The M40 Crash: Day trip to disaster for 11 young musicians 20 years ago

The children of Hagley Roman Catholic High School were in high spirits when they left their lessons behind on Wednesday afternoon and headed for London to see the country's finest young musicians at the Royal Albert Hall.

Hagley's own musicians had performed for Pope John Paul II in Rome and for pilgrims at Lourdes but their teacher, Eleanor Fry, 35, wanted them to see the Schools Proms. She told the excited teenagers that she wanted them to emulate the orchestras at the three-day event.

Miss Fry, who normally taught mathematics and music, was a well- liked, enthusiastic teacher with a love for music. She had often driven the school minibus on trips at home and abroad and was a competent and experienced driver, according to David Stanley, the education officer for Hereford and Worcester. The eight-year-old bus she was driving passed its MoT test only two weeks ago.

Dr Bernard Tedd, 35, a physics teacher, was driving a second minibus, making the total on the trip 28. He said they arrived at the proms at 6.15pm and settled down to enjoy a three-hour performance.

Afterwards, the two satisfied parties took on petrol, searched in vain for fish and chips and, after a final toilet stop in north London, headed home and became separated.

It was the last time Dr Tedd saw the 11 victims of the minibus crash, though, after making his agonising decision to drive on when he saw a vehicle ablaze near Junction 15 of the M40, he said he had a feeling of dread that it was theirs.

Police and fire brigade officials confirmed yesterday that he could have done nothing. Malcolm Tandy, a Warwickshire Fire Brigade public relations officer who was at the scene, said: 'Some people had already pulled seven children clear, but three were dead. The emergency services had arrived, so stopping would have been useless.

'Dr Tedd saved those children from witnessing the worst accident any of us has ever seen. I have to gather video evidence of accidents all the time. I had never seen anything like that.'

The minibus had ploughed into the back of a stationary motorway maintenance 'block vehicle', a 12.5-ton Bedford lorry fitted with a crash cushion made of honeycombed aluminium. Its driver, who has not been named, had stopped on the hard shoulder and was telephoning the police to tell them his crew of nine was moving on to another section.

According to David Lynn, head of engineering services in Warwickshire, the driver was following normal procedure and witnesses had confirmed that the vehicle's safety lights were flashing.

Emergency workers at the scene were quick to notice that a large arrow on the back of the block vehicle was pointing to the left, something which they initially felt may have confused Miss Fry, but Warwickshire County Council officials later said the arrow was obscured at the time of impact by the crash cushion.

'When the block vehicle is protecting workers on the motorway, the cushion is down,' said a spokeswoman. 'When it is not working, it is in the up position and covers the arrow. It must have been up and was probably destroyed in the ensuing blaze. If it had been down, it would have softened the impact for the Transit van, too.'

First on the scene was Patrick Molloy, a motorist from Liverpool. He said he tried to get someone out of the passenger seat but the door was jammed, so he ran to open the rear doors.

'I realised there were loads of people all on top of each other,' he said. 'I jumped into the van and started pulling them out. Everyone was unconscious. While I was doing this, another man started helping me and we noticed that there were flames spreading. Within seconds they were getting bigger.

'We managed to get about seven people out but this other man said 'Get out, the van is going to blow'. The tyres were exploding and the petrol tank was fizzling. There was thick black smoke everywhere. We did the best we could.'

Red Watch from Leamington Spa fire station attended in three fire engines but there was nothing they could do save put out the blaze and cut off the van's roof to remove the charred bodies.

Mr Tandy said: 'It is always difficult attending the scene of road traffic accidents but this was particularly traumatic, particularly because of the age of the children.' He said the firefighters involved had been told post traumatic stress counselling was available for all those who needed it.

Bob Martin, one of the first ambulance officers on the scene, said the minibus was 'an inferno' with flames shooting about 30 feet into the air. 'I have never seen anything like it before in my life,' he said. 'There were seven people laid out at the side of the road and others were standing around crying. It was awful.'

Yesterday, the police named those killed in the crash as James Hickman, 12, Ruth Clark, 12, Nicola Misiolek, 12, Fiona Cook, 12, Richard Pagett, 12, Clare Fitzgerald, 13, Adele Howell, 12, Anna Mansell, 14, Charlotte Bligh, 13, and Louise Gunn, 12. The eleventh victim, Charlene O'Dowd, 12, died in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, last night.

The three surviving children were Polly Caldwell and Bethan O'Doherty, who were described as 'stable', and Katie Murray, who was described as 'critical'. All three are in South Warwickshire hospital, Warwick.

Monday 18 November 2013

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/the-m40-crash-day-trip-to-disaster-for-11-young-musicians-steve-boggan-outlines-the-events-leading-to-the-accident-which-killed-11-pupils-and-a-teacher-after-an-outing-to-london-1505175.html

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Egypt train crashes into mini-bus, kills 26

At least 26 people were killed in Egypt when a train ploughed into a truck and a mini-bus at a railway crossing early Monday, the health ministry said.

Another 28 people were injured in the accident, which happened south of Cairo.

Local police chief Kamal al-Dali told state television the mini-bus had been carrying guests home from a wedding.

The head of the Egyptian Railway Authority said the drivers of the vehicles had ignored warning lights and chains blocking entry to the crossing, and tried to go across the tracks.

"The bus stormed the crossing, according to initial reports," Hussein Zakaria told state television.

"The crossing was closed with chains, (and) there were warning lights," he said.

The train, whose driver survived the crash, continued for almost one kilometre (0.6 miles) before coming to a halt, he said.

Egypt's rail network has a poor safety record stemming largely from lack of maintenance and poor management.

In January, 17 people died when a train transporting conscripts derailed, and in November 2012, 47 school children were killed when a train crashed into their bus.

Both the transport minister and the railway authority head were forced to resign as a result of that accident, which was blamed on a train signal operator who fell asleep on the job.

The government formed a panel to investigate, but as with similar tragedies in the past, it did little to shed light on the details and less still to bring about accountability.

In Egypt's deadliest railway tragedy, the bodies of more than 360 passengers were recovered from a train after a fire in 2002.

Egyptians have long complained that the government has failed to deal with chronic transport problems, with roads as poorly maintained as railway lines.

Monday's accident took place days after train services resumed completely across the country, after they were halted due to unrest following the overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi in July.

Monday 18 November 2013

http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-train-crashes-bus-kills-20-010226122.html

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Briton among 50 dead in Russian plane crash in Kazan

All 44 passengers and six crew members on board a Boeing 737 that crashed on landing in the Russian city of Kazan have been killed, sources at the scene have confirmed.

The UK Foreign Office has said that a Briton was among the dead. Russian media reports identified the British national as Donna Bull, 53, who was working as an educational consultant at Bellerbys College in Cambridge.

Also on board were the son of Tatarstan's president and the regional chief of the Russian intelligence agency FSB. The crash also claimed the lives of two children.

Forensic experts are working to establish the identities of all the victims. A search and rescue operation in and around the airport has ended as all 50 bodies have now been recovered.

The passenger plane is believed to have encountered difficulties while landing and exploded into a ball of fire on touching down. The jet's nose is reported to have hit the runway when the pilot was making a second landing attempt after the first one apparently failed.

"The plane touched the ground and burst into flame," said Sergei Izvolsky, spokesperson for the aviation monitoring agency Rosaviatsia.

Crash investigators initially said the possible causes of the accident were a technical malfunction or pilot error.

The head of the transportation department of the regional Investigation Committee, Alexander Poltinin, said the pilot made two attempts at landing the aircraft for unknown reasons.

A Kazan airport air traffic controller, Kirill Kornishin, told state broadcaster Rossiya-24 that the pilot reported a problem with the “landing configuration” as he began attempting a second approach.

“He reported that he was performing another circle, and I dictated the data to him, according to procedure, and that was that,” Kornishin said.

The jet belonged to Tatarstan Airlines and was travelling from Moscow to Kazan, the capital of the oil-rich province of Tatarstan.

The authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the crash. Apart from Boeing officials and Russian authorities, experts from the US National Transportation Safety Board are expected to take part in the investigation.

The flight recorders of the plane, which could give a clue to what went wrong, are yet to be traced.

Speculation on the cause of the crash ranges from pilot error to unfriendly weather conditions to a technical glitch.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims. A day of mourning has also been declared in Tatarstan province.

Monday 18 November 2013

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/522954/20131118/russia-plane-crash-boeing-kazan-pictures-images.htm

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Typhoon Haiyan: The grim task of recovering Tacloban's dead

They're doing a job nobody wants to do in a place few want to be.

But their deeply unenviable task is a vital step toward getting Tacloban, the Philippines city decimated by the fury of Super Typhoon Haiyan, back on its feet.

They are the body collectors -- the men who go from one debris-laden street to another, gathering the corpses left by the devastating storm and ferrying them in trucks to the outdoor morgue or mass graves.

Amid the humid heat and the frequent rain, the work is grisly and arduous.

"It's very hard for us," says Don Pomposo, a fireman sent to help Tacloban from another region of the country with 15 of his colleagues. "It's too hard."

Quantifying the dead

The bodies that remained in the city's streets for days after the typhoon became a grim symbol of Haiyan's destructive power and the temporary breakdown in government operations that followed.

Officials are still struggling to quantify the dead. At the very least, hundreds of people were killed in Tacloban. Nationwide, the death toll from the typhoon stands at 3,976, authorities say, with another 1,598 missing.

Over the past few days, progress has been made in central areas of Tacloban in the gathering and clearing of bodies, whose putrid odor has people constantly covering their noses and mouths and worrying about the possible consequences for their health.

Although those fears may be exaggerated, the continued presence of the bodies -- lined up on the streets in bags, or still buried in large areas of jumbled wreckage where houses once stood -- is a macabre reminder of how far the city still has to go to recover from its horrific ordeal.

Pomposo and his colleague Vincent Albert Garchitorena are among those working hard to help Tacloban move forward. Their team recovered 76 bodies from one street during a single morning this weekend, they say.

Clad in black T-shirts and pants tucked into tall rubber boots, they are stoical as they talk about the stomach-turning sights that confront them.

The main difficulty, they explain, is to keep going for the duration of the roughly 10-hour days they have to endure.

"We just need complete rest after working," Pomposo says, standing near a pile of stinking debris.

He has a face mask, and Garchitorena a scarf, to block out some of the stench. They both wear baseball caps to shield them from the scorching sun. But there is nothing that can protect their eyes from what they see.

The bodies they've collected over the past several days span the age range, from babies to the elderly. On occasion, they've come across dead pregnant women.

The corpses they were finding over the weekend have been festering for more than a week in the baking heat. In certain cases, decomposition is advancing rapidly.

Some of the bodies have lost their eyes, they say. Others are riddled with maggots.

The mental toll

The WHO warns that "anyone in charge of a body recovery team should be aware of the stress and trauma that team members might feel, and provide support for this where possible."

But Pomposo and Garchitorena shrug off concerns about the mental toll the experience may be having on them, even though they've never done this kind of work before.

They say they're not suffering from nightmares. They just want to get the job done and head back to Bicol, the region a few hundred kilometers northwest of Tacloban where they're from.

Their clothes retain the stench of death from one day to the next, and they have to wash themselves over twice to try to get rid of the smell from their skin.

But they show more concern for the stricken people of Tacloban than they do for themselves.

"They will have to start from zero," says Garchitorena, his eyes hidden behind a pair of reflective sunglasses. A state of flux

The two firemen say the situation in the city has changed from the unruly conditions they witnessed when they arrived early last week, a time when law and order had broken down and looting was rife.

Now, Tacloban is in a state of flux. Many residents who survived the typhoon, especially women and children, have left to stay with relatives elsewhere until the situation improves. People from badly hit communities in the surrounding areas have also flowed through the city.

Like the firemen, large numbers of the government employees working to clear up Tacloban and provide aid to storm victims have come in from other parts of the Philippines. And ordinary people from other regions have also rushed there to look for missing relatives and help survivors.

Added to that is the influx of international aid workers and foreign journalists.

Edwin Manaus stands outside the Stephanie Smoke Haus restaurant in the center of town, known locally for its all-you-can-eat buffet. He tries to make sense of the upheaval.

The streets appear to have gotten busier over the weekend, as more debris was cleared and an improved gasoline supply allowed more people to use scooters, motorized rickshaws and a variety of other vehicles to move around and reach food distribution points.

But despite the increased bustle, Manaus says the city feels emptier to him, with so many of the regular residents gone, including many members of his family.

"I need people for my business," he says, gesturing toward the darkened interior.

Shocking devastation

He also needs electricity and running water before he can reopen. He says he heard a rumor that the power could be back on as soon as next week, but city officials said late last week that it could take months.

The businesses that do appear to be thriving in the early days of recovery are improvised market stalls in a northern part of the city, near the poor, severely damaged neighborhood of Paseo de Legazpi.

Some goods on sale, like fresh bananas, appear to have come in from neighboring provinces. But other products -- like umbrellas, cigarettes and coffee -- are most likely taken from the looted stores nearby, locals say.

The devastation in Paseo de Legazpi, where many people lived in flimsy shanties, remains shocking. The creek that runs through the neighborhood is full of the splintered remains of homes and their contents, along with the bloated carcasses of several very large pigs.

The body collectors are likely to have a grueling task ahead of them, gathering what still lies amid the area's tangled wreckage.

Pomposo and Garchitorena say they don't know how long they'll have to stay. But they've already planned what they'll do when they eventually get back to Bicol.

"Rest, sleep and drink a cold glass of water," says Garchitorena.

To which, Pomposo adds, "File for vacation leave."

Monday 18 November 2013

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/18/world/asia/philippines-typhoon-body-collectors/

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Dozens feared dead in plane crash in Russian city of Kazan

Fifty-two people died as a passenger Boeing crashed while landing in the city of Kazan in central Russia on Saturday, according to the Emergencies Ministry.

The passenger aircraft Boeing 737-400 operated by the regional Tatarstan airline exploded after crash-landing in the airport of Kazan at 15:25 GMT, according to Interfax. The flight was coming from Moscow Domodedovo airport.

Reports of casualties vary. According to a spokeswoman from the Emergencies Ministry, 52 people were on board the plane and all are feared dead. Another report from the Federal Air Transport Agency said that 50 people - including six crew members - were on board, all of whom were killed.

The plane caught on fire after the crash landing. The flames were extinguished one hour into the disaster, ITAR-TASS reported.

An emergency services source told Interfax that the pilots made a mistake when entering the second lap, causing the plane to crash. However, the source added that there is a possibility that it was a technical failure.

The Federal Air Transport Agency, on its behalf, said the plane attempted to land three times before crashing.

All the forces of the Volga Regional Emergency Center are on high alert.

The Boeing 737-400 is a make of a popular short- to medium-range twin-engine jet airliner, which was introduced in 1985. The series is also known as “Classic,” along with the 300 and the 500 models. The 737-400 can seat between 146 to 168 passengers and has two cockpit crew members.

Sunday 17 November 2013

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131117/184766061/44-Feared-Dead-in-Plane-Crash-in-Kazan.html

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22 dead as mini truck overturns in Belgaum

Around 4am Saturday, an overloaded canter overturned near Halaki cross on the Belgaum-Bagalkot state highway, killing at least 22 labourers and injuring 15. The dead included nine women and eight children.

The driver lost control when he swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle and slipped into a roadside pit on a deserted stretch of the highway in Savadatti taluk. The passengers, who had no room to escape, were crushed in the canter, which was carrying at least 52 people and sacks of rice, dal and other groceries.

Basavaraju, who escaped with minor injuries, said most of the victims did not suffer any major injuries, but died of suffocation. "The driver lost control and due to the impact, the bags fell on the people, especially the children," said Basavaraju.

