In 2013, 110 found dead in Chennai bus terminal

Bus stations are meant to be transitory points but not usually for a final trip to the great beyond. And yet police have in the past year found the bodies of 110 people in the teeming Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus, through which 2 lakh people pass every day.

Most of the dead were elderly people, abandoned by their families, CMBT police inspector Sam Vincent said. Policemen take it on themselves to give those who are unidentifiable a decent burial, performing the funeral rites for more than 100 people in 2013.

Vincent, who maintains a record of elderly people rescued from the bus terminus and of those found dead, said policemen were forced to spend most of their time keeping track of bodies found in the terminus, attempting to identify the dead and contacting their relatives, or trying to trace the origins of elderly people abandoned by their families. "It's just part of the job," Vincent said. "It is our duty to make sure the dead are buried respectfully." With more than 800 long distance buses arriving or departing daily, police at the station often find it impossible to track down relatives of people abandoned or identify the dead.

In some instances, people are found dead on the platforms in the terminus. Bus crews also discover the bodies of people in their vehicles at the end of a trip.

Others who frequent CMBT, like autorickshaw driver Prabhu Kumaran, say they have seen people abandoning elderly relatives at the terminus. "They come by autorickshaw and vanish after leaving behind elderly people," Kumaran said. "Most of the senior citizens left behind are disabled in some way. They either cannot speak or hear; some cannot walk or take care of themselves."

He says he alerted the CMBT police about elderly people being abandoned at the terminus on three occasions in six months.

Inspector Vincent says the CMBT police have to deal with around 35 % of all the unidentified people found dead in the city. The 135 police stations in Chennai report four to five cases a month .At the CMBT police station, the number scan be as high as 12-14 each month.

"Police constable K Selvamani does a very tough job. He has disposed of most of the bodies found at CMBT," Anna Nagar deputy commissioner of police S Xavier Dhanraj said.

Selvamani , 36, a native of Chidambaram who lives with his family in Korattur, joined the force in 1999. "I was initially hesitant when I found a body in the terminus because I did not want to get involved. But giving abandoned people a proper burial now gives me peace of mind," he said.

"I am not a pious man," he said. "But I don't understand how people who go to temples to worship can dump elderly people or the bodies of the dead in a bus terminus."

Wednesday 08 January 2014

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/In-2013-110-found-dead-in-Chennai-bus-terminal/articleshow/28532276.cms

US military helicopter crashes in Britain, munitions across site

British police said on Wednesday they would be working with the US Air Force and others to find out why a US military helicopter crashed on the coast of eastern England, killing all four crew on board.

Wreckage included munitions was spread over a wide area of the crash site in difficult terrain. The helicopter, a Pave Hawk assigned to the 48th Fighter Wing based at RAF Lakenheath air base, was performing a low-level training mission along the Norfolk coast when it went down in marshland on Tuesday evening. The cause of the crash, which occurred in a nature reserve near the village of Cley next the Sea, was not known. The area is about 130 miles (210 km) northeast of London. "We will be working with our partners at the Ministry of Defence, Air Accident Investigation Branch and US Air Force to gather all evidence from the scene and then recover the aircraft," said Chief Superintendent Bob Scully of Norfolk Constabulary, the local police force. "This is difficult terrain with marshland and tides coupled with wreckage containing munitions covering a large area," he said in a statement.

A 400-metre (quarter mile) area around the crash site remained cordoned off to preserve public safety. No one on the ground was thought to have been hurt, authorities said. Earlier, the 48th Fighter Wing, which also flies F-15 fighter jets, confirmed the deaths of all four airmen on board and said their names would be released 24 hours after their next-of-kin had been informed. The Pave Hawk is made by Sikorsky Aircraft Co, a unit of United Technologies Corp . According to the US Air Force website, it is a modified version of the Army Black Hawk and its primary mission is "to conduct day or night operations into hostile environments to recover downed aircrew or other isolated personnel during war". RAF Lakenheath is home to Europe's only F-15 fighter wing.

