US says some remains of sailors found on USS John McCain after collision

Navy divers searching a flooded compartment of the USS John S. McCain found remains of some of the 10 sailors missing in a collision between the warship and an oil tanker, the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander said Tuesday as he promised a full investigation.

Adm. Scott Swift also said at a news conference in Singapore, where the McCain is now docked, that Malaysian officials had found one body, but it had yet to be identified and it was unknown whether it was a crew member.

The collision before dawn on Monday near Singapore tore a gaping hole in the McCain’s left rear hull and flooded adjacent compartments including crew berths and machinery and communication rooms. Five sailors were injured.

“The divers were able to locate some remains in those sealed compartments during their search today,” Swift said, adding that it was “premature to say how many and what the status of recovery of those bodies is.”

“We will continue the search and rescue operations until the probability of discovering sailors is exhausted,” Swift said.

He would not say where in the destroyer the bodies were found.

It was the second major collision in two months involving the Pacific-based 7th Fleet, and the Navy has ordered a broad investigation into its performance and readiness. Seven sailors died in June when the USS Fitzgerald and a container ship collided in waters off Japan. There were two lesser-known incidents in the first half of the year. In January, the USS Antietam guided missile cruiser ran aground near Yokosuka base, the home port of the 7th Fleet, and in May another cruiser, the USS Lake Champlain from the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, had a minor collision with a South Korean fishing boat.

“While each of these four incidents is unique, they cannot be viewed in isolation,” Swift said.

He said the Navy would conduct an investigation “to find out if there is a common cause ... and if so, how do we solve that.”

He said he had heard some reports speculating that the Navy could have been a victim of a cyberattack. “We’ve seen no indications of that as yet, but ... we are not taking any consideration off the table,” he said.

Earlier Tuesday, the 7th Fleet said the sea search by aircraft and ships from the U.S., Singapore and Malaysian navies would continue east of Singapore where the McCain and the tanker collided.

Megan Partlow of Ohio, who said her fiance was on board the McCain, told The Associated Press in a Facebook message that they last communicated on Sunday and she was losing hope of seeing him again.

“My last text to him was ‘be safe,’ which is the same way we end every conversation. I’m just ready for answers,” she said. The identities of the missing have not been disclosed but Partlow said her fiance’s parents were in touch with the Navy’s family assistance center.



April Brandon of Michigan said her son, Ken Smith, 22, is among the missing sailors. Brandon told Detroit-area TV stations that she was visited by two officers Monday at her home. Illinois U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis says the mother of McCain crew member Logan Palmer says he is missing. Davis says Palmer comes from a “patriotic family” in the Decatur, Illinois, area.

Navy Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, on Monday ordered a pause in 7th Fleet operations for the next few days to allow commanders to get together with leaders, sailors and command officials and identify any immediate steps that need to be taken to ensure safety.

A broader U.S. Navy review will look at the 7th Fleet’s performance, including personnel, navigation capabilities, maintenance, equipment, surface warfare training, munitions, certifications and how sailors move through their careers. Richardson said the review will be conducted with the help of the Navy’s office of the inspector general, the safety center and private companies that make equipment used by sailors.

“Make no mistake,” Swift said Tuesday, “our sailors on these ships are doing critical work at sea. And for more than 70 years, the U.S. Navy has helped guarantee the security and stability of the western Pacific. ... We owe it to the sailors that man the 7th Fleet and their families to answer the questions that flow from the uncertainty of what happened, how could it happen, and what can be done to prevent such occurrences in the future.”

Swift also lauded the crew for righting the listing ship quickly as they tended to the injured. He said sailors set up watertight boundaries and shored up the ship’s internal structure, and were able to begin evacuating sailors by helicopter within an hour or two of the collision.

He said it was “quite extraordinary” for the McCain to be “up and running as an operational ship almost immediately after the collision.”

The McCain had been heading to Singapore on a routine port visit after conducting a sensitive freedom-of-navigation operation last week by sailing near one of China’s man-made islands in the South China Sea.

