Christchurch Coroner's report: CTV rescue was never possible

A coroner's court has found it was never possible to rescue the eight people who survived for hours in the rubble of Christchurch's CTV building after a violent collapse. CTV rescue was never possible.

In a major report made public today, coroner Gordon Matenga told rescuers they were not to blame for the deaths and praised an "outstanding, courageous and selfless" New Zealand Fire Service (NZFS).

But he also condemned several of their practices, finding key issues in the emergency service's command structure, crisis management and decision-making.

The CTV building was a badly designed office block that collapsed in an unusually powerful and shallow earthquake on February 22, 2011. The six storeys pancaked on top of each other at 12:51pm, leaving 115 dead and around a dozen trapped in small pockets of air.

Eight of the trapped were English students from Kings Education Language School on the third floor – Dr Tamara Cvetanova, Ezra Medalle, Jessie Redoble, Rika Hyuga, Rhea Sumalpong, Emmabelle Anoba, Mary Amantillo and Chang Lai.

In the hours that followed most were able to contact family and emergency services with their mobile phones, sending cries of help as far as China and the Philippines.

Dr Cvetanova was able to call her husband several times as he clambered over the rubble trying to find her. They began to knock back forth through the concrete; she would go on to say she wasn't afraid, as rescue was on the way.

The seven women and one man – of China, Siberia, Japan and the Philippines – died sometime before or around midnight on February 22. Mr Matenga found their deaths were a result of "massive crush injuries", smoke inhalation or other unidentified causes.

Rescuers cleared of accidentally crushing survivors

The actions of NZFS were heavily criticised as many of the families felt the rescuers were disorganised and unprepared for the disaster. Alec Cvetanov – Dr Cvetanova's husband – told a 2012 inquest the firefighters had accidentally killed his wife during the rescue, arguing she was crushed as workers moved rubble with heavy machinery.

However, Mr Matenga has since found no sure proof of the allegation, saying the rescuers did "all they could in a difficult situation". There were several strong aftershocks and "too much going on", he ruled, to be sure the rescue effort had accidentally killed the survivors.

He also found there was no evidence NZFS delayed the rescue to focus on other reports or calls for help, as alleged by Mr Cventanov at inquest.

"The rescue efforts of those who worked at the CTV building were outstanding, courageous and selfless and a number of people were saved because of it," his report reads.

"The rescuers could not save everyone, but they expended every effort and resource that was available to them in attempting to do so."

The inquest has also found NZFS was plagued by a series of key systemic failings during the rescue.

Mr Matenga found the senior fire officers at the site were "clearly overwhelmed" by the disaster. Senior station officer David Berry arrived late at the scene and felt he wasn't in command, while others thought he was, prompting confusion.

As a whole, NZFS failed to properly take command of the recovery, failed to create an incident control point and failed to send one of Christchurch's 13 executive officers to the scene – a decision Mr Matenga labelled as a "missed opportunity".

The coroner also slammed an executive decision, made by national controller John Hamilton on the advice of special operations commander Jim Stuart-Black, to go on without the help of a specialist United Nations disaster recovery team.

Mr Matenga has since ordered eight recommendations, each advising NZFS to better its training and disaster preparation.

"More people, more resources, better communication and a better structure would, I am satisfied on the evidence, have improved the situation overall and may have improved the chances of saving more lives," his report reads.

"However, I am not satisfied to the standard required that such improvements would have resulted in the actual locating and saving the lives of [the eight lost]."

Prime Minister John Key this morning told RadioLIVE errors were inevitable due to the magnitude of the disaster.

CTV families spokesperson Peter Brown says the report shows emergency services could have done a better job.

"On the day, all the families accept that the ones that were here did the best they could. But as the report has outlines… things could have been done a lot better," he said on Firstline this morning.

"The main thing really is that the people who are there at the rescue know what they are doing in this particular type of event."

He was at the CTV building after it collapsed, and helped police locate bodies by drawing rough maps on scraps of paper.

"I knew from the outset… there would be no one found alive because of the way the building had pancaked." Quake beyond our training and experience – NZFS

NZFS chief executive and national commander Paul Baxter today responded to the report, saying the fire service takes the recommendations "very seriously".

"The fire officers in command of NZFS resources at the CTV site were faced with a situation that no other officer in the history of NZFS has had to face," he says in a media release.

"It is widely accepted that a natural disaster of this scale presented challenges beyond the training, experience and resources of the service."

Mr Baxter says the fire service has already addressed or is in the process of addressing all eight recommendations made by the court.

"It has been more than three years, but for many, including our firefighters, it was like yesterday and the NZFS wants to acknowledge the strength and resilience shown by the community.

"Firefighers and USAR crews involved in the emergency response in Christchurch did an exceptional job, stepped up, did their very best, often putting their own situations and families to one site, and many risked their own lives to try and save others."

PM: Errors inevitable in a disaster

"They did everything they possibly could, I believe, and they did tremendous work down there," he said. "Whenever you have a major event like this, there are findings and learnings that can be improved.

"I'm sure if there was ever to be a natural disaster of an equivalent magnitude again there would be potentially other things that would occur because the enormity of the event and the rapid decision making – all of those things – add to an incredibly challenging situation."

Mr Key praised the actions of the rescuers at the scene, saying the scale of what took place was "enormous".

"I was not that far away from the CTV building," he said. "I could see it and it was like a warzone there, it was hard to believe.

"People were in shock, there was just sirens and fire and noise, it was incredible and the whole of the CBD was being brought to its knees.

"Under those circumstances, I think you'll find there'll always be improvements that could be made, that's just the nature of what you're dealing with."

Copies of the report were mailed last week to the families of all 115 people who died in the CTV building, along with the embassies of China, Japan, Philippines, Thailand and Korea.

The full report will be uploaded to the Ministry of Justice website today.

Full list of recommendations:

[154] Pursuant to section 57(3) Coroners Act 2006 I make the following recommendations;

154.1 NZFS continue work commenced to establish a Memorandum of Understanding between NZFS, NZDF, Air New Zealand and DHL to ensure that the requirements of each organisation are clearly expressed, to ensure the expeditious deployment of USAR teams when required and undertake joint training exercises to ensure the requirements are understood;
154.2 NZFS arrange for USAR technicians to undertake the "Dogman" course to receive specialist training in the use of heavy machinery (including cranes) in search and rescue work;
154.3 NZFS arrange for USAR technicians to undertake and maintain IATA certification;
154.4 For all major disasters where international assistance is sought or accepted, it becomes the default position that a request be made to United Nations for the assistance of an UNDAC team;
154.5 NZFS, in conjunction with the Civil Defence Emergency Management Group, develop and undertake joint exercises with such Light Response Teams that have been established by local authorities (but with emphasis on areas where the risk of building collapse is high following a significant even - such as Auckland, Welling and Christchurch) to better understand their capabilities and to ensure the best use of this resource;
154.6 NZFS develop a standard operating procedure following an earthquake event for all on duty NZFS personnel, in the affected area to follow, prior to deployment;
154.7 NZFS and NZ Police develop and undertake further training in incident management and to emphasise the need to co-operate to establish an Incident Control Point and an Incident Controller in the USAR environment;
154.8 The Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management give consideration to amending the CIMS model to provide for the situation where there a multiple sub-incidents, it is a role of the overall Incident Controller to ensure that incident control of a sub-incident has been determined.

Monday 31 March 2014

Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/CTV-rescue-was-never-possible--coroner/tabid/423/articleID/338020/Default.aspx

The horrific accident that claimed 16 lives

It was the country's worst road accident more than four decades ago.

Fifteen people either died instantly or within minutes or hours after the accident while the 16th died the next day.

And the place where the accident happened was also known to have been haunted for some time, with sounds of musical instruments and singing being heard there.

Some who were alive at that time recalled hearing stories about the accident spot being haunted but said there was nothing of that sort happening now.

On the front page of its Monday edition, January 22, 1973, The Fiji Times reported the death of 15 passengers after a collision between two buses on the Kings Rd. It happened on a bend near the Laqere bridge in Nasinu, if someone was travelling from Nausori towards Suva.

On the front page of the following day, this newspaper reported the death of the 16th passenger in one of the buses.

All the casualties were passengers in a bus on their way to Suva to throw flowers into the sea as part of a wedding ceremony. They were reportedly singing and playing Indian musical instruments 'when the tragedy struck.

It was Sunday, January 21, 1973 and an auspicious occasion as a close relative of several of the victims, Usma Wati Singh, was marrying Jagdish Prasad Thakur at Davuilevu in Nausori.

The wedding ended well and after guests had their meal, a group of people, mainly women and children, left to throw flowers in the sea later in the afternoon.

Ms Singh's cousin, Satendra Singh told this newspaper the group was going to throw the flowers at Suva Point.

"When the bus reached a bend near Laqere bridge, it collided with another coming from the other side. The driver's side of the bus was ripped off," he said.

Sixteen people who were passengers in the bus carrying the wedding party died in the accident, mostly women and children.