The victims were labourers from Surpur village of Yadgir district in Gulbarga. They were on their way to work at a stone quarry at Savantvadi village in Maharashtra. Among the 15 injured, nine suffered serious injuries and were admitted to KLE Hospital in Belgaum, while the rest are undergoing treatment at the City Civil Hospital.

The rice and ragi bags, personal baggage and cooking utensils that the truck was loaded with, fell over them. Since the labourers were required to be at a construction site till June next year, they were carrying nearly 35 quintals of rice, ragi and bajara and other grocery items. In fact, the truck was jam-packed, with men, women, children and luggage.

Govind Somalingappa Jadhava, one of the survivors of the accident, was all praise for the quick assistance rendered by the authorities in removing them from under the overturned truck. He was one of those who helped in rescuing 15 persons from certain death by clearing the bags that had fallen on top of them. “We don’t know how the accident happened as we were asleep. Even before we could realise what had happened, we heard screams and cries. It was a ghastly scene,” he said.

He and Thakur Hanmant Rathod, both residents of Surpur taluk of Yadgir district, and a few others, were among those sitting at the back of the truck. He said all of them were going to Sawanthwadi in Maharashtra, about 100 km from Belgaum city. The truck had started picking up workers from Irkyal tanda at about 10.15 p.m. on Friday. Mr. Govind was among those who fell out of the truck and survived with minor injuries. The 108 Ambulance rushed to the spot even as he was helping the injured. An earthmover pulled the truck to one side and that was when they found bodies under the rice and bajra bags.

Dr Gurusiddappa, medical officer, Chachadi Primary Health Centre, said most of the injured were given first aid. He confirmed the passengers could not escape and suffocated to death.

District incharge minister Satish Jharkiholi, who visited the spot, said the families of the dead would be given Rs 1 lakh. "This accident should not have occurred. I will instruct police and transport authorities to keep an eye on these trucks. The government will provide free treatment to the injured," he added. Small scale industries minister Prakash Hukkeri also visited the spot.

The bodies were shifted to the Murgod hospital mortuary, and a couple of doctors summoned to conduct the postmortem.

Sunday 17 November 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/goods-truck-accident-many-found-dead-under-bags-of-grains/article5360333.ece

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Health department moves to collect, identify bodies

The Department of Health (DOH) has set up a quick system for managing the collection of bodies in the typhoon-ravaged areas of Leyte and Samar provinces.

The DOH has convened a meeting of forensic experts from the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Bureau of Investigation, and the University of the Philippines to establish the system that, it said, conforms with existing international standards on disaster victims identification.

Several teams, each composed of a forensic expert and four others including a photographer, will start work using the quick system on Saturday, the DOH said.

The Philippine Red Cross will support the teams by providing psychosocial support and preparing the communities for the process.

Photos, identifying marks and belongings, and appropriate samples for possible DNA testing will be collected when possible, considering the prevailing harsh conditions, the DOH said.

According to Health Secretary Enrique Ona, the identification process will not allow public viewing but surviving relatives will be asked to participate in the final identification of bodies at an appointed time.

“Hopefully, each team will be able to handle 40 dead bodies every day. Final identification of dead bodies will take a while but we appeal to the public for their patience and understanding,” Ona said in a statement.

After the identification procedure, the bodies will be temporarily buried according to prevailing protocol that will allow future investigations when necessary, he added.

A week after one of the strongest typhoons ever tore through the Philippines, bodies still lie where they fell or were washed up, the defining motif of a tragedy that has killed thousands.

The stench of bloated and discolored human flesh decomposing under the tropical sun hangs everywhere in the city of Tacloban, where wretched survivors and rescue workers cover their mouths to keep the cloying smell from their throats.

Hundreds have been collected, put into body bags and trucked off to wrecked municipal buildings to await burial in mass graves, a process that city authorities began on Thursday.

Officials and aid volunteers say those bodies that have been recovered are just the beginning, a small fraction of those that could be seen when the storm surge subsided. Many more, they say, lie under the mountains of debris.

“Leaving them (the bodies) just decaying on the roadside, uncollected, is next to unforgivable,” said Catholic priest Amadeo Alvero.

Officials initially said picking up the bodies had to take second place to the effort to help those still living, many in utter destitution, their homes swept away and with precious little food or clean drinking water.

But they also conceded they had simply been overwhelmed by the number of dead and had temporarily run out of body bags.

Echoing a fear expressed by many, Alvero said the dead could be the source of contagious disease.

“The government needs to act fast because this could also become a health issue,” he said.

In many affected areas, many bodies have yet to be discovered and retrieved. And almost all the bodies that have been retrieved remain unidentified and unburied.

There is a growing fear among the public that the bodies will cause illness. But Ona explained that dead bodies do not cause epidemics.

“Dead bodies do not pose immediate health risk. Those are cadavers and when you die, you are no longer infected. The bacteria dies with you,” he said.

“Most infectious germs do not survive beyond 48 hours. Body handlers can wear gloves when they handle bodies and must wash their hands as precautionary measure,” he added.

Teams have been dispatched to Tacloban from the justice department’s investigating arm and the national police’s crime laboratory.

They know they will not identify everybody they find straight away, but hope to collect enough evidence to allow that to be done later.

“On the scene, our doctors begin the documentation,” said Chief Supt. Liza Sabong, head of the Philippine National Police crime laboratory and part of the contingent sent to Tacloban.

“We tag them as male or female, they photograph them, list the belongings on the cadaver itself. We do fingerprinting. We measure the body and then they are placed in cadaver bags.”

This “processing” will allow any surviving relatives at a later date to identify the body, possibly through its clothes or appearance, she told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

But the sheer scale of the task is overwhelming.

Only 13 of the 182 bodies collected by Sabong’s group have been picked up by their relatives, she said. The rest have been left behind.

Tacloban on Thursday began mass burials of some of those bodies that had been bagged and laid out by the shattered City Hall.

The plan, said Mayor Alfred Romualdez, was that all those whose name and family were known would be placed into one huge pit. The unidentified rest would go into a separate mass grave.

Romualdez, who has been an outspoken critic of the rescue effort, said he believed three-quarters of all bodies collected had still not been claimed by family. In these circumstances, mass burials were the only option.

“Let’s get the bodies out of the streets,” he said. “They are creating an atmosphere of fear and depression.”

The head of the justice department’s forensics division, Wilfredo Tierra, said the collective burial was only intended as a stopgap measure.

“They will be buried temporarily in a shallow, mass grave and when everything has settled down and the peace and order situation is not an issue anymore, then we will proceed with the proper disaster victim identification,” he told AFP

Saturday 16 November 2013

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/528123/health-department-moves-to-collect-identify-bodies

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Leyte mayors prepare mass graves to protect the living

On Friday, November 15, Melvin Lasi buried his grandfather a day after his body was found under the rubble of his neighbor’s house. It’s been a week since the old man was killed by Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan).

Lasi’s grandfather was one of the 801 people who died based on the latest count of the Tacloban City government. The death toll is expected to rise in the coming days as retrieval operations continue. “The final figure will be significantly higher,” Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez said in a press briefing on Friday, November 15.

Unlike Lasi’s family, other survivors could not properly mourn and bury their dead. Only about 10-15% of the bodies were identified, Romualdez said.

Starting Wednesday, November 13, many of the dead were laid in a temporary mass grave dug in a public cemetery in Basper, a village in the outskirts of the city.

On Thursday, November 14, at least 105 bodies were put in a long trench dug by a backhoe inside the cemetery. Hundreds of cadavers in black bags rotting in front of the city hall for a week were transported to the mass grave as Romualdez was holding the press conference.

Lack of manpower

Asked what took the government so long to bury the dead, Romualdez said the city lacked manpower. He added that he “constantly requested” help from the national government to retrieve bodies but understood that it could only do so much with what it has.

But according to Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, the government has mobilized its assets and is following a protocol for identifying and burying the dead.

The process allows survivors to identify their dead while protecting the health of the public and water sources. “Sinusunod naman iyan lahat,” Roxas said in a press conference late Friday afternoon, November 15. (We follow everything.)