China, Washington’s main rival for influence in the Asia-Pacific, seized on the McCain collision to accuse the Navy of endangering maritime navigation in the region. This year’s string of accidents shows the U.S. Navy “is becoming a dangerous obstacle in Asian waters,” the official China Daily newspaper said in its online edition.

The McCain and the Alnic MC oil tanker collided about 4.5 nautical miles (8.3 kilometers) from Malaysia’s coast at the start of a designated sea lane for ships sailing into the busy Singapore Strait.

There was no immediate explanation for the collision. Singapore, at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, is one of the world’s busiest ports and a U.S. ally, with its naval base regularly visited by American warships.

The Singapore government said no crew were injured on the Liberian-flagged Alnic, which sustained damage to a compartment at the starboard, or right, side at the front of the ship some 7 meters (23 feet) above its waterline. The ship had a partial load of fuel oil, according to the Greek owner of the tanker, Stealth Maritime Corp. S.A., but no apparent spill.

Several safety violations were recorded for the oil tanker at its last port inspection in July, one fire safety deficiency and two safety-of-navigation problems. The official database for ports in Asia doesn’t go into details and the problems apparently were not serious enough for the tanker to be detained.

23 August 2017

https://www.apnews.com/acbdd603933f40c7b7d7540cb644e8cf

Landfill collapse kills eight in Guinea as family homes are buried by garbage

At least eight people, including two children, have died in Guinea after a rubbish dump site collapsed on houses due to heavy rains.

Dozens were also injured in the incident, which occurred on the outskirts of the capital Conarky on Tuesday ( 22 August).

The landslide submerged houses in the Dar Es Salam neighbourhood after an overnight deluge.

The bodies of the victims were taken to the local morgue. The death toll is expected to increase.

"The rubbish fell onto three homes," senior police official Boubacar Kasse, the police commissioner for Conakry, told AFP.

"There are still many people buried, and we have to do everything possible to save them. We have to get diggers in. Access to the area is very difficult," he continued.

Rescue teams are looking for survivors.

"Currently rescue operations are under way," the government said in a statement quoted by Reuters. "On this sad occasion, the government addresses its deepest condolences to the victims' families."

Dar Es Salam resident Yamoussa Soumah said: "I saw the mountain of garbage collapse on other people's houses. People were trapped. My wife and I heard the mud begin falling on our roof. We were able to escape, but we've lost everything."

Similar incidents have occurred in several countries across Africa in recent months.

Some of these countries are among the continent's poorest nations. They are vulnerable to heavy rainfalls and prone to national disasters due to a lack of urban drainage, and the fact that many houses – mostly ramshackle – are built on slopes.

At least 200 people were killed in a landslide in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) earlier in August. The incident occurred in the Tora village, situated along Lake Albert. The local governor called for the help of the international community to step up search and rescue operations.

"There are many people submerged whom we were unable to save," Pacifique Keta, the vice governor of Ituri province, told Reuters on 18 August. "The rescue is very complicated because there are mountains everywhere, which makes it very difficult to have access."

Around 500 people died in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown after torrential rains caused flooding and a massive mudslide on 14 August, leaving hundreds of survivors homeless.

The Red Cross said at least 600 people are still missing and search-and-rescue operations are ongoing.

Health workers warned of an impending health crisis as corpses had been left in the out in the street before mass burials took place.

What has been labelled as one of Africa's worst natural disasters of recent years took place months after at least 72 people were killed when a rubbish dump collapsed in Ethiopia.

The disaster at the Koshe Garbage Landfill, on the outskirts of the capital Addis Ababa, occurred on 12 March and destroyed makeshift houses at the site.

23 August 2017

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/landfill-collapse-kills-eight-guinea-family-homes-are-buried-by-garbage-1636279

After the mudslides: Sierra Leone's body collectors

After Sierra Leone's deadly mudslides, the race is on to retrieve the body parts of the victims before disease sets in.

Freetown, Sierra Leone - A group of young men wearing protective suits and face masks pace the riverbanks looking for body parts.