"Some of those who died were my aunts and cousins. Those who survived the accident have either died or migrated overseas."

Mr Singh, who was in Form Six when the tragedy occurred, said it was the worst accident at that time.

He said Ms Singh died in New Zealand recently while Mr Thakur was alive and living there. The couple were not in the bus.

On stories of the area being haunted once, he said he was aware of it but added nothing of that sort seemed to be happening now.

Ever since I was a child, I also heard stories of the area being haunted after the accident, with some people saying musical instruments and singing could be heard there. However, there are no such stories about the place being haunted now, not forgetting that the area and road have gone through developments since 1973.

Taking a trip down memory lane, this newspaper reported on January 22, 1973 that the bus carrying the wedding party collided with a tour coach shortly before 5pm a day earlier.

The story said the metal-frame of the tour coach tore the right side from the other bus, with a bystander saying "one side and the seats smashed like firewood".

Mohammed Unas told this newspaper then that he was at a party nearby when he heard a crash. He looked up and saw injured and dead people tumbling from the side of the bus.

Being a member of the St John Ambulance Brigade at that time, he ran to the accident scene to help the injured.

"Blood was everywhere. When I picked up a child, the blood rushed down my legs. I tried to stop the injured people falling out the torn off side of the bus," he said in the newspaper report.

Mr Unas said too many people were injured to give effective first aid, adding he did his best to get them to hospital as quickly as possible by stopping passing cars.

"I tried to get the children in first. We just had to put the dead bodies to one side," he said.

As the injured were taken to CWM Hospital, off-duty doctors and nurses were called in by their bosses to handle the emergency while others came in voluntarily.

Police had told this newspaper then that 11 people, mostly women and children, died instantly while the others died later.

Extra police officers were also called in, with some assigned to inform the relatives of the deceased and injured passengers while the others controlled the traffic jam for more than two hours.

On January 23, 1973, this newspaper reported that the death toll from the accident had increased to 16 as relatives prepared for the funerals of 13 victims.

It was reported that at times, the mourners, mostly men, got out of control as they thronged cars which brought the dead to the cemetery.

The last bodies to arrive at the cemetery were taken directly to the pyres when the crowd got out of control, it was reported.

Pushpa Wati Singh, the bride's sister, told this newspaper then that the women and children involved in the tragedy were their close relatives who attended the wedding.

"It happened so fast, I thought it was all part of a dream. One moment there was singing and dancing and the next there were unconscious and injured people all around me," she had said.

"I wasn't injured at all in the actual collision but I cut my feet on broken glass when I jumped from the bus. It was a horrible sight and something I will never forget."

She said women and children sitting on the driver's side were hurled and crushed when the buses collided.

This newspaper's editorial comment on January 23, 1973 headlined "Lessons from Laqere tragedy" highlighted how such tragedies could be avoided or prevented.

It said "the accident underlines, however, the general truth that road travel carries with it dangers that call for unceasing care and a sense of great responsibility on the part of all who put themselves in charge of any moving vehicle."

"A more salutary warning could be one before the eyes of every driver that he has in his control something that has in it the potential for bringing mutilation or death to himself and others," the editorial comment read.

On January 25, 1973, The Fiji Times reported on the front page that the driver of the tour coach Faruk Ali, 28, was charged with careless driving and police were investigating 15 other charges against him.

While the eventuality of his case is unknown, what is known though is that lives were lost in the accident and several families were shattered by the tragedy.

The happy way in which Sunday, January 21, 1973 started and the tragic manner in which it ended remained etched in the memories of their relatives who are alive today.

Some lessons may have been learnt from that fatal accident but the fact remains that road fatalities continue to happen and will do so although it may not be as worse now as the Laqere collision.

Monday 31 March 2014

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=264274

Robot sub in search for 8 Chinese after Japan ship crash

Search teams have used a remote-controlled submarine in the hunt for the bodies of eight Chinese mariners after the collision of two cargo ships in Tokyo Bay, a Japanese coastguard official said today.

Rescuers have recovered the body of a 23-year-old Chinese man from the ship, which lies in 100 metres of water, the second confirmed death from the accident earlier this month, the official said.

The Panamanian-flagged Beagle III, a 12,630-ton vessel carrying steel coil, sank on March 18 after colliding with the South Korean-registered Pegasus Prime in the mouth of Tokyo Bay.

Twelve of the 20 Chinese crew aboard Beagle III were rescued, but one of them later died.

A survey ship has detected the sunken vessel on the sea floor, and its owners mobilised a remote-control sub to look for the remains of those believed to have been killed in the accident.

“The man’s body was found and recovered from the right-side deck of the sunken ship,” the coastguard official said, adding that it was receiving updates from the owners. “Rescuers used the submarine’s remotely controlled arms to raise the body.”

The crew of the 7,406-ton Pegasus Prime ― six South Koreans and eight people from Myanmar ― were mostly unhurt.

Tokyo Bay is Japan’s busiest waterway with some 500 ships passing through daily.

Monday 31 March 2014

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/world/article/robot-sub-in-search-for-8-chinese-after-japan-ship-crash

Missing persons number from Washington landslide falls from 90 to 30

Hundreds of family photos have been found after the massive landslide in Washington, helping to bring the number of missing persons down to 30.

According to the Associated Press, debris continues to be cleared by workers, and after confirming that some names on the missing persons list were duplicates, the number dropped dramatically from 90 to 30.

Authorities have also stated that more than two dozen bodies have been found, but they have not yet been added to the list of deceased persons because they have not been identified at this time. Authorities report that, unfortunately, those bodies are not always intact, making the identification process even harder.

“Rescuers are not always making full recoveries,” said program manager Jason Biermann. “Often, they are making partial recoveries.”

According to CNN, the community remains strong and is sticking together through these hard times.

“People say in times of disaster, it brings out the best and the worst in people,” Pastor Gary Ray said. “But I’m just seeing the best. I’m seeing patience and sacrifice.”

Volunteers have been reportedly collecting any found photographs to hopefully return to families.

Monday 31 March 2014

http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/2014/03/missing-persons-number-washington-landslide-falls-90-30

1912: Block of wood in propellor led to the death of 14 submariners

Of all the incidents at sea involving naval vessels, the sinking of a submarine while submerged must fill most of us with dread.

Sadly that is what happened to the submarine A3 when on battle trials in the Solent on February 2, 1912. All hands were lost.

The bodies of the 14 victims were recovered from the sunken boat and 13 were buried in Haslar Naval Cemetery. The 14th, Lieutenant Campbell, was taken home by train to Oban, Scotland, to be interred.

It appears from the coroner’s report that the incident may never have occurred but for a block of wood. It was found wedged in the boat’s propellor.

A3 was accompanied by her parent ship HMS Hazard on the trials. Hazard was to steam to the eastern end of the Isle of Wight and A3 was to then attack her firing dummy torpedoes.

A3 was seen for a while off the starboard side of Hazard and then disappeared. Shortly after, something struck Hazard and it was felt it was the submarine.

A hole eight feet long and a foot wide opened up on A3 and water poured into her hull filling her in seconds and in very little time the crew had perished.

On being recovered and returned to the Dockyard, an inspection was made and the block of wood was found.

Water was being blown from the ballast tanks and the motors were switched to go astern.

The opinion was formed that A3 was unaware of exactly how close Hazard was until seconds before being struck.

It is thought an attempt was made to surface as there was little room to dive under Hazard in time.

Had the block of wood not been there, A3 might have been able to go astern and clear Hazard. No blame was attached to either captain.

The funeral took place at Haslar Naval Cemetery, Gosport, with every sailor borne on a gun carriage.

The service was attended by men from every ship in port.

More than 300 wreaths covered the coffins and the procession was more than a mile-and-a-half long.

On May 17 the A3 was used as a target and sunk by gunfire from HMS St Vincent.

So shocking was the incident it was reported in newspapers worldwide, including the New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald.

Saturday 29 March 2014

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/nostalgia/block-of-wood-in-propellor-led-to-the-death-of-14-submariners-1-5967590

MH370 kin can get deaths certified without bodies, lawyers say

The families of Malaysians thought to have been killed on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 may be able to prove the death of their loved ones even though no bodies have been recovered, escaping potentially lengthy administrative nightmares.

While a body is usually needed in order for the authorities to issue a death certificate, exceptions exist and the Malaysian government could weigh in to help affected families.

Nizam Bashir, a partner at the law firm Nizam, Amer & Sharizad, said the courts could declare, as early as next week, that the Malaysians aboard the flight had died

He said that instead of a death certificate, a court could declare that a person is presumed dead and that declaration could be used to file for administration of the deceased’s estate.

In some circumstances, the courts can presume a person was killed even though the country’s laws say that a person can only be presumed dead if they have not been heard from for seven years.

“Seven years is only a presumption. You don’t necessarily have to wait for the seven years,” Nizam told The Malay Mail Online.

