Families urged to report relatives suspected killed in Hercules crash

The North Sumatra Police’s Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team has called on people to report to the authorities any relatives feared to have died in a military plane disaster last week.

The team asked families to report to the ante mortem post at Bhayangkara Hospital on Jl. Wahid Hasyim in Medan to help identify 10 remaining bodies and 22 body parts collected from the crash site.

The team chairman Sr. Comr. Setyo Purwanto said that the team had collected DNA from the 10 bodies and the 22 body parts to be matched with DNA collected from family members.

“If the families of the victims do not report to the ante mortem post, the 10 bodies and 22 body parts cannot be released,” Setyo said at the hospital on Monday.

In that case, he said, the bodies and body parts would be kept in cooling crates at the hospital.

Family members were also needed, Setyo said, so that their DNA could be matched with the DNA of the human remains.

Setyo also called on the families to bring documents, such as certificates or unwashed clothes, belonging to missing relatives.

Certificates belonging to the victims, he said, would be needed to be matched with the post mortem data taken from the bodies of the victims, while unwashed clothes were needed to check victims’ DNA.

Since the remaining bodies and body parts were moved from Adam Malik Hospital to Bhayangkara Hospital on Saturday, there have been no reports of missing people.

Setyo revealed that 119 people killed in the crash had been identified. Of them, 114 were the bodies of passengers on board the Hercules C-130 aircraft, while the remaining five identified victims had been on the ground.

Of the 114 bodies belonging to the passengers of the plane, 83 have been flown to different parts of Indonesia; the remaining 31 victims were residents of North Sumatra. All have now been buried by their families.

Flights carrying bodies from a hangar at Soewondo Air Base in Medan ceased on Saturday, but the Air Force said it would re-open the hangar if necessary.

“If more bodies are identified and have to be send to their respective families soon, then the Air Force is ready to fly them at any time,” said the commander of Air Force Operation Command I, Air Vice Marshal Agus Dwi Putranto.

The aircraft crashed into a residential area on Jl. Jamin Ginting, near Polonia Airport in North Sumatra’s capital of Medan, shortly after taking off from the Soewondo Air Base last Monday.

All crew and passengers perished in the crash, and the plane also crushed a number of buildings.

Compensation claims, meanwhile, have begun to be filed by the owners of properties damaged in the accident.

The owner of the Beraspati hotel, Suwondo, said he had suffered financial losses of some Rp 100 million from damage caused by the aircraft.

Earlier, Air Force Chief Marshal Agus Supriatna said that his office would compensate all damage to buildings and other property, including cars, caused by the Hercules crash.

Tuesday 7 July 2015

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/07/07/families-urged-report-relatives-suspected-killed-hercules-crash.html