Mr Scully told the press conference: 'The crashed aircraft did contain ammunition. 'That ammunition is not of any great significance. It is bullets, if you will, but those are scattered about that area that I just described to you, and so the site is hazardous to members of the public and those people that would normally visit this area for birdwatching and other nature-interest activities, so for the present time we will be assisting and working with the military to ensure public safety by restricting access to that area.'

SCATTERED DEBRIS

Scully told reporters at Cley next the Sea that debris was scattered across an area about the size of a football field. Most of the debris was in marshland although some of it was vulnerable to high tides and was being removed swiftly.

Scully said a coroner, who under English law will be responsible for the investigation into the four deaths, was carrying a daylight assessment and once he had given his consent, authorities would arrange for the removal of the bodies. "The situation that we have now is that we are obviously moving from a potential rescue operation to one of preserving the scene and carrying out an investigation," Scully told reporters. "We are now working with the US military and the RAF (Britain's Royal Air Force) to assist in their investigation and ours at the present time, and at some point we will hand over to the air investigation side of the military, both UK and US"

A second helicopter, which had been taking part in the same training exercise as the one that crashed, had landed at the site and was still there, Scully said. "It will be a matter for the investigation to determine whether or not there was any causal link. My understanding is that apparently not, but we don't know. And that's the important thing, we shouldn't be speculating here," Scully said.

Inquiries into the cause of the crash, as well as the recovery of the wreckage and the second aircraft, are expected to take a number of days to complete, due to the geography and the munitions from the crashed helicopter.

The cordon remains this morning and the A149 through Cley is closed.

NATURE RESERVE STAFF RUSH TO HELP EMERGENCY SERVICES Staff at the nature reserve close to where the Pave Hawk crashed gave emergency services advice when they first arrived on the scene.

The head of the wildlife trust which runs Cley Marshes reserve said he initially feared two people on the ground could have been killed.

Brendan Joyce, chief executive of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, told the Norwich Evening News: 'I was concerned when I heard four people had lost their lives. The initial reports were it was an Apache helicopter, and they only fly two, so I wondered who else was involved.'

He added: 'My understanding is that it came down on the shingle bank, so not on the actual reserve. We don’t know what the cause was at all.

'It would have been dark. There would not have been any staff or volunteers on the site at the time.

'I do know that our staff locally initially assisted in terms of advice to the emergency services.

'Obviously the emergency services and military have taken over pretty quickly and have sealed the area off. We are not involved.

'We are deeply shocked by it and our first thoughts are with the families of those who have lost their lives.'

Details of the four crew members will not be released until next of kin have been informed and it is not believed that anyone in the surrounding area has been injured, police said.

Norfolk Constabulary Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Hamlin said: 'I would like to pass on my condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of those US Air Force personnel who have sadly lost their lives in this tragic incident.

'Emergency services, the military, partner agencies and volunteers have been working through the night to deal with this difficult situation on our coastline and I would also like to thank them for their professionalism and resilience.

'As our inquiry moves on today and the recovery of the aircraft begins, I would urge the public to stay away from the area - the cordon and road closures are in place to allow our experts to carry out these processes safely and there is no risk to members of the public if this section of marshland is avoided.'

Bernard Bishop, a Norfolk Wildife Trust warden based at Cley, said his house overlooks the crash site and he had never seen anything like it.

'I heard the helicopter flying overhead and watched from my back garden,' he said.

'It was very quickly obvious something serious was wrong. The search and rescue crews quickly arrived and it was my job to escort them over the marsh.

'The conditions are very difficult because the marsh has flooded twice in recent weeks so that's hampering their efforts to recover the bodies and make the helicopter safe.

'There's only one track in and out of the crash site, which is also restricting their movements. It's just awful. I've never known anything like and never seen so many people here at one time.'

Peter and Sue McKnestiey, who run Cookies crab shop in Salthouse, have been making cups of tea for the search teams.