“Is there enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that so-and-so has died? Arguably, with the Prime Minister coming out to say that the plane went down in the Indian Ocean, that is enough evidence,” said Nizam who has experience in inheritance matters.

On Monday, 16 days after the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) plane disappeared from civilian radar in the early hours of March 8, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said that analysis of available satellite data showed the Boeing 777-200ER jetliner had “ended somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.”

MAS also informed the families of the 239 people aboard the plane that it must “assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived.”

An international search for the wreckage is now converged on a remote area in the southern Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia. No debris or bodies have been found.

There were 50 Malaysians, including crew members, on the Beijing-bound flight.

Felix Raj, aviation lawyer from Shaikh David Raj, said that if the bodies cannot be recovered, the death certificates can only be obtained through an inquest that will likely be held after April 7, when the plane’s black box stops producing signals.

“Legally speaking, they'll have to hold the inquest,” Raj told The Malay Mail Online.

He said, however, that Putrajaya could choose to skip the inquest and order the National Registration Department to issue death certificates.

Life Insurance Association of Malaysia, for instance, has taken the unusual step by allowing the next-of-kin of those of the doomed flight to file insurance claims without death certificates.

In the case of food seller Lim Chin Aik, a death certificate was only issued after an inquest. He died in a freak storm in Penang last June and his body was never found.

Jane Tai Le Qian, a lawyer from BON Advocates said that an inquest would not be practicable in the MH370 case as the plane crashed into the sea well away from Malaysia.

“It would also be difficult to gather evidence for the inquiry,” the estate and inheritance lawyer told The Malay Mail Online.

The lawyer stressed, however, that more evidence was required to prove the deaths of those aboard Flight MH370.

“There should be more primary evidence, particularly from the investigators and rescue or search teams that there is virtually no hope of survivors being found,” Tai said, citing plane debris as an example of primary evidence.

When contacted today, the Association of Banks in Malaysia (ABM) said that they were unable to comment at this time on whether special exemptions would be allowed for the plane crash victims.

“Generally, banks will need to sight the letter of administration or the grant of probate of the deceased before they can take the appropriate action,” ABM executive director Chuah Mei Lin told The Malay Mail Online.

Banks operate differently from life insurance companies, she said, adding the association will help net of kin in the best possible way without giving any details.

Saturday 29 March 2014

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/mh370-kin-can-get-deaths-certified-without-bodies-lawyers-say

Indian Air Force cargo plane crashes, killing all 5 crew

An Indian Air Force cargo plane crashed on Friday, killing its crew of five, in the latest of a string of accidents to spotlight poor safety standards across the country's armed services.

Last month, India's navy chief resigned, taking moral responsibility for a series of accidents, on the same day that two officers were killed by smoke in a submarine.

In Friday's crash, a U.S.-made C-130J Hercules aircraft came down in a desolate area of the central state of Madhya Pradesh while on a routine training mission.

All five crew members on board were killed, Air Force spokesman Capt Gerard Galway said. The defence ministry said it had ordered an investigation into the cause of the accident.

Kanakpura, where the C-130J Super Hercules Special Operations transport aircraft crashed, is a swamp left of a partially dried up river infested with crocodiles that nestle here.

Monents after the plane crashed near the remains of the waterbody, crocodiles walked up to the body parts strewn across the area and started feeding on them. "We have been informed of the crocodiles eating up the bodies of at least two crew members on board the Hercules, but it hasn't been confirmed yet," an official with the defence ministry said.

The villagers had rushed to the spot on hearing the defeaning sound of crash in their vicinty when they spotted the debris of the huge plane.

The aircraft, made by Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), was one of six bought for the air force at a cost of $962 million in 2011.

It crashed to the west of Gwalior after taking off at 10 a.m. (0430 GMT) from Agra, home of the famed Taj Mahal monument.

It was the first crash of a Hercules aircraft of the Indian Air Force, which has been plagued for years by the crashes of its Russian-made MiG-21 fighters.

More than half the MiG fleet of 872 aircraft has been lost to crashes that killed 171 pilots, Defence Minister A.K. Antony told parliament in 2012.

Saturday 29 March 2014

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/28/indian-air-force-cargo-plane-madhya-prad-idINDEEA2R03K20140328

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-dead-iaf-officers-bodies-become-crocodile-feed-1973133

Another body found in U.S. mudslide as fears grow for missing

Authorities combing a massive mud pile left by a Washington state landslide that buried dozens of homes said on Friday they were bracing for the worst for 90 people still listed as missing, in one of the strongest official acknowledgments that many of those lives may be lost.

Officials said one more body had been found in a field of debris left behind when a rain-soaked hillside collapsed without warning last Saturday, unleashing a towering wall of mud onto the outskirts of rural Oso, about 55 miles (89 km) northeast of Seattle.

The new discovery brings the presumed death count to 27 based on the number of bodies officials have reported finding, even as the official toll of victims who have been found, recovered and formally identified remained steady at 17.

"We always want to hold out hope but I think we have to at some point expect the worst," Snohomish County Executive Director Gary Haakenson told a news conference after being asked if a large portion of the 90 people listed as missing were now feared dead.

"The crews are finding bodies in the field. It's a very slow process. It was miserable to begin with. As you all know, it's rained heavily the last few days. It's made the quicksand even worse," he said.

While fire officials directing search operations at the disaster site have reported slow but steady progress in recovering remains of victims, the official tally of the dead has changed little in recent days even as officials have repeatedly said the death toll could rise substantially.

County authorities say coroners have so far identified the remains of just 17 people, including an infant whose body was retrieved on Thursday.

Remains of 10 more people were reported to have been located in the square-mile (2.6 square-km) heap of mud-caked debris over the past several days, but as of Friday night had been excluded from the formal tally of lives lost.

Officials have revised the list only as each set of remains is identified by coroners, leaving the public mostly in the dark about the retrieval of more bodies. The task has been made harder because not all the victims are recovered intact.

"I don't think it's a secret that they are dealing with partial remains," said an official involved in the rescue operation, who asked not to be named.



CHURCHES AND FIRE STATIONS

News of additional remains being located and recovered has been trickling out to family members of the missing and dead through word-of-mouth and other channels, however, thanks to community members working side-by-side with rescue teams in the search for more victims.

Area churches and fire stations have been go-to venues for members of the community seeking updates, said Gail Moffett of Oso, who lives 2 miles from the disaster site and works at a hardware store in nearby Arlington.

"I go home and talk to the source, because it's family," she said of the community network, including locally based rescue workers, she has tapped into for information.

"They are all out there on the mudslide every day, going back and going back and going back, day after day after day, to make a difference and to help our people. And they just keep doing it and they come in at night and their butts dragging, covered in mud, and their faces are not the faces I knew last week," she said.

Authorities have also allowed some victims' relatives onto the disaster site as the remains are recovered, and a moment of silence is observed, as occurred when the body of the infant was extricated on Thursday.

In one case, a volunteer member of the search team, Dayn Brunner, pulled the body of his own sister, 36-year-old Summer Raffo, from the mud pile on Wednesday. She was driving through the area when the slide buried her in her car.

Brunner, 42, took a day off to grieve and rest, and then returned to the debris field on Friday to resume the search.

An estimated 180 people lived in the path of the landslide, and the list of missing, once at 176 or more, has remained steady at about 90 since Wednesday.



HOPES FADE

Authorities have said some of those killed might never be found, and on Thursday braced the public for news - still yet to come - that the number of dead would increase substantially in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Officials have so far publicly identified five dead, while withholding the names of others listed as dead or missing. But about 40 people have been identified on a local blog site as potential victims, including several members of one family.

All of those discovered alive in the mud were rescued by helicopter within the first few hours after the landslide, and rescuers have found no further signs of life, officials said.

Volunteer Bob Michajla, 66, said the search was entering a more difficult phase.

"They found the easy bodies in the first few days. The rest of them are probably buried. That's what I was told," said Michajla, his face and fingers caked in mud.

Local fire district chief Travis Hots said rain and wind sweeping the area on Friday was working against the round-the-clock search efforts. A flash flood alert was posted for the county, extending through the next three days.

With hopes for finding any additional survivors continuing to fade while uncertainty over the fate of dozens more lingers on, the mood among the community has grown grimmer.

Bernie Tamez, 39, said he was comfortable that officials were dealing with the community forthrightly, despite the dearth of tangible information.

"They're keeping us informed," said Tamez, a machinist who took the week off to volunteer in Darrington, where he lives.

Meanwhile, residents like 45-year-old Larry Dwyer who escaped the slide marveled at their luck.

"We were driving on that exact stretch two weeks ago. We were right there," Dwyer said as he watched his three sons wave signs ushering motorists toward a food drive at an Arlington market on a rainy Thursday evening. "That's why we're out here right now. It's a karma thing. When it's not you, you give."

Saturday 29 March 2014

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/29/usa-mudslide-washingtonstate-idINDEEA2S00820140329

DNA tests identify 10 more Rana Plaza victims

The National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory has identified ten more Rana Plaza victims who were buried without identification, officials said.

