopec, ruptured early Friday and leaked for about 15 minutes onto a street and into the sea before it was shut off. Hours later, as workers cleaned up the spill, the oil caught fire and exploded in two locations, the city government said.

The Beijing News cited a resident surnamed Gao, who works in logistics, as saying he was driving past Qingdao's Huangdao district when he felt the force of the blasts, and then realized the ground in front of him had fractured. The air was pungent, many cars on both sides of the road were overturned and there was dark smoke rising in the distance, he said.

"It felt like an earthquake, and I was dumbstruck," Gao said, adding that there was chaos on the street as people ran, panicking, in all directions.

Authorities ruled out terrorism but the incident remained under investigation, it said.




President Xi Jinping urged local officials to go all out in finding missing people, treating the injured and in finding the cause of the accident, state TV broadcaster CCTV said.

Calls to Sinopec's headquarters in Beijing were not immediately answered, but a statement online offered condolences to victims. "We will investigate the incident with responsibility and give timely reports," Sinopec said.

The Qingdao Environmental Protection Bureau said barriers had been set up to contain the oil as it spread into the sea, but that a mixture of gas and oil from a storm sewer exploded and caught fire over the sea.

More than 3,000 square meters (32,000 square feet) of sea surface was contaminated, the city government said.

Authorities said the oil had seeped into underground utility pipes, which could have been a factor in the blasts, but they did not elaborate. They assured the public that the explosions did not affect any petrochemical plant or military facilities in the seaside district and that air quality remained good after the disaster.

The accident is likely to add to growing concerns among the members of the Chinese public about safety and environmental risks that come with oil pipeline projects.

It was China's third deadliest industrial accident this year, behind a chicken factory fire in June in Jilin that killed 121 and a mining accident in March, also in Jilin, that killed 36.

Friday 22 November 2013

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/11/21/3331176/oil-pipe-blast-in-east-china-kills.html

Latvia store collapse: Deaths rise as Riga rescue continues

At least 45 people have died after the roof of a supermarket collapsed in the Latvian capital Riga.

Rescue efforts continued through the night and police have launched a criminal investigation.

Three of those killed were emergency workers who were helping people trapped when more of the roof came down.

The number of deaths makes this the former Soviet republic's worst disaster since independence in 1991, the country's main news agency says.

It is unclear how many more people could still be inside.

The cause of the collapse is unclear although reports say a garden was being constructed on the roof at the time.

British pilot Paul Tribble, 27, was shopping in the store with his partner Elizabeth when the roof fell in.

"I was taken down by shelving falling on me, which skimmed my shoulder and forced me to the ground but I was still able to move," he told the BBC.

"There were torrents of water coming down off the roof. We headed into the back of the supermarket, the aisles were covered in produce and concrete and people lying on the floor."

Mr Tribble said a crane had been loading sand and building materials onto the roof for the past few weeks. He said he believed a lack of drainage following heavy rains had contributed to the fall.

"The police have started the investigation already," said Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis after visiting the scene.

"The criminal process has started about violating building standards."

Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis told Latvian TV it was "clear" there had been a problem meeting building regulations.

Latvian rescue services spokeswoman Viktorija Sembele said three firefighters were among those killed.

"We do not know the number of people who are still inside," she told the BBC.

She said people were being asked to call the mobile phones of relatives feared missing to help rescuers find them in the rubble.

TV footage showed rescue workers using mechanical cutters to clear debris from the single-storey concrete and glass building. Cranes were brought in to remove slabs of concrete.

More than 60 soldiers were helping the rescue effort, the army said on its official Twitter feed.

The initial collapse happened just before 18:00 (16:00 GMT) on Thursday, when the store was busy with customers.

Walls and windows also crumbled, leaving the shell of the building piled with rubble, witnesses said.

About 20 minutes later another part of the roof caved in, trapping rescue workers who were trying to reach survivors.

Dangerous work The rescue services believe a total of about 500sq m (5,300sq ft) of roof caved in, according to reports.

Witnesses said customers tried to run out after the first part of the roof collapsed but the supermarket's electronic doors closed, trapping them inside.

Leta news agency said the collapse represented the largest loss of life from a disaster since the restoration of independence in 1991, worse than a fire at a nursing home in 2007 that killed 25.

Normunds Plegermanis, deputy head of rescue services, said emergency teams faced difficult conditions at the supermarket.

"Falls are happening from time to time... it is very dangerous to work inside," he said.

Local media said the store, part of the Maxima retail chain, had been awarded a national architecture prize when it was completed in 2011.

The reason for the collapse is not known. Some have blamed the weight of soil being used to plant a winter garden on the supermarket's roof.

Friday 22 November 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25045879