Mrs McKnestiey said: 'We were watching TV at about 7pm. We heard the helicopter come over very fast and very low.

'I don't know about engines but I am used to the sound of helicopters and this sounded very heavy and very unusual'

Cley Marshes is Norfolk Wildlife Trust's oldest and best known nature reserve. It was purchased in 1926 making it the first Wildlife Trust reserve in the country.

The Cley Marshes website says its shingle beach and saline lagoons, along with the grazing marsh and reedbed support large numbers of wintering and migrating wildfowl and waders, as well as bittern, marsh harrier and bearded tit.

Richard Kelham, chairman of Cley Parish Council, said: 'It looks as though the military helicopter has come down in the middle of the bird reserve. The incident is very sad and there is a 400m cordon surrounding the area.'

Lieutenant Keenan Kunst, who is based at Lakenheath, confirmed that the helicopter that crashed was based there.

An RAF Lakenheath tweet sent later read: 'We can confirm that one of our HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters was involved in an incident during a training mission outside Cley-Next-The-Sea.'

The RNLI said three of its boats were called out at about 7.45pm but were called back because the incident had happened on land.

A spokesman for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution said: 'We were asked for three lifeboats to respond to reports that an aircraft had possibly ditched in the sea.

'Lifeboats Wells, Sheringham and Cromer were launched at the request of the coastguard but were stood down when it was confirmed that the aircraft had come down over land.'

Wednesday 08 January 2013

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-us-military-helicopter-crashes-in-britain-munitions-across-site-1947336

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2535501/BREAKING-NEWS-Four-people-believed-died-helicopter-crash-Norfolk.html

Goa building collapse: Death toll rises to 19

The death toll in Canacona building collapse has gone up to 19 after one more body was recovered, officials said.

"One body was recovered last evening and another one late night, taking the death toll to 19," Director of Fire and Emergency Services Ashok Menon told PTI.

The rescue operation, which had stopped after two adjacent buildings tilted, resumed yesterday afternoon.

The under-construction building in Chawdi area of Canacona, 70 kms from here, collapsed last Saturday. Its location on a narrow lane, a kilometre off the national highway linking Goa to Karnataka, had made rescue operations difficult.

According to the officials, at least ten more bodies are still under the debris.

The state government has called in special machinery to demolish three adjacent buildings, including the two which are tilted.

The operation to demolish the buildings will start in the afternoon, officials said.

Wednesday 08 January 2014

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-goa-building-collapse-death-toll-rises-to-19-1947221

NBI on Haiyan bodies: No choice but temporary burial

With no refrigerator vans for disaster victim identification (DVI) operations in Yolanda-hit areas, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said unprocessed bodies in advanced state of decomposition are left with no choice but a temporary burial.

Dr Wilfredo Tierra, officer-in-charge (OIC) of the NBI Medico-Legal Division, said the bodies will be buried in shallow graves and exhumed later on for processing – an arrangement agreed on with the local government.

In an interview with Rappler on Wednesday, January 8, Tierra explained that "continuous verbal requests" by their bureau for refrigerator vans had been addressed to various agencies even before Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit.

Because of the less-than-ideal conditions in their DVI operations work site, the team is able to process only 40 bodies compared to what should normally be 150 bodies in a day.

Thus far, 418 unidentified bodies have been processed for DNA sampling and buried permanently at the Holy Cross Memorial. The samples will be kept for DNA testing later on.

The ante-mortem phase of the process will involve DNA testing of relatives coming forward to compare with that of the dead for identification.

The OIC added that DVI has always been a "tedious, difficult, and costly" process, citing the 5,000 dead bodies in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in Thailand which took up to two years to identify.

Constraints

Tierra’s division deploys a 13-man team working on a rotational 9-day basis – including during the previous holiday season when the 418 bodies were processed and buried at the Holy Cross Memorial, contradicting the pronouncement of Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez that the team halted operations.

The team is composed of forensic doctors, photographers, and chemists from the NBI Forensic Chemistry Division.