With the latest detection, the number of victims identified through DNA test rose to 210, causing a matter of little hope for the relatives who are yet to find out their beloved ones following the country's worst ever industrial disaster.

The DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) test came to spotlight few weeks after the multi-storied building collapse when the authorities concerned were not in a position to identify the trapped bodies as those were too decomposed.

They said the forensic lab of the Dhaka Medical College (DMC) has finished all necessary works on the samples collected from ten undetected victims and started preparing a complete report of the DNA profiling tests.

"We are hopeful of submitting the test report to the Ministry of Labour and Employment in the upcoming week," said Prof Sharif Akhteruzzaman, National Technical Adviser (NTA) of the DMC Forensic Lab.

Declining to disclose any further information regarding the issue, the professor said they have almost completed the DNA matching process. "But some minor works still remain incomplete," he added.

Another official at the Lab said relatives of the victims can claim compensation to the authority after successful completion of the DNA-matching process.

He said that the number of bodies identified through DNA now stands at 210 as the laboratory earlier delivered complete DNA report of 200 bodies to the ministry.

However, the authorities are yet to make any progress in respect of 112 bodies, whose collected samples are not matched yet.

Although a total of 548 DNA samples from victims' relatives were submitted to the laboratory against the 322 unidentified bodies, unfortunately 112 victims' DNA test did not match with any submitted samples.

Professor Akhteruzzaman said the DNA testing laboratory found mismatch with the collected samples and the samples given by the victims' relatives. For instance, the four bodies from which DNA had been collected for lab tests were taken and buried by people claiming to be the victims' relatives, without going through any test procedure. But later on three out of the four matched with the samples given by others, he added. Professor Akhteruzzaman expressed dissatisfaction at the process of handing over 800 bodies to relatives after the building collapse without having any DNA samples kept from either the victims or the relatives.

He, however, did not give up the hope regarding the identification of the remaining 112 bodies saying that certainly there is a way to detect them. But the procedure is very complex and without support from the government it is not possible to accomplish, he said.

"To identify rest of the bodies, we have to examine the DNA samples from all the relatives of the Rana Plaza victims who were buried without DNA tests", the professor added. He said the work is not simple as the victims' family members have already received some compensations, even in many cases they won't allow further tests.

"However, if the government takes effective measures with financial support for the large-scale testing procedures for the buried bodies it would be possible to make identification," he stated.

Shock gripped people all over the world on April 24 last year when the 9-storey commercial building that housed five apparel units collapsed within seconds at Savar, killing at least 1130 people and injuring hundreds others.

Friday 28 March 2014

http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2014/03/28/25789

South Korea returns bodies of hundreds of Chinese soldiers

South Korea on Friday repatriated the remains of 437 Chinese soldiers killed during the Korean War six decades ago, making a gesture symbolic of warming ties between the two nations.

China sent a flood of soldiers to help its Communist ally North Korea, which invaded South Korea in June 1950. Its intervention saved the North, whose forces had been pushed back toward the country’s northern corner by American-led United Nations forces later that year. The three-year war ended in a cease-fire, leaving the divided Korean Peninsula technically in a state of war.

Over the years, when South Korea discovered the remains of hundreds of Communist soldiers in old battle sites, it kept them in a tucked-away, little-known temporary burial ground north of Seoul, until recently known as “the enemy cemetery.”

That it took six decades for the bodies of the fallen Chinese soldiers to return home bore testimony to political uneasiness rooted in a war that, while it long ago ended, was never formally put to rest.

Between 1981 and 1989, North Korea accepted the remains of 42 Chinese soldiers from South Korea and handed them over to Beijing. But it has never been willing to negotiate for the return of its own fallen soldiers. Accepting their return home would be seen as a gesture of closing the war, which North Korea insists will not be over until Washington signs a peace treaty with it.

After accepting the remains of another Chinese soldier in 1997, North Korea refused to accept any more, leaving the 437 Chinese soldiers stranded in the inter-Korean deadlock.

A breakthrough came last June when President Park Geun-hye of South Korea visited China to cultivate warmer ties with China. She offered to send the Chinese remains home as a good-will gesture, and Beijing welcomed it.

“The repatriation today will be a landmark for the two countries in healing the trauma from the past and moving toward coprosperity,” Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo of South Korea said during a ceremony held at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul.

During the ceremony, the Chinese ambassador, Qiu Guohong, placed Chinese flags on dark brown boxes that contained the remains. Chinese soldiers carried them aboard a Chinese plane, which flew them to the Resist America and Aid Korea Martyrs Cemetery, the resting place for China’s Korean War dead, located in Shenyang, in northeastern China.

China remains North Korea’s last remaining major ally, while the United States is South Korea’s No. 1 military ally. But China has overtaken the United States as South Korea’s biggest trading partner since it normalized relations with Seoul in 1992. Each year, millions of Chinese visit South Korea as tourists.

Still, the existence of Chinese remains, and the “enemy cemetery” itself, has drawn little attention in South Korea, even though some Chinese tourists began visiting it in recent years. Built on a hillside, it is difficult to find.

Now with their Chinese companions gone, the remains of 770 North Korean soldiers stay marooned in the cemetery only a few miles south of the inter-Korean border, their forlorn grave markers emblematic of unresolved Cold War hostilities that still divide the Koreas. Their graves all face north, looking homeward, in contrast to the Korean tradition of aligning graves toward the south.

Also buried there are dozens of postwar North Korean agents, including commandos killed in an unsuccessful 1968 attack on the presidential palace in Seoul and a North Korean agent who killed himself after planting a bomb on a South Korean jetliner that exploded over Myanmar in 1987 with 115 people aboard.

The bodies of the agents cannot go home because their government has not acknowledged their missions.

Estimates of the number of Chinese killed in the war vary from 110,000 to over 400,000.

South Korea said it would continue to repatriate Chinese remains if it discovered more while excavating battle sites for its own war dead.

Friday 28 March 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/south-korea-returns-bodies-of-hundreds-of-chinese-soldiers.html?_r=0

Missing-Persons list in Washington mudslide disaster a work in progress

Five days after a catastrophic mudslide buried a rural area near Oso, Wash., killing at least 16 people, authorities raced to locate survivors. The list of those reported unaccounted for or missing after the slide fell Wednesday to 90 from 176, though officials said the status of 35 other names was now classified as "in question."

Authorities in any disaster initially cast as wide a net as possible in compiling a list of possible victims, erring on the side of overestimating, said Kim Zagaris, fire chief for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

Typically, officials start by consulting public records, such as property records, to calculate how many structures are in the affected area. Then, they try to determine how many of those buildings were known to be occupied, and how many other people potentially could have been in the area, including those who may have been visiting or traveling through, Mr. Zagaris said.

Ronald Klamecki, a Los Angeles Fire Department captain assigned to search and rescue, said it isn't unusual for the number of missing people to fluctuate, meaning it can take days to figure out the scope of a disaster.

Mr. Klamecki, who searched for survivors after the 2005 La Conchita landslide in Southern California that killed 10 and destroyed 13 houses, said that while he and other rescuers dug bodies out of ruined houses and dirt, other officials looked up property records and tried to contact owners to narrow down the number of missing.

It is especially tricky, he said, "when you've got a mix of year-round residents and some vacation homes," which was the case in La Conchita as well as in Oso. "It took a few days to figure out who was there and who wasn't."

Officials say they must assume that anyone who may have been in the affected area is missing until proven otherwise.

"It's not like an airline where you have an official manifest," said Bryan W. Koon, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management and vice president of the National Emergency Management Association.

As to what could drive up the number on a missing-persons list days into a disaster, Mr. Koon said it could result from someone who missed a doctor's appointment or failed to return to work from a scheduled vacation and was reported missing. Or, he said, "it could be that they are in a shelter and their cellphone has died."

In compiling the list in Oso, officials drew from various databases, including property records, rental information and driver's licenses, said Marybeth O'Leary, a spokeswoman for Snohomish County. They also received reports on missing people from friends, relatives and neighbors who called a hotline.

"They are trying to make sure they get everyone," Ms. O'Leary said.

She said the county revised the number of names on the list—to 108, then to 176—as more records became available Monday and individual lists were combined.

The number, "as discouraging as that sounds, [it] is exactly what we were looking for, which was information and data," said John Pennington, Snohomish County's emergency management director. "A good analogy, I think, is John Doe, 123 Steelhead Lane, brown hair, brown eyes; John, brown hair; John, 58 years of age. Of the 176, it's probably the same person."

Three Snohomish County Sheriff's officers, including missing-persons investigators, are helping three other analysts and several volunteers sort through the list to narrow it down, said Ms. O'Leary.

They are checking the names against those who have reported themselves being safe. They also are searching for contact information for those reported missing and making calls to try to ascertain who should remain on the list, said Ms. O'Leary.

Officials later will reconcile the revised list with the list of bodies recovered, Ms. O'Leary said.