Romualdez earlier gave assurances the Philippine National Police Scene of the Crime Operatives and the National Bureau of Investigation conducted "dead victim processing" in coordination with the Department of Health. This will help provide closure to survivors in the future, if not today, officials explained.

Romualdez said he will wait for the recommendation of the agencies on when the graves can be covered. Bodies can be exhumed and identified in the future.

Protect the living

Mayor Remedios Petilla of the nearby town of Palo could not wait, however. “We don’t care any more. We just told them we’ll bury them, give them a decent burial, blessing from the church and all that," Petilla said.

According to the mayor, she waited for 3 days “but we were not provided with body bags.” As of Thurday, November 14, at least 813 casualties – 30% of which were not identified – were buried in batches of a hundred per mass grave.

“We’re trying to protect the living,” Petilla said, adding that she made the choice to prevent the contamination of water and the spread of disease in her town.

The death toll in the aftermath of Yolanda has reached over 3,600 so far, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported on Friday, November 15.

WHO warns: Avoid mass burials

The World Health Organization (WHO) is discouraging local government officials from holding mass burials for the victims of Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan).

According to the WHO Technical Note for Emergencies, the international health body said it would be best to avoid holding of mass burials for the thousands of victims of the super typhoon.

“Burials in common graves and mass cremations are rarely warranted and should be avoided,” said the WHO in its guidance on the disposal of dead bodies in emergency situations.

The WHO said there is no need to rush burying the dead to the point of bypassing correct identification and time to bereave for the loved ones, as it may just lead to more psychological trauma.

“This does not allow for the correct identification and record taking of the details of the dead. Nor does it give the time for the bereaved to carry out the ceremonial and cultural practices, which would normally occur after a death,” said the WHO.

It also agreed with the earlier position of the Department of Health (DOH) that there is no truth to the belief that corpses pose a risk of communicable disease if they remain sitting in public.

“The widespread belief that corpses pose a risk of communicable disease is wrong. Especially if death resulted from trauma, bodies are quite unlikely to cause outbreaks of diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, or plague,” said the WHO.

The international health body said that the only health risk that dead bodies hold is if they manage to contaminate streams, wells, or other water sources, as they may result to gastroenteritis or food poisoning syndrome to the survivors.

As much as 10,000 people were believed to have died from the onslaught of Yolanda, although Aquino opined that it may be “too much” of an estimate.

On Friday, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reported that the death toll from the Super Typhoon Yolanda has risen to 3,621, a jump of more than 1,200 from the previous toll of 2,360.

Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez said they are already planning to hold mass burials for the victims while admitting that many remain uncollected. In fact, on Thursday, six days after Yolanda hit land, scores of unidentified bodies were interred together in a hillside cemetery without any ritual — the first mass burial in Tacloban.

Still, the WHO urged that the corpses should be collected immediately from the streets in order to minimize the distress caused by the sight of dead bodies and the odor produced by their decomposition.

“It is important to collect and remove corpses to a collection point as quickly as possible,” said the agency.

After collection, the WHO said it would be best if stricken communities are encouraged to carry out traditional ceremonies and grieving processes.

“This is important in helping people deal with the psychological impact of such disasters as it sets in motion the process of disaster recovery,” it said.

It pointed that it would be better if burial of dead bodies are placed in individual graves and that burial procedures should be consistent with the usual practices of the community concerned.

The WHO also said it is not required that the dead bodies will be placed in coffins but should be at least wrapped in plastic sheeting in order to keep the remains separate from the soil.

The area badly hit by the typhoon was Tacloban City, where scores remain missing as of Friday, November 15.

Saturday 16 November 2013

http://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/disasters/typhoon-yolanda/43813-mass-graves-leyte-haiyan

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/breaking-news/2013/11/15/who-warns-avoid-mass-burials-313872

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Search for missing a hellish routine after typhoon

John Lajara peers under a slab of crumbled concrete, lifts a sodden white teddy bear then drops it back into the filth. He reaches again into the rubble and pulls out a boot, a treasured find in this typhoon-flattened village. But he's searching for something far more precious — the body of his brother, Winston.

For those still looking for loved ones missing since last week's storm, their already torn-apart lives are shot through with a difficult question — How do you move on when there is no body to bury?

The search for the missing — 1,179 by official count — has become a hellish daily activity for some. In Lajara's seaside village, residents estimate that about 50 of the 400 people who lived there were killed. About half of the dead are still missing: mothers, fathers, children and friends.

"Somehow, part of me is gone," Lajara said as another fruitless expedition in the rubble ended Saturday.

Lajara has carried out the routine since both he and his brother were swept from their house by Typhoon Haiyan on Nov. 8. And every day has ended so far with no answers on Winston's fate.

According to the latest figures by the Philippines' main disaster agency, 3,633 people died and 12,487 were injured. Many of the bodies remain tangled in piles of debris, or are lining the road in body bags that seep fetid liquid. Some are believed to have been swept out to sea.

After the initial days of chaos, when no aid reached the more than 600,000 people rendered homeless, an international aid effort was gathering steam.

"We're starting to see the turning of the corner," said John Ging, a top U.N. humanitarian official in New York. He said 107,500 people have received food assistance so far and 11 foreign and 22 domestic medical teams are in operation.

U.S. Navy helicopters flew sorties from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington off the coast, dropping water and food to isolated communities. The U.S. military said it will send about 1,000 more troops along with additional ships and aircraft to join the aid effort.

So far, the U.S. military has moved 174,000 kilograms (190 tons) of supplies and flown nearly 200 sorties.

The focus of the aid effort is on providing life-saving aid for those who survived, while the search for missing people is lower in the government's priorities.

The head of the country's disaster management agency, Eduardo del Rosario, said the coast guard, the navy and civilian volunteers are searching the sea for the dead and the missing.

Still, he said, the most urgent need is "ensuring that nobody starves and that food and water are delivered to them."

Lajara's neighbor, Neil Engracial, cannot find his mother or nephew, but he has found many other bodies. He points at a bloated corpse lying face down in the muddy debris. "Dante Cababa — he's my best friend," Engracial says. He points to another corpse rotting in the sun. "My cousin, Charana." She was a student, just 22.

Lajara remembers the moment his brother vanished.

They were standing alongside each other side by side with relatives and friends before the surge hit. They stared at the rising sea, then turned to survey the neighborhood behind them, trying to figure out where or if they could run. Then the wave rushed in.

Lajara, Winston and the others dived into the water, and were swept away from each other. After Lajara's face hit the water, he never saw Winston again.

Lajara has trudged through the corpse-strewn piles of rubble and mud, searching for two things: wood to rebuild his home, and Winston. So far he has found only wood.

On Saturday, he set out again. The rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum echoed across the landscape, as a young boy played the instrument from the roof of a gutted building. It was a grim accompaniment to what has become Lajara's daily march into the corpse-strewn wasteland that was his home, where the sickly sweet stench of death mixes with the salty sea air.

Reminders of the people who once lived here are wedged everywhere among the warped piles of wood, glass and mud: a smiling, bowtie-clad stuffed bumblebee. A woman's white platform shoe. A wood-framed photograph of a young boy.

Suddenly, a neighbor, Pokong Magdue, approached.

"Have you seen Winston?"

Magdue replies: "We saw him in the library."

Lajara shakes his head. It can't be Winston. He's already searched the library.

Sometimes people come to him and inform him that Winston's body has been found. Lajara must walk to the corpse, steel himself, and roll it over to examine the face.

He then must deal with conflicting emotions: relief that the body is not his brother's. Hope that Winston might still be alive. And grief that he still has no body to bury. Because at least then, he says, he could stop searching.

Winston was his only brother. He had a wife and two teenage children. He was a joker who made everyone laugh. He drove a van for a living and was generous to everyone. He was a loving father.

"It's hard to lose somebody like him," Lajara says.

Now, the only trace of his brother that remains is his driver's license: Winston Dave Argate, born Dec. 13, 1971. 177 centimeters tall, 56 kilograms. The upper left-hand corner of the license is gone, and the picture is faded. Lajara leaves it with a friend for safekeeping when he is out hunting for wood and Winston.