Due to the disproportionate number of government personnel to the dead, the team is forced to do tasks other than the processing of bodies. They have been moving bodies as well – a task supposedly for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP).

The NBI team on scheduled rotation, he said, also faces other constraints, including the frequent rain in the area which causes flooding and makes it harder to harvest specimen for processing.

In the initial phases, the lack of air transportation was also a problem.

Despite the constraints, the NBI assured the public that it is relying on tried and tested protocol – the Interpol DVI standards.

Tierra – who has been with the NBI Medico-Legal Division for 17 years now – said the Interpol DVI standards are in accordance with the protocol that the team employed in previous natural and man-made disasters. These included typhoons Reming, Sendong, Pablo, and the 2006 ULTRA stampede.

Multi-agency task

The NBI Medico-Legal Division is taking the lead in the DVI operations in affected areas, but the Department of Health (DOH) is in charge of the overall management of the dead.

Managing the thousands of dead bodies remains a “multi-agency task,” with the DOH, local government units, AFP, BFP, and non-government agencies such as the World Health Organization and International Committee of the Red Cross.

Tierra said the scale of Yolanda’s devastation is the biggest that he has encountered in his more than a decade of medico-legal service in government.

Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) devastated parts of the Eastern Visayas in November 2013, leaving thousands homeless and mourning for the dead.

Speed should not prevail over accuracy

"Speed should not prevail over accuracy," said Justice Secretary Leila De Lima about the ongoing burial of corpses in areas battered by Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan).

It is the need for accuracy, among other things, that has delayed burial of the rapidly decomposing bodies.

"The corpses were not buried right away because they were still being processed. Processing is time-consuming," she explained, almost two* months after Yolanda devastated the Eastern Visayas. Processing, she added, is necessary to identify those left dead by the storm.

"We don't want to be turning over the wrong dead bodies to certain families," she emphasized.

The explanation came after the media reported 1,400 bodies left lying on a muddy open field in San Isidro, a farming village on the outskirts of hard-hit Tacloban City. There were also reports of unburied bodies in other devastated areas 7 weeks after the disaster.

She quelled fears that the government was taking its time in burying the bodies, while citizens took it upon themselves to bury loved ones and complete strangers.

"We are on double time to bury bodies, both processed and unprocessed," the DOJ chief said.

. To remedy the slow-going operation, local governments and national agencies agreed to temporarily bury the bodies. They will then be exhumed later on for processing by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), said De Lima.

Uncooperative weather

Rainshowers that drenched the Eastern Visayas the past few weeks was another major cause of delay.

"There were factors like rainy days in succession. It's difficult to work in a rainy environment. It's one of the causes for the delay in burials," she explained.

Contrary to media reports, the NBI did not stop rehabilitation operations during the holiday break, De Lima clarified. A skeletal force left in Tacloban continued processing of the bodies.

"Before holiday break, there were more than 400 processed bodies which were not yet buried. During the break, they were buried," she said in a mix of English and Filipino.

More help on the way

After an initial rift between the national and local governments that also hampered relief and rehabilitation efforts, De Lima said the two are coordinating closely with one another for burial operations.

More teams of forensic doctors and chemists who can help in the processing of dead bodies are on their way to Tacloban. Three teams were sent there on January 2 and more will be deployed, she said.

Such scientists are needed to identify bodies in an advanced state of decomposition. With their facial features marred by decomposition, only scientific analysis of their DNA can unlock their identities.

Rehabilitation czar Panfilo Lacson said the burial, which started on Thursday, January 2, is expected to be completed on Tuesday, January 7, if the weather cooperates. He said that Health Undersecretary Janette Garin is in Barangay (village) Suhi in Tacloban to personally supervise operations.

The Department of Public Works and Highways sent additional equipment such as backhoes and payloaders, to speed up the mass burial. By Saturday, January 4, the team is targeting the processing and burial of 300 bodies.