Thursday 27 March 2014

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303325204579463533604712424

Uganda: Lake Albert boat disaster toll climbs to 251

More than 251 Congolese refugees perished in the weekend sinking of a crowded boat on Lake Albert, between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, Kinshasa said Thursday.

Government spokesman Lambert Mende also declared three days of national mourning starting Thursday in the wake of Saturday's disaster.

Uganda had said Tuesday it had recovered 107 bodies including 57 children after the sinking of the boat, which was packed with refugees from the DRC hoping to return home from a camp in Uganda.

"It is with deep sorrow that we confirm to the nation the death of 251 of our compatriots who had boarded the boat from the Ugandan side of Lake Albert," Mende told reporters.

He said there had been about 300 people on the board at the time.

Navigation on central Africa's Great Lakes can be as perilous as sailing in high seas when the weather is rough. Accidents often lead to very high casualty tolls, partly because of a lack of life-jackets and also because relatively few people know how to swim.

Saturday's disaster happened just days after the DRC authorities launched a campaign to enforce the wearing of life jackets aboard all boats on the large nation's many waterways.

Thursday 27 March 2014

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/140327/251-congolese-perish-lake-albert-boat-disaster

Washington rescue workers continue search for mudslide survivors

Rescue workers were continuing to search for scores of people still listed missing after a catastrophic landslide in Washington state, as river water backed up behind the debris field.

Sixteen bodies had been pulled from the mud by Wednesday, and another eight have been identified but remain stuck. That brought the probable death toll to 24, although the tally remains at 16 until officials are able to recover the other bodies.

Snohomish County officials revised down to 90 from 176 the number of individuals still officially unaccounted for, and conceded that some of the missing may never be recovered. The status of another 35 people was described as "unknown".

The scope of this disaster has drawn international attention, along with direct federal aid and the personal condolences of President Obama. "While I won't get ahead of the response and rescue operations, we know part of this tightly-knit community has been lost," Obama said.



Mothers and sons, brothers and wives, babies and children: whole families were swallowed when the sparsely forested hillside gave way on Saturday morning, rushing downslope and across the north fork of the Stillaguamish river, filling its contours and ploughing through 49 homes clustered around Steelhead and East Steelhead drives, before burying a mile of Highway 530.

Even now, county officials are monitoring the Stillaguamish, which has backed up behind the debris, flooding more houses and creating a large pond that is cutting into the rubble, carrying it downstream. County officials said there were 120m cubic feet of water still held in abeyance; while Tuesday brought heavy rain, the water level dropped slightly between Monday and Tuesday.

"Sometimes, landslides that are this catastrophic just happen," said John Pennington, the director of Snohomish County's department of emergency management.

"People knew this was a landslide-prone area," he said, noting that he is still trying to understand whether a small earthquake could have shaken the hill loose. "Sometimes big events just happen; large events that nobody sees happen. The community did feel safe. They knew the risk, but they felt safe from the smaller events. This wasn't a small event. It was large, and it was catastrophic."

There were questions on Wednesday over whether it could be stated categorically that the disaster was unforeseen. The slide took place in the same location as a series of historical mudslides, the most recent of which occurred in 2006 and was later mitigated with retaining walls meant to shore up the sides of the slope. In 2010, Snohomish County commissioned a report that highlighted this exact hill as a high-risk landslide area. Elsewhere in the state, governments have been buying people out of their homes in communities susceptible to natural disasters.



The 2010 report, carried out by Tetra Tech, a California-based engineering firm, said the area affected by Saturday's mudslip was particularly vulnerable. "For someone to say that this plan did not warn that this was a risk is a falsity," Rob Flaner, the report author, told the Seattle Times.

The devastated riverside community was built below a hill of glacial sediment undercut by a flood-prone river and exposed to higher water saturation after repeated logging. Those risks came together to form a deadly dynamic during one of the wettest Marches on record for the area 55 miles northeast of Seattle.

When asked if the country should have been more prepared, Pennington said: "I'm not sure that we could have. It haunts me. We did everything we could have done, and the community did feel safe."

Teams of national guardsmen, fire fighters, police officers and volunteers are now slogging through the mud, using heavy equipment to remove splintered trees, crushed cars and collapsed houses, searching for the bodies of the missing.

Thursday 27 March 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/26/washington-mudslide-rescue-workers-search-survivors

MH370 Crash: Spiritual rites dim as uncertainty of finding bodies abound

Perth braces as hundred of grieving and agitated families of MH370 passengers are expected to travel as soon as wreckage is found. Traveling to Perth is the closest they can get to the final place where their loved-ones were.

About 227 passengers from 15 nations and regions aboard MH370 plane. The passengers were a combination of different nationalities, spiritual beliefs and religions.

Finding the bodies of their relatives was particularly essential to consummate funeral rites that are vital to their spiritual beliefs.

Chinese Culture

Among the 227 passengers of the missing plane, two-thirds were Chinese, including 19 artists with six family members and four staff. They came from a calligraphy exhibition of their works in Kuala Lumpur.

The Chinese were notably the ones being agitated about the tragedy. Experts said the Chinese were behaving this way because of the funeral rites are embedded deeply in their culture.

According to Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia, Chinese believed the souls of those who die tragically into the unknown, or whose bodies are not recovered (as in the case of the MH370), will remain lost to the unknown.

In an interview with ABC News, Joy Chen, cultural icon and author of the popular Chinese-language book, "Do Not Marry Before 30," explained that Chinese culture needs the presence of a body to complete the funeral rites.

"In a Chinese culture, the living and the dead are part of the same family. There is such a strong sense of family. You are separated from your ancestor, but they are still a part of you."

Chen cited the Chinese viewed the holiday Qing Ming , meaning "sweep the grave," of particular importance. It is impossible to have this ritual without the presence of a body.

The idea of a funeral without the bodies being mourned is beyond the understanding of the Chinese culture. Chinese usually hire professional wailers to cry during funeral rites.

"When person first dies it's incredibly important to have a body. You have a wake for a whole day or more. The body is cleaned and dressed up in their best clothes and all the friends and relatives come around to pay respects. Then after that, there is a funeral procession and everyone goes to the grave site," Chen noted.

"Because in Chinese tradition, death is not just the end of a person's life, they are going to another world and the family continues to maintain our relations with our ancestors. We live among them all the time and even seek their help."

With this belief, the MH370 tragedy created a sense of uncertainty for the Chinese that their loved-ones will be peaceful.

"There is no sense of certainty. You haven't had the opportunity to pay respects from the passing of this world to the world of the dead. You don't get to acknowledge and respect their passage into the afterlife."

Hindu

As written in the book titled, "Hindu Rites of Passage: The Funeral," details of the exact date and time of a loved-one's death is important for the final rites.

"Otherwise, the soul will not rest in peace and it will become an earthbound spirit. The authorities should declare a date and time because there are specific ceremonies for a send-off of the dead," author P.S. Maniam wrote.

Hindu G. Subramaniam, whose son Puspanathan, 34, was on the flight, said he cannot imagine performing the final passage without the body of his son.

"I still believe my son will return as there is no death certificate issued on his status," he noted.

Tao

Tan Hoe Chieow, president of the Federation of Taoist Associations Malaysia, said closure can only be complete with the information of exact location and time of death.

"We need to know where it happened and go to the scene of the accident to perform rituals and prayers. It can be done without the physical body, but the priest and family must be in the same area. If the relatives are not given their final rites, they become lost souls," Chieow explained.

Muslims echoed the same sentiments. A funeral cannot be consummated without the body.

Christians And Bhuddists

While the Chinese families were agitated of the Malaysian government, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defense and acting transport minister, noted the families of the Australian passengers were calm.

"But the Chinese families must also understand that Malaysia also lost loved ones and many other nations also lost loved ones. I have seen images [of relatives] from Australia: very rational, understanding this is a global effort, not blaming Malaysia, because it is co-ordinating something unprecedented."

For Catholics, the body was not necessary to perform rites as they believe prayers will suffice. The same belief involves Bhuddists.

Chief Monk of Malaysia Datuk Rev K. Sri Dhammaratana said the Buddhists do not need body to perform the funeral rites.

"We don't need the body, we can just do the prayers as normal," he added.

"The body is not important as the mind and soul have already departed," Rev Sri Saranankara of Maha Karuna Buddhist Society noted.

Sardar Jagir Singh, president of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism, called for the Malaysian government to conduct memorial or tribute for all those who were lost in the MH370 tragedy.

"When it comes to prayers, whether to hold a funeral, the family must decide. Perhaps, there can be prayers for the soul before the last rites are held," he said.

Thursday 27 March 2014

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/545193/20140327/mh370-missing-malaysia-airlines-christianity-buddhism-hinduism.html

Chinese relatives of those on MH370 flight to make spiritual journey to Perth

Hundreds of relatives of the passengers and crew of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight are expected to travel to Perth in coming days if wreckage is found, a journey that is particularly significant for Chinese families with traditional spiritual beliefs.