He gazes at the card in his hand. "When I want to see him, I just stare at his picture."

Saturday 16 November 2013

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/world/article/Search-for-missing-a-hellish-routine-after-typhoon-4987347.php#photo-5471892

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Bus tragedy: samples collected for DNA test

Doctors from the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), Hubli, have completed the task of collecting samples from the seven charred bodies — victims of Thursday’s bus tragedy near Haveri — and blood samples of their relatives on Friday.

A team of doctors, led by Professor and in-charge of Forensic Medicine Department of KIMS, Gajanan Naik, and comprising Associate Professor Sunil Biradar and postgraduate students Madhusudhan and Ravindra, started post-mortem at 2 p.m. on Thursday and concluded it at around 11 p.m.

On Friday, they collected blood samples of the close relatives of the victims when they came to claim the bodies. Among the seven killed, five, including three children, belonged to the same family.

Dr. Naik told The Hindu that they had completed the process of collecting samples from the charred bodies for DNA test.

He said, “We have collected samples of muscle, sternum (breastbone) and end of femur (thigh bone) required for DNA profiling.

“These samples, together with the blood samples of the close relatives of the victims, are being sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Bangalore for DNA cross-matching,” he said.

He said that the test results may probably take a week’s time to come. Dr. Naik said that post-mortem revealed that there was a woman among the victims.

The doctors have taken X-ray of available joints of the charred bodies for ascertaining the age of the victims.

Dr. Naik said that they would send samples to Belgaum for spectroscopy to help ascertain the exact cause of death.

Till the results come out, the mortal remains will be kept at the cold storage unit of the KIMS mortuary. They will be handed over to the relatives only after the results come, Dr. Naik said.

Saturday 16 November 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/bus-tragedy-samples-collected-for-dna-test/article5355157.ece

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Guatemalans use portraits, museum to seek missing

As darkness fell over the peeling colonial houses of Guatemala City, eight young men and women crept through the streets carrying buckets of glue and photocopied pictures of people who'd been missing for decades.

They gathered at the foot of a house stained grey by car exhaust. One man smeared cheap white paste across the base of the nearest wall. A young woman stuck up dozens of handbills with the portraits of the disappeared — a wrinkled woman in a Mayan head wrap, a man wearing the broad lapels favored in 1980s Guatemala. Spray paint hissed as another woman wrote "No Amnesty, No Pardon" in big red letters alongside the portraits of the disappeared. In less than five minutes, the eight were gone, moving quickly to avoid the police.

Their loved ones were just a few of the 45,000 people who disappeared during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, virtually all at the hands of soldiers and allied paramilitaries seeking to wipe out a Marxist guerrilla movement. Almost all the victims are believed to have been killed, often after being raped, tortured, or both, then buried in mass graves, ditches and wells. Many were hurled from helicopters into the sea or volcanic craters. In total, at least 200,000 people were killed during the war.

Yet with fewer than 1,000 of the missing found, five successive right-wing Guatemalan governments have resisted local and international pressure to launch a full-scale effort to find and identify the rest.

Now, a handful of Guatemalans have launched homegrown attempts to draw attention to what human rights groups and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights call a deplorable lack of official action in the face of one of the worst unresolved cases of human-rights violations in the 20th century.

A month ago, about 20 relatives of the disappeared started nighttime forays through the streets of Guatemala City, pasting up tens of thousands of photos of the disappeared, most simple portraits copied from passports and other official documents.

Paulo Estrada was a year old when his father, a university student, disappeared in 1984. A military document leaked to human rights groups in 1999 said that he had been killed, but it didn't say where his body was left.

"I didn't even know him," Paulo Estrada said as he traveled the city pasting up photos of his father and other missing people on a recent Saturday afternoon. "But yes, I want to know where he is and what they did to him."

Families of the disappeared and slain have also built the Museum of the Martyrs and the Union, Student and Popular Movement of Guatemala, whose grand name belies its humble setting — a 30-by-18-foot garage and four small rooms in a converted single-family home.

In Guatemala's only monument to the disappeared, the remains of industrial union leader Amancio Villatoro lie on a red cloth in a glass case, surrounded by photos of him with his family. A member of the guerrilla wing of the Guatemalan Workers Party, he was kidnapped on Jan. 30, 1984, by men in plainclothes. His remains were found in a rural military outpost 27 years later.

Samuel Villatoro, the dead man's son and director of the museum, started weeping as he described how his father was held and tortured for 57 days, according to leaked military documents.

"We don't want to close this story by burying him," said Villatoro, who was eight when his father disappeared. "There's still no justice."

Some of the self-styled activists say they believe they can pressure the state to look for the missing. Others acknowledge that their efforts are unlikely to prompt action.

The activists say government action isn't the main goal, and that they mainly want to remember their loved ones, and force others to remember them, in a country that often seems determined to forget.

The Guatemalan government did not respond to several requests to comment on the topic.

The country's aggressive attorney general has prosecuted several high-ranking officials on war-crimes charges. But the highest-ranking, former dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt, saw his conviction annulled this year in a high court decision that many saw as a sign of the lingering influence of the wartime military and its backers.

Estrada and his companions say they have posted 5,000 photos since they started about a month ago.

"We want to tell a story that's denied," said Eduardo Hernandez, whose family was one of the few to find the remains of their loved ones. His relatives found the bodies of his mother, grandmother and two uncles outside Guatemala City soon after they disappeared in 1984.

"This type of activity has been like therapy for us. People stop and ask us who these people in the photos are and we tell them our story. It's our way of easing the pain that lingers because of the absence of our loved ones."

In Nov. 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against Guatemala in the disappearance of 26 people named in the leaked military files. The government has not complied with any of the terms of the court's ruling, including launching a search for the victims as quickly as possible, and building a park or plaza in the memory of the disappeared, where the families could gather to remember their loved ones.

The amateur museum, which opened last year, also contains tributes to Felix and Cesar Augusto Estrada Mejia, brothers, students and members of a guerrilla faction. Felix vanished in 1984, his killing registered in the leaked military document. Cesar Augusto disappeared in 1990 without a trace.

Their brother, Salomon Estrada, who works at the museum, said its purpose is "to remember them, to say that they existed and their relatives still want to know where they are."

A short distance away, the photo-posters gathered for a beer at the end of a night in which they plastered some 1,500 portraits on city walls.

As they planned their next outing, organizer Francisco Sanchez said they would have to keep moving quickly to avoid being hassled by police enforcing anti-graffiti and vandalism laws.

But even some police officers have been touched by the group's efforts, Sanchez said.

"We tell our story to some police and, believe it or not, they are moved and end up agreeing with us," he said.

Friday 15 November 2013

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/11/15/3317079/guatemalans-use-portraits-museum.html

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Dealing with the dead in natural disasters

Pictures of bodies lying in the streets of Tacloban and other areas of the Philippines hit by Typhoon Haiyan are one of the starkest images of the disaster.

Survivors in desperate need of aid are also calling for the relief authorities to clear the bodies of victims, some in body bags, others causing a stench as they decompose in the open air.

But as the relief effort continues, experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations have reiterated their advice that the Philippine government should focus their relief efforts on the living, rather than the dead.

"Obviously it's distressing to see bodies on the ground, and the government is doing the best it can, but from a health perspective, bodies are not a health risk," said WHO spokesman Nyka Alexander in Manila.

The WHO - which holds daily meetings with the Philippine government - and relief agencies familiar with natural disasters, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), stress that dealing with the bodies of victims should not be the top priority.

"There is a widespread and erroneous belief, even among some health professionals, that dead bodies are a source of disease and therefore a threat to public health. This is untrue," says the WHO's current fact sheet on care of the dead in disasters, available on its website.

"Contrary to popular belief, dead bodies pose no more risk of disease outbreak in the aftermath of a natural disaster than survivors," the WHO says.