One of them removes his mask and starts to chant, "if you smell something bad then tell us, if you smell something bad then tell us…."

Somebody upstream calls and the team rushes forwards, rolling out a body bag as they do so.

A man is standing on the riverbank pointing to a ball of branches, mud and plastic. He gestures that there is a bad smell.

The body collectors wade through the water and start searching under the rubble. After five minutes one of them pulls out a foot; mangled, white and rotting. They drop it into the body bag.

This group of volunteer body collectors, all of whom are young men from neighbouring communities, has been working for seven days to gather the remains of those killed by a deadly mudslide in Sierra Leone on Monday, August 14.

So far, 499 bodies have been unearthed. More than 600 people remain missing. Those who know the affected communities estimate that the real number of victims could be well over 1,000.

"The problem," says body collector Mohamed Jalloh, "is that many of the bodies were torn up by boulders and trees."

After weeks of heavy rain, the side of Sugar Loaf Mountain collapsed, crushing the settlement below called Regent.

The mudslide sent a torrent of water, mud and rocks tumbling down the valley and swept away houses in two other communities; Kaningo and Kumayama.

Some of the people living higher up the riverbanks were able to escape their flooded houses by climbing onto their roofs. But those on the lower flats had no chance.

With body parts still strewn around the riverbanks a week after the disaster, there is a high risk of diseases, including cholera and typhoid, spreading.

The Ministry of Health has issued a statement urging the public to "drink only water collected from a safe source" and to "wash all fruits and vegetables well with clean water before eating". They say that this will help to reduce outbreaks of water borne diseases.



In Regent, volunteer body collector Aruna Momoh says they are still unearthing body parts. "There are still people buried," he says. "We have managed to get the ones in shallow ground out, but there are more deep down."

He has been at the site every day since the disaster. "I live nearby and rushed here on the morning of the mudslide. It happened around 5:45am. By the time I reached there were government ambulances and NGOs. Machinery didn’t arrive until Tuesday. By Thursday the place started to stink, the smell of rotting flesh was everywhere," he says.

Fesellie Marah, a young man from Kumayama, says that ambulances and stretchers didn't reach his community until Monday afternoon. "All we had were gloves and some lappas [sheets of colourful material]. We were pulling masses of bodies out of the rubble and piling them up in the front room of a broken house," he says.

"We'd use the lappas to collect body parts - feet, legs, hands … once they were full, we would tie them up and put it in the same room as the bodies. In the afternoon government ambulances and The Red Cross came and collected the corpses."

He remembers how families were crowding the bodies, crying and screaming. Some were trying to identify their family members, but it was almost impossible because of the condition the bodies were in. Many were crushed, and they were all covered in mud.

Marah says he saw a boy being swept down the river, screaming and holding on to a floating fridge. "We couldn't reach him, but we were all shouting encouragement, telling him to hold on tight. Further downstream he caught on to a palm tree and managed to climb out. He survived."

In Kaningo, Mohamed Jalloh and his friends are still working to collect bodies. Jalloh works as a night guard in an NGO's compound. Since the mudslide, he has been working his regular job at night and collecting bodies by day.

"Since Monday I have hardly slept," he says. "Each day I finish work at 6:30am and come here by 7. Then I sleep for just two hours in the late afternoon. I have so much sympathy for my brothers and sisters who were killed. I want to help reduce the health risk by collecting all the body parts. If we sit down and do nothing, then more people will die from diseases."

Although Jalloh and his colleagues have worked hard to try and collect all the corpses from the wreckage, there are still decaying body parts strewn around, one week on. Furth

er down the river, a group of boys is watching a dog eat something beside a pile of muddy branches and plastic. A sharp, sickly smell hangs in the air. The dog is chewing on a piece of human flesh.

"There are bodies under there," says one of the boys, pointing to the rubble. "But we can't get to them, the dogs went in and started pulling out bits of bodies."

An old man arrives, groans in disgust and throws a stone towards the dog. It runs away, dropping the muddy flesh on the ground.

23 August 2017

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/mudslides-sierra-leone-body-collectors-170822072518926.html