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett said on Wednesday he expected ''several hundred'' grieving family members to arrive.

''My understanding is that particularly relatives of the Chinese passengers who presumably have lost their lives will want to come to Perth to be as close as possible to the final place,'' he told 6PR radio. Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia, said there was a traditional Chinese folk belief that those who die tragically in the wilderness, or whose bodies are not recovered, cannot find their way to the ancestral spirit realm.

''There is a special festival to placate these spirits called the 'hungry ghost festival','' he said. ''The living will want to make special offerings … and hopefully help them on their way.'' Advertisement

He said many loved ones would simply want to be close to the accident site, as would be expected in any culture. ''The idea of being lost in a vast, wild and remote ocean is particularly disturbing,'' he said.

Sammy Yap, the president of the Chung Wah Association, which represents the Chinese community in Western Australia, said many more families would make the trip if bodies were recovered. ''Most will be Buddhist or Taoist, so we can organise for any religious practitioners to carry out the ceremonies which they may look for,'' he said.

Mr Yap said Chung Wah would work with more than 40 other Chinese associations in Perth to prepare for the arrival of relatives, with dozens of local Chinese people volunteering support.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

http://www.smh.com.au/national/chinese-relatives-of-those-on-missing-plane-to-make-spiritual-journey-to-perth-20140326-35ixl.html

Yolanda victims’ bodies still being found; identification process to last 3 years

Vernabeth Amarilla and her family were both relieved and heartbroken when the authorities recovered the body of her grandmother last Sunday.

Although the body was now in an advanced state of decay, they were able to identify her through her clothes.

She was found inside a ruined radio station in Tacloban City by authorities who were cleaning up rubble. A victim of Typhoon Yolanda, her body had lain there since November, while all this time her family searched for her and feared the worst.

Only 8 out of 2,241

What happened to Vernabeth's grandmother is not an isolated case. According to the National Bureau of Investigation, bodies of Yolanda victims are still being discovered almost five months after the super typhoon devastated central Philippines late last year.

"Actually, last week may dumating na 15 bodies [sa amin]," NBI Disaster Victims Identification team leader Dr. Nicacio Botin told reporters on Wednesday.

The Bureau of Fire Protection retrieves the bodies, which are then transferred to the NBI for identification.

The United Nations Development Programme provided sniffing dogs that made retrieval operations more thorough, Botin added.

Last Sunday, the NBI finished its postmortem investigation of 2,241 bodies that were temporarily buried in Holy Cross Memorial Cemetery (189), or permanently buried in Brgy. Suhi (1,200) and Brgy.Basper (852).

Out of the total number of identified bodies, only eight have been claimed.

Identification process to last three years

The anti-post-mortem phase of the identification will commence after Holy Week. During this stage, the NBI will ask the relatives of those still missing to come forward and provide identification documents, photos, and DNA samples. This stage will take about six weeks, Botin said.

However, he added, the matching of the identifying documents and DNA could take as long as three years.

There are currently eight members of the NBI's Disaster Victims Identification team, on rotational basis. At the height of retrieval activities, the team has about 21 members. This number does not include the volunteers.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/354237/news/regions/yolanda-victims-bodies-still-being-found-identification-process-to-last-3-years

Jet fragments could help locate body of pilot missing since 1962

First Lieutenant Yakir Naveh and flight cadet Oded Koton were killed 52 years ago when their Fouga plane crashed into the Sea of Galilee • It took a year to recover Koton's body; Naveh's remains are still missing.

Pieces of the cockpit of a plane that crashed 52 years ago, killing pilot 1st Lt. Yakir Naveh and cadet Oded Koton, have been discovered in the northeast part of the Sea of Galilee.

Naveh, 23, served as a flight instructor in the Israeli Air Force. On May 6, 1962, he and Koton took off for a training flight in an IAF Fouga jet. The plane crashed into the Sea of Galilee and sank. Both Naveh and Koton were killed.

Searches for their bodies began immediately, but it took a year before Koton's body was found and laid to rest.

Every year, the Israeli Air Force and the Israeli Navy launch new searches of the Sea of Galilee in an attempt to find Naveh's body and bring the tragedy to a close. A few years ago, Navy teams working with fish farmers from Kibbutz Ein Gev found parts of the plane on the floor of the lake at a depth of 35 meters (115 feet.) Five years ago, Naveh's gun and watch were discovered and identified by his family.

On Monday a few parts of the cockpit were recovered, but the pilot's body is still missing. According to some assessments, Naveh's remains are covered on the floor of the lake, and divers are excavating the area around where the latest plane fragments were discovered.

Naveh's 79-year-old brother accompanies the teams on all their excursions. One team member said "Every year we get closer to the goal of finding [his] body."

Wednesday 26 March 2014

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16423

Washington mudslide: More bodies found, many missing

Authorities say they have recovered the bodies of two more people killed in a massive mudslide in the US state of Washington, bringing the total to 16.

The officials said they thought they had located eight more bodies under the mud but were unable to retrieve them.

As many as 176 people remain unaccounted for.

A 177ft (54m) wall of mud buried the town of Oso, north of Seattle, on Saturday. Officials said the search would resume at first light.

"We haven't lost hope that there's a possibility that we could find somebody alive," local fire chief Travis Hots told reporters on Tuesday night.

"We are coming to the realisation that that may not be a possibility - but we are going full steam ahead.

"We are going at this hard to get everybody that's out there that's missing"

The sudden, catastrophic mudslide on Saturday destroyed about 30 houses, temporarily damming a river and leaving a square-mile field of muck and debris in its wake.

Survivors were last pulled alive from the mud on Saturday.

But as many as 200 search-and-rescue workers at a time - aided by dogs, helicopters, laser imaging and excavation equipment - have not let up since, pausing only when darkness made the work too dangerous, officials said.

The search-and-rescue operation was further complicated on Tuesday by heavy rain, Mr Hots said, as the workers were forced to contend with slippery mud, upturned nails, wreckage, and deep pits of water.

At least 16 have been confirmed dead. And on Wednesday, rescuers will work to salvage another eight bodies they believe they have located under rubble of the landslide that covers about a square mile.

At least 176 people are unaccounted for. But officials have stressed that some names of those missing have been duplicated, so there is hope the actual number may be smaller.

Finding them will be toilsome in Oso, with a population of about 180, and Darrington, a town of about 1,350. In some places, the debris is 30 to 40 feet thick.

And it will also be dangerous, since some of the mud has the consistency of quicksand and is filled with the wreckage of nearly 50 structures damaged or destroyed.

On Wednesday, rescuers will work to salvage another eight bodies they believe they have located under rubble of the landslide that covers about a square mile.

President Barack Obama, in the Netherlands on Tuesday, asked that "all Americans to send their thoughts and prayers to Washington state and the community of Oso."

Obama said he had spoken with Gov. Jay Inslee and signed an emergency declaration.



Closure

Nichole Rivera has returned to her hometown of Darrington in hopes that someone will find her loved ones.

But after seeing the wide swath of devastation and the unyielding mud, she has no optimism of ever seeing them alive again.

"I can tell you with great soundness they're not going to find my parents, or daughter, or her fiancé," she said.

Now, she and her family just want closure -- the bodies of their loved ones, if possible.

But if they don't turn up, they take comfort in knowing that they will rest in a place that they loved.

Her relatives had plans to put their burial plots on their own land.

The waiting came to an end Tuesday for the family of U.S. Navy Cmdr. John Regelbrugge -- at least in part. His brothers found his body and that of his dog.

But his wife, Kris, is still missing.

"They were both home when the slide hit, but they haven't found her yet," his sister-in-law Jackie Leighton said.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

http://www.krdo.com/news/washington-mudslide-more-bodies-found-many-missing/25168846

Death toll in western Ugandan boat accident rises to 108 people

The death toll in the weekend boat accident in western Uganda has risen to 108 from 19 that were reported on Saturday.

David Kazungu, Commissioner for Refugees in the ministry of relief, disaster preparedness and refugees told Xinhua in an interview here that 108 bodies have been retrieved from Lake Albert as of Monday afternoon.

Most of the passengers on the boat were Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) refugees returning home.

"So far on Saturday we retrieved 19 bodies from Lake Albert, on Sunday we retrieved six bodies and today by two o'clock 83 bodies have been retrieved by the police marine unit," Kazungu said.

He said the total number of the people who were on the boat is not yet known. Fourty five people survived the accident.

"The bodies are being taken by the DRC officials with whom we have been working with since Saturday on identification of the bodies and return of the bodies for decent burial," he said, adding that some bodies especially those for children have not yet been identified.

He said the refugees were returning home after the UN Intervention Brigade neutralized the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan rebel group operating in eastern DRC.

"These were returning back to Congo. This comes after the intervention forces have created peace majorly within the Kamango region. The King of Kamango area has been calling on his people to return home," he said.

He said the search for more bodies is still continuing and the chance of finding more survivors is slim.