"The micro-organisms responsible for the decomposition of bodies are not capable of causing disease in living people," the guidelines say.

"Dead bodies do not cause epidemics after natural disasters," says the ICRC's field manual on managing bodies after disasters. "Most infectious organisms do not survive beyond 48 hours in a dead body."

"Certain diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis, pose a potential risk for individuals who come into close contact with dead bodies, but not for the general public," the manual says.

The WHO adds that efforts to deal with the dead first - such as spraying the area around dead bodies with disinfectant - "take staff away from caring for survivors and are totally unnecessary." Mass burials without proper identification can later cause suffering for surviving relatives, the organization says.

Friday 15 November 2013

http://www.businessghana.com/portal/news/index.php?op=getNews&news_cat_id=&id=192901

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Forensics experts to start identifying 'Yolanda' bodies on Saturday

Starting Saturday, several teams of five members each, including a forensic expert and a photographer, will identify bodies in regions hardest-hit by typhoon Yolanda, the Philippines’ health department announced on Friday.

"Photos, identifying marks and belongings, and appropriate samples for possible DNA testing will be collected as practical as can be, considering prevailing harsh conditions," Health Secretary Enrique Ona said.

The system, which can handle up to 40 bodies a day, is similar to currently existing international standards on Disaster Victims Identification (DVI), the health department said.

Although it will disallow public viewing, surviving relatives will be asked to participate in the final identification of bodies at an appointed time, the health chief said, appealing for the public’s “patience and understanding.”

Once identified, the bodies will be buried based on prevailing protocol that will allow future investigations when necessary.

“It is important that we bury our dead with dignity. Rushing on things will not help at all in the long run,” Ona said.

Forensics experts will come from the World Health Organization (WHO), National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and the University of the Philippines (UP).

For its part, the Philippine Red Cross will support the teams by providing psychosocial support and preparing communities.

The health secretary also reiterated that dead bodies "do not cause epidemics."

"Most infectious germs do not survive beyond 48 hours. Body handlers can wear gloves when they handle bodies and must wash their hands as precautionary measure," he said.

Friday 15 November 2013

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/74925/forensics-experts-to-start-identifying-yolanda-bodies-on-saturday-health-dept-says

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Greece: 12 migrants found dead after boat capsizes

Twelve migrants were found dead Friday and 15 were rescued after a boat capsized in western Greece, authorities said.

The coast guard continued searching for more possible victims and survivors.

The Merchant Marine Ministry said the victims included four children. The incident occurred early Friday, off the coast of Lefkada, an island in the Ionian Sea and the migrants were presumed to have been headed to nearby Italy, from the western Greek mainland.

Ministry officials said the migrants were aboard a plastic boat that was 23 to 26 feet in length. The survivors were being taken to hospitals for observation, four on the island and the others on the mainland.

Fifteen migrants managed to escape alive and alerted the authorities to the accident near the island of Lefkada, a spokeswoman for the port police told AFP.

"Coast guard boats and divers are continuing the search in the Palairos area, between Lefkada and the mainland," Lefkada mayor Costas Aravanis told The Associated Press.

"The boat sank after dawn in good weather conditions, with low prevailing winds, so it's unclear how this happened. Some of the survivors managed to swim to the shore and call for help. They were not sure exactly how many people were on the boat so we still don't know if there are others still out there."

The migrants’ nationalities and port of departure were not immediately known.

Greece is one of the main ports of entry into the European Union for migrants and refugees fleeing war-torn and impoverished countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

Refugee traffic has soared over the past year, because of the o

ngoing war in Syria, with arrivals by sea increasing owing to stricter controls on the Greek-Turkish northern land border. Europe's immigration policies have come under the spotlight after more than 400 asylum seekers drowned in October in two tragedies near another popular migrant port of entry, the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Friday 15 November 2013

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/15/migrant-boat-capsizesneargreeceleavingseveraldead.html

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Typhoon Haiyan: WHO warns mass burial of storm victims violate human rights

The embattled Philippine government is in a no-win situation in the aftermath of super typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda).

One such quandary is the rising number of deaths requiring mass burial of decomposing and unrecognisable corpses.

On Thursday, the first mass burial was held in Tacloban City where the bodies were buried in a 2-metre deep grave the size of an Olympic pool.

However, on the same day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned the Philippine Department of Health that mass burials without proper identification could violate human rights. WHO cited its Management of Dead Bodies in Disaster Situations manual which states, "Burial of bodies in common graves or the use of mass cremation is unnecessary and a violation of the human rights of the surviving family members."

Besides breaching human rights, the practice could also violate religious and cultural beliefs, particularly among indigenous communities that still observe ancestral rites in burying their dead.

WHO emphasised that the threat of infection from exposed dead bodies is limited, contrary to popular belief.

However, the government is also under pressure from residents who complain of the foul odour coming from the corpses. GMA News reported that some communities in Palo, Leyte, placed messages and signs asking for authorities to remove the bodies out of fear it would cause outbreak of diseases.

Palo also held a mass burial of about 150 corpses.

For the Tacloban mass burial, to help identify the corpses, the National Bureau of Investigation removed a part of the femur from each body. Technicians then will extract DNA from each bit of bone, said Joseph David, the crime photographer of the agency.

Friday 15 November 2013

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/522361/20131115/typhoon-haiyan-yolanda-update-who-warns-mass.htm

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Gunmen torch vital records of rights group in El Salvador

Gunmen in El Salvador early Thursday burst into the offices of a human rights agency that focuses on children missing from the country’s civil war, torching documents and taking away computers, activists said.

The attack was a major blow against a group that had reunited numerous children with families from which they were wrenched in the 1980s. It follows by less than six weeks the abrupt closure of another human rights organization, one connected to the Roman Catholic Church, which had documented massacres and other egregious abuses over several decades.

Both incidents come as the Salvadoran judiciary reviews an amnesty law that prevented the prosecutions of army officers, right-wing political leaders and leftist guerrillas for crimes committed during the 1980-92 civil war, which killed 75,000 people in that tiny country. The U.S.-backed government at the time used brutal tactics to put down a Marxist-inspired insurgency.

If all or part of the amnesty law is overturned, those prosecutions could be opened. It is believed much of the evidence would come from the files in a number of grass-roots human rights organizations that work in El Salvador.

Thursday’s incident involved the Pro-Busqueda (“search”) Assn. for Missing Children (link in Spanish), which since 1994 has attempted to find the 1,000 or more children who disappeared in the war.

“This is a clear sabotage of our work,” Pro-Busqueda Director Ester Alvarenga said in a news conference.

Gunmen tied up a guard, removed computers and other equipment, then doused the files with gasoline and set them on fire, the organization said on its website. Someone with a radio stood outside, giving the assailants instructions, according to a person briefed by investigators.

About 80% of crucial documentation is believed to have been destroyed, said Abraham Abrego, a representative of the Studies Foundation for the Application of Law, a left-leaning legal rights organization that was one of several groups denouncing the attack.

“This sends a message of terror,” Abrego said by telephone from the capital, San Salvador.

Pro-Busqueda was the subject of a 2011 Times article recounting the difficult task of reuniting families and long-lost children nearly two decades after the war ended.

Children during the conflict vanished when they fled army incursions or strayed when their guerrilla parents were killed in firefights. Some ended up in orphanages and were adopted, either by corrupt lawyers or through well-meaning applications.

Pro-Busqueda, using DNA testing and old-fashioned detective work, has pored through adoption records and interviewed survivors of massacres to track down missing children. Leads have taken them mostly to cities in the United States but also Europe.

The organization says it has put about 175 people in contact with families; the bodies of at least 50 children, found in unmarked or clandestine graves, have also served as the sad end to some cases.

Last month, the archbishop of San Salvador abruptly shut down another important human rights office, Tutela Legal, which had served as the preeminent chronicler of massacres, killings and other war crimes throughout the civil war and afterward. Bishop Jose Luis Escobar argued that with the war over, the office no longer had a purpose; human rights organizations the world over protested the decision and demanded that Tutela Legal’s enormous archive of more than 50,000 cases be preserved.