Wednesday 08 January 2014

http://www.rappler.com/nation/47496-nbi-haiyan-bodies-no-choice-temporary-burial

http://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/disasters/typhoon-yolanda/47186-doj-haiyan-burials-accuracy-speed

Project to honour 'unrecorded' WW1 dead

A new project is being launched to honour hundreds of “forgotten” soldiers from both world wars who are not currently commemorated.

The National Army Museum, in west London, has established a dedicated unit to investigate cases where the deaths of soldiers, sailors and airmen from the conflicts were inadvertently overlooked by the authorities.

Once each case has been verified, the name of the fallen serviceman will be passed on to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in order to ensure it is added to a memorial.

The project starts this month and is to run for two years. There is already a backlog of 360 names, submitted by relatives and amateur historians, and the museum believes that this year’s centenary of the outbreak of the First World War will lead to a far greater number of names being put forward, as people research their family history and make discoveries.

Every British or Commonwealth soldier killed in either war should be commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. However, bureaucratic lapses mean that many were accidentally omitted from the records.

Some experts have suggested there could be as many as 10,000 names mistakenly left off the records, which could now be added.

Among them was Lance Corporal Peter Pollock, 21, killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The omission was detected by amateur historians and his name has been added to the Thiepval Memorial, in France, to those killed in the battle for whom there is no known grave.

The task of investigating such claims was previously performed by the Ministry of Defence, but it will now be taken on by the dedicated, two man team at the museum, in Chelsea, as part of its plans to mark the centenary.

David Bownes, assistant director of the National Army Museum, said: “Restoring honour to the casualties of the World Wars is a deserving enterprise and one that the National Army Museum’s experts are well-equipped to investigate and substantiate.”

The majority of the missing names discovered so far by researchers are from the First World War.

The CWGC was not founded until three years into the conflict, in 1917 – initially as the Imperial War Graves Commission – and did not start its work in earnest until after the war ended. Its role was to ensure that every war dead had an official headstone or, if they had no known grave, were commemorated on an official memorial.

It drew up lists of the dead and set about trying to locate those already buried, but in an era before computers, many of the dead appear to have fallen from the records or otherwise been lost in the fog of war.

Many of those omitted were those, like Pollock, the son of a Presbyterian minister, serving in the Royal Irish Rifles, whose bodies were never found.

John Bull, from Stockport, was also killed on the first day of the Somme – July 1 1916 – and like Pollock his body was never recovered.

Bull had enlisted in the second Pals battalions of the Manchester Regiment in September 1914, alongside three brothers, Ernest, William and Abraham.

Due to an error, his death was not properly recorded – although that of his brother Ernest, fatally wounded on the same day, was – and his name was not passed on to the Commission, until it was found to be missing by researchers. His name has now joined Pollock’s on the Thiepval memorial.

Many of those overlooked died of wounds or illness, away from the front line, among them Reginald Buckman, 25, a footman from Ardingly, Sussex who was serving as a Bombardier in the Royal Field Artillery. He died of his injuries in hospital in London in October 1916, a month after being shot on the Western Front. He now has an official headstone on his grave in Highbrook, West Sussex.

Wednesday 08 January 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10557073/Project-to-honour-unrecorded-WW1-dead.html

Kegworth air disaster: The day disaster struck as passenger plane fell from the skies on to M1

The village of Kegworth is marking the 25th anniversary of a fatal air disaster with which its name will always be associated.

On 8th January 1989, a British Midland flight from Heathrow to Belfast crashed into an embankment on the M1 motorway after attempting an emergency landing.

Of the 126 people on board, 47 died and a further 74 were injured.

The Boeing 747 experienced problems soon after taking off from Heathrow Airport. Flight 092 was scheduled to travel from Heathrow to Belfast but was diverted to East Midlands Airport after the pilot reported an emergency situation in one of the engines.

A loud bang from one of the engines sent a ripple of panic through the aircraft, especially as some passengers could see sparks flying from the jet.