Charles Ssebambulidde, the police commander for Uganda's Albertine region, said that rescue teams pulled scores of bodies — mostly women — from the lake over the weekend.

Lake Albert lies on the Uganda-Congo border, and most of the drowning victims were Congolese refugees returning home from a resettlement camp, according to the United Nations refugee agency and Ugandan officials.

Ssebambulidde said the authorities confirmed the boat carried more than 150 passengers as well as their belongings when it capsized. That boat, which is now in police custody, should only have carried 80 people without luggage, he said.

"This tragedy has shocked me profoundly," U.N. Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said in a statement sent from Geneva. "My thoughts are with those who have lost dear ones, and the survivors. I am grateful to the government and other actors who have mounted a rescue-and-recovery operation and are assisting the survivors."

The U.N. statement said as many as 250 people may have been aboard the boat, one of two transporting Congolese refugees returning home, suggesting the death toll could rise even further as more bodies are recovered.

Boat accidents are common in Uganda, as transport providers take advantage of lax policing to load their boats with more passengers than they can safely transport.

Ssebambulidde, the Ugandan police official, said it appeared the victims of the latest accident were so desperate to return home that they did not bother about safety. He said the boat was clearly "overloaded."

Uganda hosts more than 320,000 refugees and asylum seekers from violence-prone neighboring countries. More than 175,000 of them are Congolese, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/africa/2014-03/25/c_126310046.htm

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/uganda-boat-accident-death-toll-rises-107-23035504

30 people killed in Thailand bus crash

A double-decker bus carrying municipal workers on a field trip in western Thailand plunged off a steep road and into a ravine, killing at least 30 people and injuring 22 others, officials said on Tuesday.

The accident on Monday night was the latest fatal crash on a mountain road in Tak province known for its treacherous dips and turns where 300 accidents occurred last year, said provincial governor Suriya Prasatbunditya. The road is frequented by buses and trucks travelling to and from the border with Myanmar.

The driver was trying to pass cars on a winding downhill road when it skidded off the edge and flipped several times as it tumbled about 30m into a valley before crashing into a tree, Suriya said, recounting what other drivers who witnessed the accident told police.

The driver, who survived the accident with a broken rib, said he tried to slow down but claimed the brakes stopped working, Suriy said.

The bus was one of four carrying local workers and villagers on Monday night from Tak to north-eastern Thailand.

"Accidents happen on this road very often," Suriya said. "We've put warning signs up to caution road users but the accidents keep happening."

Road accidents are common in Thailand, where safety standards are poor and road rules are rarely enforced. Last year, more than 8 600 people died in accidents on Thai roads.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

http://www.news24.com/World/News/30-people-killed-in-Thailand-bus-crash-20140325

Typhoon Haiyan: Storm victim’s body left to hang on a tree

The body of a boy was dug up in this city almost five months after super typhoon “Yolanda” devastated the Eastern Visayas region, but the authorities just left the boy’s cadaver in a body bag literally hanging from a tree branch for two weeks.

The body was found in San Jose district’s Barangay Cogon by a canine search team on March 11 in a shallow grave near an old chapel.

Barangay Cogon residents said no one in the village could identify the boy so he could not have been a resident of the barangay, but residents decided to temporarily bury the boy in the grounds of the village’s chapel.

Under current arrangements, bodies of Yolanda fatalities are usually sought with canine teams and dug up by a search team. Crime scene investigators will then take photographs and DNA samples from the cadaver for possible identification.

After processing, the Bureau of Fire Protection is supposed to retrieve bodies for burial at one of the mass grave sites in the city.

But in the case of the body dug up in Barangay Cogon, the BFP never came for the body although village leaders repeatedly told them over a period of two weeks about the body abandoned in their barangay.

“The stench of the corpse that they dug up was already horrid and everyone could smell it because they hung it on a fallen tree by the road side,” one resident said in the vernacular after asking not to be identified.

“Residents are already afraid of catching disease so we are pleading with the authorities to please get the corpse,” the resident added.

Village chief Arlie Go-Perez said she repeatedly told the BFP about the body and it took them two weeks to return and get the body.

When asked about the incident, the local police’s crime scene investigators disavowed knowledge of the body that was dug up last March 11 and they claimed that that was the first time they heard about the matter.

Later in the day, however, the authorities finally retrieved the body and buried it in a mass grave in Barangay Suhi.

The incident has become common in the city, where 2,669 are known to have died, excluding the deaths from nearby towns and provinces. More than half of the Tacloban number come from the San Jose district.

The government’s confirmed death toll is at 6,268 with 1,785 still missing, but the data has not been updated for a month and information on the dead or the missing cannot be found on the website of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

The NDRRMC could not explain why the fatality figure has not been updated, although its spokesman Reynaldo Balido confirmed that bodies were still being found in Tacloban four months after the diaster.

“Sometimes they find two or three a day, then there are days where they find none,” Balido earlier told a news wire agency.

United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs herself was shocked that bodies were still turning up when she visited the city last month.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2014/03/25/storm-victim-s-body-left-to-rot-on-a-tree/

Malaysia plane: How do you mourn a missing person?

The relatives of passengers on board the missing Malaysian Airlines plane have been told the plane crashed in the ocean, with no survivors. So how hard is it to mourn a missing person?

When flight MH370 went missing, Prahlad Shirsath travelled from his home in North Korea to Beijing and then on to Malaysia as he searched for news of his wife's whereabouts.

Kranti Shirsath, a former chemistry professor and mother of two, was travelling to see her husband who worked at a non-profit organisation in Pyongyang.

When there was no news and the days passed, Shirsath's family called him back to his home country of India, where they could endure the uncertainty together.

This is called an "ambiguous loss", says Pauline Boss, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, who treats people undergoing this unique kind of bereavement. There is no physical proof of death - no body - so people cling to the hope that the missing are still alive.

"People can't begin mourning when there is ambiguous loss - they're frozen," says Boss. "Frequently, society thinks they should be mourning but, in fact, they are stuck in limbo between thinking their loved one might come back and thinking they might not."

This is a kind of suffering that freezes their grief, says the professor, author of Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief.

The latest news that the plane probably crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, with no survivors, is unlikely to release them from this limbo, she says. "There is no closure even if they find definitely that the plane is in the ocean. They still have no body to bury. It will always be ambiguous until remains are found or DNA evidence."

People need to see evidence before they are assured that the death has occurred, says Professor Boss, and without that, grief is frozen and complicated. A more clear-cut death is undoubtedly painful but funeral rituals can take place where there is a body, and family and friends come together to re-affirm that the person has died.

In the absence of a confirmed explanation for what happened, relatives imagine their own outcomes. Before the latest news, Kranti's family, including her 16-year-old son, were inclined towards the one that offered most hope - that the plane was hijacked, a scenario in which it was more likely that Kranti was alive.

"We don't really have the strength to entertain the possibility of any bad news at the moment," says Satish Shirsath, Prahlad's younger brother, speaking a few days ago. He was the one who booked Kranti's tickets online.

"I also feel that maybe if I had chosen another route - maybe if I had booked my sister-in-law from Pune instead of Bombay, then to Delhi and Beijing - perhaps it would have been different," he says.

When there is no knowledge of what happened, there is no one to attribute responsibility to, so blaming oneself is typical, says Boss. The first thing she tells families in therapy is that it is not their fault.

Catastrophic events like 9/11 and the Asian tsunami left many relatives and friends waiting in vain for definitive news, but this kind of loss can also happen when someone walks out the door and never comes back.

Valerie Nettles - whose son Damien went missing 17 years ago in the Isle of Wight when aged 16 - has learned to compartmentalise the pain.

She says she lives with one step in two different worlds - one in an "abyss of not knowing" and the other in the practicality of everyday life.

"I always thought that if something happened to my child, I would die - but you don't," she says.

She remembers a vivid dream about her son, in which she saw him across a motorway with her husband and younger son.

"I was elated they had found him, but then I woke up," she says.

Dreams about loved ones are common for people whose relatives are missing. Sometimes, people even dream the ends of the incomplete stories of the missing person - that they are either dead and at peace or happy somewhere far away.

Some cultures attach a lot of significance to these dreams, says Boss, and it helps people to cope better with the ambiguity.

Ambiguous loss is less difficult to negotiate if you live in a culture - for example, where religions such as Hinduism and Islam are dominant - that tend to "accept the fate that a higher power has delivered," Boss says.

"The more 'mastery-oriented' people are, the harder time they seem to have. Because you can't manage it, you can't master it, you have to live with not knowing and that is very hard for most of us to do."

Telling someone who has a missing relative to simply begin the mourning process is not helpful, she adds, because you cannot push those who are suffering in this way to accept any one scenario.

"My first question to the family is - what does this mean to you? And you get the answer and you can build on that," she says.

Nettles is closely following the developments of the missing airplane from Texas, where she now lives. Having every detail played out so publicly must be a "rollercoaster" for the passengers' loved ones, she says.

"It tears you apart - all the 'what-ifs' and 'maybes'." Nettles still wrestles with having decided to relax Damien's curfew deadline the night he disappeared in 1996.