Given both incidents, “all human rights archives in the country are really at risk,” said Geoff Thale, programs director for the Washington Office on Latin America, a U.S.-based human rights group. He was in San Salvador.

“The human rights community, victims and the government need to think about systematic strategies to protect these archives,” he said.

Friday 15 November 2013

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-gunmen-torch-records-rights-group-salvador-20131114,0,5788558.story

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Exodus of multitudes, mass body collections, fields of debris in Philippines; death toll at 3621

The official death toll in the Philippines in the wake Typhoon Haiyan rose to 3,621 Friday, according to national disaster agency spokesman Eduardo del Rosario.

The toll of those injured stood at 3,850. At least 77 people are reported missing in the wake of the storm that ripped up a group of the nation's islands with winds more than three times stronger than those of Hurricane Katrina.

The fright-filled scramble to survive the storm's fury, to keep heads above the wall of ocean waves it drove, has faded away with Typhoon Haiyan's winds.

But now, a week later, sickness, hunger and thirst have settled in with the sticky, humid heat and stench of rancid flesh hanging over the apocalypse the cyclone left behind.

Traumatized survivors under improvised shelters watch over bodies of husbands, wives and children who perished and are rotting in the sun.

More bodies keep emerging from under the rubble, as the cadaver collectors' cohorts in debris-removal crews uncover them while they heave away wreckage from the roads.

Juvelyn Taniega tried to keep busy. She collected old dishes and cleaned them up, crouching on the ground near the spot where her home once stood and the place where she last saw her husband and six children alive.

She's found the bodies of three of her children, but three of them are still missing. In days, she said, no one has come to help.

"My children are decomposing," she said.

There are many like her, looking in disbelief over fields miles long of crushed wood and stone that once stood as houses, wondering if her missing loved ones are buried in them.

But the bodies that Haiyan had flung everywhere are becoming a scarcer sight, as cadaver crews pull up in trucks to collect them for mass burial in nameless graves.

Officially, 801 bodies have been counted in Tacloban by Friday morning, but thousands are feared dead here.

Whole neighborhoods were swept out to sea.

In Tacloban, children have stayed children in spite of the wretchedness around them left behind when one of the strongest storms on record roared over the Philippines a week ago.

They wandered the streets Friday, satisfying their curiosity. Parents were often nowhere in sight -- if they are even still alive.

Children are most vulnerable, UNICEF spokesman Kent Page told CNN's Anderson Cooper. It's hard to keep them safe, and to give them so much that they desperately need.

"Health, nutrition, getting them clean water, good sanitation, protection, and we have to consider education also," Kent says.

"Schools have been wiped out and getting kids into child friendly spaces, where they can feel protected, where they can get a chance to play, where they can get a sense of normalcy back in their life after going through such a devastating experience is very important."

Many families are getting their children out of town. Their mothers are evacuating them, while their fathers are staying behind to sort through the remains of their destroyed lives, Tacloban's mayor Alfred Romualdez said.

He advises other families to follow their example.

As many mouths as possible should be fed elsewhere, where there is more food and water, and children need to be in safety.

Major streets have freed up in Tacloban, once home to 220,000 people, but the hum of delivery trucks ferrying out aid is conspicuously missing. The fields of rubble have become a ghost town.

Many of the city's haggard survivors have concentrated at the airport.

Irony of fate

Some typically called upon to help need help themselves.

Ryan Cardenas has helped with recovery efforts in the Philippine Navy after two cyclones in the past two years that left hundreds dead.

But when Haiyan slammed into the Tacloban naval station where he's based, he and other sailors clung to rafters in their barracks.

Their commanding officer, who was in a separate building almost demolished by the storm, stayed alive by clutching a palm tree's trunk.

Afterward, sailors helped retrieve some bodies, according to Cardenas. One found his mother sitting dead against a wall.

Now, they're sorting through the wreckage of the naval station and awaiting orders.

"This is the worst," Cardenas said, taking a break from fixing a piece of damaged furniture. "We're both victims and rescuers."

Concerns of violence

There have been reports of the threat of violence by groups looking to steal relief aid, but the U.S. military has said that violent crime is less of a problem than the debris blocking roads to those who need aid the most.

A Philippines senator said she's learned of reports of rapes and other crimes against women, some allegedly perpetrated by convicts who escaped prison in the typhoon's aftermath, the state-run Philippines News Agency reported.

Sen. Nancy Binay particularly expressed alarm after women said on TV that the situation had become worse, with assailants going so far as to break into people's homes.

Someone to live for

Jericho, a boy whose mother, aunt and nine cousins were killed in the storm in Tacloban, tells his father he wants to leave the city on one of the planes he's seen flying overhead.

His father tells him they have to stay.

"We have no money," he says. "Just each other."

Another man whose wife and child died said he can't stop thinking of seeing his family drown in the storm.

"The first one that I saw was my youngest," he said. "She fainted, and then she drowned. The water was so fast. And then my wife, when I tried to grab her, I missed her. Then she drowned, and then I never saw her again."

Over the past week, he admits he's often thought of killing himself.

But he hasn't, he said, because he still has one child who needs him.

Friday 15 November 2013

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/15/world/asia/typhoon-haiyan/

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Philippines releases official list of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) casualties

The Philippines has launched a Web site where people searching for loved affected by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) can look into.

The official death tally has been placed at 2357. Number of injured was at 3891 while the number of missing was placed at 77.

See the list here - http://www.gov.ph/crisis-response/updates-typhoon-yolanda/casualties/

Local news outlet Philippine Star has likewise prepared a list detailing the list of survivors in Tacloban City, Leyte and Samar - http://www.philstar.com/nation/2013/11/14/1255487/partial-list-yolanda-survivors-updated

The Twitter hashtag #TracingPH was launched on Wednesday to help people locate victims of the monstrous tragedy that befell the central Philippines exactly a week ago.

Thursday 14 November 2013

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/522104/20131114/philippines-list-typhoon-haiyan-casualties.htm#.UoVANO1dVow

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Myths and realities in disaster situations

Myth: Dead bodies pose a health risk

Reality: Contrary to popular belief, dead bodies pose no more risk of disease outbreak in the aftermath of a natural disaster than survivors.

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Myth: Epidemics and plagues are inevitable after every disaster.

Reality: Epidemics do not spontaneously occur after a disaster and dead bodies will not lead to catastrophic outbreaks of exotic diseases. The key to preventing disease is to improve sanitary conditions and educate the public.

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Myth: The fastest way to dispose of bodies and avoid the spread of disease is through mass burials or cremations. This can help create a sense of relief among survivors.

Reality: Survivors will feel more at peace and manage their sense of loss better if they are allowed to follow their beliefs and religious practices and if they are able to identify and recover the remains of their loved ones.

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Myth: It is impossible to identify a large number of bodies after a tragedy.

Reality: Conditions always exist that allow for the identification of bodies or body parts.

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Myth: DNA techniques for identifying bodies is not available in most countries due to its high cost and technological requirements.

Reality: This technology is rapidly becoming accessible to all countries. Furthermore, in the case of major disasters, most countries can count on external financial and technological support including DNA technology.

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Myth: Foreign medical volunteers with any kind of medical background are needed.

Reality: The local population almost always covers immediate lifesaving needs. Only medical personnel with skills that are not available in the affected country may be needed.

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Myth: Any kind of international assistance is needed, and it's needed now!

Reality: A hasty response that is not based on an impartial evaluation only contributes to the chaos. It is better to wait until genuine needs have been assessed.

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Myth: Disasters bring out the worst in human behaviour.

Reality: Although isolated cases of antisocial behaviour exist, the majority of people respond spontaneously and generously.

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Myth: The affected population is too shocked and helpless to take responsibility for their own survival.

Reality: On the contrary, many find new strength during an emergency, as evidenced by the thousands of volunteers who spontaneously unite to sift through the rubble in search of victims after an earthquake.

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Myth: Disasters are random killers.

Reality: Disasters strike hardest at the most vulnerable group, the poor -- especially women, children and the elderly.