Confusion about which of the engines had dropped out led to Captain Kevin Hunt and his co-pilot David McClelland shutting down the only working engine, leaving the plane gliding.

Its tail bounced off the ground about a quarter of a mile from the beginning of East Midlands Airport runway, before it crashed into an embankment on the M1 motorway.

In an astonishing stroke of luck, no vehicles were travelling on that section of the motorway when the plane came down.

The plane was only 20 seconds from the runway but, after narrowly missing the village of Kegworth, the 12-week-old Boeing 737-400 crashed on to the M1.

The fuselage broke into three sections on impact, immediately killing more than 30 of the people on board, the cockpit separating from the main body and the tail folding back.



Most of the deaths occurred at the front of the plane, but 79 people, including the two pilots, survived.

AA patrolmen arriving in the scene spoke at the time of "complete devastation with seats and bodies piled up everywhere".

Firefighters who had been alerted to the mechanical problems were waiting for the flight to land at East Midlands Airport.

When they saw the cloud of smoke, they fought through trees and bushes at the edge of the runway to reach the wreckage.

At Derbyshire Royal Infirmary a major accident was put into operation. A medical flying squad of 16 doctors and nurses travelled to the scene to treat survivors.

Surgeons carried out more than 80 operations during the first 36 hours after the crash.



Having heard about the Kegworth air disaster from a colleague, Professor Wallace rushed to the aid of the people involved and became immersed in a rescue effort in which he oversaw the care of four patients.

Even after his efforts on January 8, 1989, however, Professor Wallace's involvement with the disaster continued.

He started a task force which painstakingly analysed the disaster and revolutionised the safety of air travel.

"I remember the day after the accident, I was chatting to one of my colleagues and we both came to the conclusion that this was an unusual accident," he said.

"We set up a research project which looked at the cause of death in those that died and how the injuries had occurred in those that survived.

"We felt there was an opportunity to look at the safety in a crashed aircraft and how things might be improved – there were lessons that we learned from Kegworth."

The project, called Nottingham Leicester Derby Belfast (NLDB), eventually involved 30 people and produced several major recommendations which were adopted to improve safety.

"A lot of people are now very grateful for them [the changes the research made] – we learned, for instance, that the floors of the airplane at that time were not sufficiently strong because seats were ripped off the floor and a lot of the people at the front of the plane were concertinaed together and effectively crushed to death."



The task group also researched the brace position – which was then adopted as a result.

Professor Fraser said: "We worked on identifying the best brace position and how you should position yourself to reduce to the minimum the issues you get on an impact.

"We believe it has had benefits and there has been a couple of crashes where people did adopt the position and were uninjured. Certainly you reflect on it and think we did that research and we think it has benefited the industry and passengers and we are very proud.

The horror of the event is something that many people won't forget and Professor Fraser, who has worked in Nottingham since 1985 after coming from Manchester, remembers the aftermath clearly.

He said: "I was working in my office at QMC doing some research. My fellow came into my office and said a friend had told him a plane had crashed.

"We went down to the A and E department to see what we could do to help. Within ten minutes, the first casualties appeared and we had severely injured bodies come into Queen's to resuscitate."

The professor of orthopaedic and accident surgery at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust added: "It did feel different. We were aware it was a serious accident from the severity of the first of the casualties – and as more were delivered, it became clear that this had been pretty awful and that people had been killed and seriously hurt.

"Everybody who was available came to help and we allocated about two or three doctors and nurses to each of the badly injured plane occupants. One of the patients who I looked after had a bad head injury and his skull was missing at the back – others had very severe fractures, abdominal injuries and chest injuries.

"People were in remarkably good control. It's very much a situation where, when things become difficult, you focus on providing the best service you can in difficult circumstances. I think we coped admirably well."

Wednesday 08 January 2014

http://www.itv.com/news/2014-01-08/village-marks-25th-anniversary-of-kegworth-air-disaster/

http://www.nottinghampost.com/day-disaster-struck-passenger-plane-fell-skies-M1/story-20413253-detail/story.html