Seventeen years on she has tried to move on for her family but she says she is "limping through life".

"I'm still hoping for something - I don't know what," she says.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26715476

El Salvador: Digging to solve hundreds of gang murders

El Salvador is a nation riddled with gangs - and consequently has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Most crimes go unpunished, but one man spends his time in the mountains, digging up the forgotten victims.

It had taken a few furtive phone calls, but eventually Israel Ticas, known as The Engineer, agreed to meet me high up on a mountainside.

I had wanted to interview him and see the latest site he was working at, but his bosses weren't having that.

"I have been told off for talking to the media recently," he explained, his voice a hoarse whisper down the line.

"I can talk to you but solely in a personal capacity."

A couple of nights later, we drove up the snaking mountain roads to Juayua, a small town outside San Salvador.

Surrounded on both sides by rich jungle, the altitude makes it the perfect environment for coffee plantations. And the perfect environment for hiding dead bodies.

Although he doesn't like the title, Israel Ticas is El Salvador's only forensic archaeologist.

A short, wiry guy with a dark, lined face, the result no doubt of so many hours working outside, he is shivering in the bitterly cold mountain air. We retire to a nearby restaurant to get warm.

Still wearing his hard hat, the dig he has come from was no hunt for Mayan pottery or dinosaur bones. It was a mass grave.

In El Salvador, Ticas is also known as The Engineer, a reference to the fact he initially studied computer engineering before turning his mind to solving murders.

"Forensic archaeology was unknown here in El Salvador," he tells me, his hands cupped around a mug of hot chocolate.

He learnt his skills as a criminal investigator abroad, particularly on visits to Africa where he worked on sites of mass killings and genocide.

Then he brought the DNA and victim identification techniques he had seen back to his native El Salvador - until recently the country with the highest murder rate in the world.

"What I did was fuse those methods," he says, "adapt and apply them to the criminal gangs and their modus operandi here."

Certainly El Salvador's drug war has kept him in work.



"I've identified 25 different methodologies of murder," he explains with the matter-of-factness of a scientist.

"Every criminal mind is different. But each of them innovates too.

"For example, when dismembering a body, if one person disposes of it in seven parts, someone else says 'I'm going to turn it into 20'," he says.

It is a sobering thought, and over the course of our conversation, he reveals many more grisly details, most of which are far too gruesome to repeat.

I want to know how such daily exposure to the country's extreme violence makes him feel - as a citizen rather than as a scientist.

"It makes me sad," he says, his first reference to emotion.

"I don't agree with anyone's right to take away the life of someone else - especially when it's a Salvadoran taking the life of another Salvadoran," he adds.

But then, it's quickly back to the relative safety of empirical science.

"I've worked on more than 2,000 crime scenes. Thanks to God for giving me this little bit of intelligence, I've been able to recover bodies from places no-one could have recovered them from.



"I've recovered people who were buried 60 metres deep, got all 206 bones of the body back, all that evidence. That is what gives me professional satisfaction."

Ticas was the subject of a recent documentary in which the filmmakers followed him as he exhumed remains from quarries and mines, shallow graves and deep pits across the country.

Often, the grieving mothers of the victims come to urge him personally to find their missing loved ones, heaping further pressure on a man already under considerable strain.

At times that strain begins to show.

More than once he mentions the difficulty of working on the bodies of dead children, of holding a six-year-old's skull in his hands and having to think of it as just evidence, as "material".

"I give conferences in university psychology departments and I tell them 'you should study me. What's wrong with me?'

'How can I work cleaning the face of a dead baby with a brush for two days and not feel anything?'"

His rhetorical questions hang in the mountain air.

"But then sometimes I might suddenly drop the brush, look to the heavens and ask God 'how can you allow this to happen?'"

His morbid fascination could just be the natural by-product of work which has undoubtedly brought some closure to hundreds of families in El Salvador.

An inherently private man, Ticas insists he is unaffected by post-traumatic stress.

Yet something he said revealed a little of what it must be like to be The Engineer of El Salvador: "Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a film. But then, when I open my eyes, it's reality."

Tuesday 25 March 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26662942

Hub bus disaster: Victims put to rest in mass grave, DNA taken

Funeral prayers were offered for the victims of a road tragedy in Hub that claimed 38 lives, according to a media report.

The bodies of 29 victims and body parts and ashes of others were buried in a mass grave in Hub. The dead were transported by Edhi ambulances from Karachi to Hub for burial.

Prior to the funeral, families of the victims protested against the government and criticised them for not sending anyone to take notice of the issue. On March 22, two trucks collided with two passenger buses in the Gadani area of Hub, burning to death at least 38 people, including several women and children.

The police had registered cases against the three drivers and officials collected DNA samples to identify the victims who were charred beyond recognition.

The Sindh Health Department had collected DNA samples of 30 bodies and 24 family members in order to enable cross-matching.

Medical experts from the Sindh police and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital took samples on the night of the accident.

The results of the DNA tests are expected to be received in 15 to 20 days.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

http://www.nation.com.pk/national/25-Mar-2014/victims-put-to-rest-in-mass-grave

Washington mudslide: death toll rises to 14 with 176 reports of missing

Authorities say the death toll from a massive mudslide in a rural part of Washington state has risen to 14 after searchers found six additional bodies among the debris, as dozens more remain unaccounted for.

It was virtually impossible to pin down the number of those missing. Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington said late Monday that officials were working off a potential list of 176 people, but he stressed that authorities believed that included many duplicate names.

Other authorities said they have not been able to determine whether there were multiple calls about the same missing person.

"It was Saturday and probably a higher number than what you would see on a week day," Pennington said of the victims during a press conference Monday. He added that it remains unclear how many structures were impacted at the time.

The 1-square-mile mudslide struck Saturday morning in Snohomish County, critically injuring several people and destroying about 30 homes. Authorities have described the search for additional survivors to be "grim" as crews battle uneven ground and rising waters.

Crews were able to get to the muddy, tree-strewn area after geologists flew over in a helicopter and determined it was safe enough for emergency responders and technical rescue personnel to search for possible survivors, Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday evening.

"We didn't see or hear any signs of life out there today," he said, adding that they did not search the entire debris field, only drier areas safe to traverse. "It's very disappointing to all emergency responders on scene."

Hots said the search under way is technically still a "rescue" operation but added that no survivors have been found since Saturday.

Before crews could get onto the debris field late Sunday morning, they looked for signs of life by helicopter. Authorities initially said it was too dangerous to send rescuers out on foot.

Rescuers' hopes of finding more survivors were buoyed late Saturday when they heard people yelling for help, but they were unable to reach anyone. The soupy mud was so thick and deep that searchers had to turn back.

The slide wiped through what neighbors described as a former fishing village of small homes -- some nearly 100 years old.

As the search for the missing continued, authorities said some may have been able to get out on their own. The number unaccounted for could change because some people may have been in cars and on roads when the slide hit just before 11 a.m. Saturday, authorities said.

Officials described the mudslide as "a big wall of mud and debris." It blocked about a mile of State Route 530 near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle. It was reported to be about 15 feet deep in some areas.

Authorities believe the slide was caused by ground made unstable by recent heavy rainfall.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee described the scene as "a square mile of total devastation" after flying over the disaster area midday Sunday. He assured families that everything was being done to find their missing loved ones.

"There is a full scale, 100 percent aggressive rescue going on right now," said Inslee, who proclaimed a state of emergency. The slide

blocked the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. With the water pooling behind the debris, authorities worried about downstream flooding and issued an evacuation notice Saturday. The water had begun to seep through the blockage Sunday afternoon, alleviating some concerns.

Snohomish County officials said Sunday that residents could return home during daylight hours. Even though the evacuation had been lifted, Inslee urged residents to remain alert.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for Snohomish County through Monday afternoon.

Shari Ireton, a spokeswoman for the Snohomish County sheriff's office, said Sunday that several people were injured in the slide.

A 6-month-old boy and an 81-year-old man remained in critical condition Sunday morning at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg said two men, ages 37 and 58, were in serious condition, while a 25-year-old woman was upgraded to satisfactory condition.

Bruce Blacker, who lives just west of the slide, doesn't know the whereabouts of six neighbors.

"It's a very close knit community," Blacker said as he waited at an Arlington roadblock before troopers let him through. There were almost 20 homes in the neighborhood that was destroyed, he said.

Search-and-rescue help came from around the region, including the Washington State Patrol and the Army Corps of Engineers. More than 100 were at the scene.

Evacuation shelters were set up at Post Middle School in Arlington and the Darrington Community Center.

Dane Williams, 30, who lives a few miles from the mudslide, spent Saturday night at a Red Cross shelter at the Arlington school.

He said he saw a few "pretty distraught" people at the shelter who didn't know the fate of loved ones who live in the stricken area.

"It makes me want to cry," Williams said Sunday.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/25/2-killed-in-big-wash-mudslide-sheriff-office-says/