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Myth: Locating disaster victims in temporary settlements is the best alternative.

Reality: It should be the last alternative. Many agencies use funds normally spent for tents to purchase building materials, tools, and other construction-related support in the affected country.

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Myth: Things are back to normal within a few weeks.

Reality: The effects of a disaster last a long time. Disaster-affected countries deplete much of their financial and material resources in the immediate post-impact phase. Successful relief programs gear their operations to the fact that international interest wanes as needs and shortages become more pressing.

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Myth: Starving people can eat anything

Reality: It is widely held that people who are starving will be very hungry and eat any food that can be supplied. This attitude is inhumane and incorrect. Even if hungry initially, people often do not consume adequate quantities of unvaried and unfamiliar foods for long enough. More importantly, the starving people are often ill and may not have a good appetite. They will therefore languish in an emaciated state or get even sicker.

Even someone well-nourished would fail to thrive on the monotonous diets of three or so commodities (e.g. wheat, beans and oil) that is all that is available, month in, month out, to many refugees and displaced people. And this is aside from the micro-nutrient deficiencies that often develop. This misconception starts, in part, from a failure to agree on explict objectives for food assistance -- which should surely be to provide for health, welfare, and a reasonably decent existence and help in attaining and acceptable state of self-reliance and self-respect. Source: Lancet, Vol. 340, Nov 28, 1992

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Myth: Children with diarrhoea should not be intensively fed

Reality: A view from many years ago, and from non-emergency situations, sometimes persists -- namely, that children must be rehydrated (and diarrhoea prevented) before re-feeding. This policy is incorrect and, with severely malnourished children, it can be fatal. Any child with diarrhoea must be fed, if necessary with a liquid diet by nasogastric tube, at the same time as additional fluids are given. Even if the diarrhoea is profuse, some nutrients are absorbed and can start the recovery process. To begin feeding after rehydration will often be too late. Source: Lancet, Vol. 340, Nov 28, 1992

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Myth: Refugees can manage with less.

Reality: This misconception dehumanizes the refugee. It implies that, once uprooted, he or she no longer has the basic human rights to food, shelter and care - that these are now offered as charitable acts and that refugees can (or should) make do on much less than non-refugees. In fact they will often need more than their normal food requirement at first if they have become malnourished and sick before arrival at a camp and need rehabilitation; and may suffer exposure from inadequate shelter. If the only food source is provided by camp organizers, these rations have to be adequate in all nutrients. This requires a mixed food basket, including fruits and vegetables. If this cannot be ensured then trading may have to be encouraged if refugees are not to become undernourished and deficient in micro-nutrients. The fact that some foods may be traded, to add variety to the diet, is no grounds for reducing the ration. Source: Lancet, Vol. 340, Nov 28, 1992

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Myth: Trading foods indicates that people do not need all of the rations.

Reality: If the only food source is provided by camp organizers, these rations have to be adequate in all nutrients. This requires a mixed food basket, including fruits and vegetables. If this cannot be ensured then trading may have to be encouraged if refugees are not to become undernourished and deficient in micro-nutrients. The fact that some foods may be traded, to add variety to the diet, is no grounds for reducing the ration. Source: Lancet, Vol. 340, Nov 28, 1992

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Myth: A standard ration is suitable for all populations.

Reality: The recommended per caput calorie output for a refugee population should vary according to demographic composition, nutritional and health status of the population (allowing for an extra "catch-up" allowance where people are malnourished), the activity level the intake is intended to support, environmental temperature, and likely wastage in the chain from supply of food in a country to its consumption by individuals. In other words there is a range of requirements for dietary energy, which will depend on the circumstances, and use of a single figure is likely to lead to either deficit or wastage. The figure of 1900 kcal (commonly assumed to be of general application) often underestimates what is needed. Source: Lancet, Vol. 340, Nov 28, 1992

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Myth: Energy adequacy means nutritional adequacy.

Reality: The diet needs to be adequate in both quantity and quality, meeting requirements for calories, protein, and micro-nutrients. Where refugees are completely dependent on the ration provided -- for example, in the early stages of an emergency or in closed camps, where trading for diversity cannot be ensured -- the ration must be designed to meet the requirements of all nutrients in full. Often, a ration is designed to meet minimum energy requirements and micro-nutrients are left to look after themselves. How micro-nutrient needs are to be met must be made explicit, especially when the ration provided is calculated on the basis of fully meeting energy needs. Foods should be diverse and palatable, and the special needs of weaning children must be met.

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Myth: Disasters cause deaths at random.

Reality: Disasters tend to take a higher toll on the most vulnerable geographic areas (high-risk areas), generally those settled by the poorest people.

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Myth: It is best to limit information on the magnitude of the tragedy.

Reality: Restricting access to information creates a lack of confidence in the population, which can lead to misconduct and even violence.

Thursday 14 November 2013

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/11/14/13/myth-dead-bodies-pose-health-risk

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Seven killed in Karnataka bus fire

Seven passengers were burnt to death and 40 injured Thursday when a luxury bus headed to Mumbai caught fire after ramming into the railing of a bridge in Karnataka, police said.

The horrific accident took place around 2.45 a.m. on National Highway 4 near Haveri town, about 330 km from here. "The private bus, which was on its way to Mumbai from Bangalore, crashed into the railing at high speed and caught fire as its fuel tank cracked," Haveri Superintendent of Police M. Shashi Kumar told IANS.

The ghastly accident comes after the Oct 30 tragedy in Andhra Pradesh when 45 passengers perished when a private luxury bus going from Bangalore to Hyderabad burst out in flames near Mahabubnagar.

In the Thursday incident, 43 men, six women and a girl child were in the bus, operated by the Bangalore-based Nationals Travels. The bus left Bangalore late Wednesday after picking up passengers from seven points. It was scheduled to reach Mumbai Thursday afternoon. "We are yet to identify the victims as their bodies are burnt beyond recognition. An autopsy and DNA test will be conducted to identify the bodies with the help of their relatives," Kumar said.

Six of the 40 injured were admitted in a state-run hospital at Hubli, 50 km from Haveri town, as their condition was critical. The remaining injured were treated in a hospital at Haveri for burns. A spokesman for the bus operator told IANS one of the two drivers died in the accident. The other driver fled from the accident spot and is absconding.

Driver Mayas Pasha, who died, drove the bus from Bangalore up to a point from where the other driver, Mujaid, took over the wheels from him. The cleaner was injured in the incident, a spokesperson noted. Most passengers were asleep when the fire broke out suddenly. The survivors escaped by smashing the emergency exit window and jumping out of the burning bus.

Karnataka Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy blamed speeding for the tragedy. "Over-speeding appears to the cause of the accident. We are ordering a probe to ascertain the reason though the driver could be at fault," Reddy told reporters. The bus operator announced Rs.5 lakh as compensation each to the victims' kin after Chief Minister Siddaramaiah declared Rs.1 lakh ex-gratia.

Among the passengers were two foreigners, including one from South Africa. Police are scanning the passengers' list to verify the second foreigner's nationality. Zameer Ahmed Khan, a Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) lawmaker from Bangalore, is one of the partners in the bus travel company. "The brand new Volvo bus was inducted in October to operate on the Bangalore-Mumbai route with a valid permit, a fitness certificate and a third party insurance cover," Khan told reporters at Haveri.

Ever since the Oct 30 bus fire, the state transport department has intensified checks on all state-run and private buses operating on intra-state and inter-state routes to ensure the safety of the passengers. Khan blamed Volvo for the deaths, suspecting a technical flaw in the diesel tank. "It is too much of a coincidence that two luxury buses of Volvo make have gone up in flames in similar circumstances in a fortnight. We want the government to order an inquiry to ascertain the cause of the fire in its buses," Khan said.

Volvo offered to cooperate with the authorities. "Our technical experts will investigate the incident with the support of our safety experts," Volvo said late Thursday.

Thursday 14 November 2013

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-seven-killed-in-karnataka-bus-fire-1919284

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