-
Relatives in endless search for closure

Published on December 23, 2005 - 12 months after the tsunami, families are still desperately trying to locate or even identify the remains of loved ones

Almost a year after the devastating tsunami changed their lives forever, some families are still burying their loved ones, while others have yet to find the bones and ashes that were unwittingly cremated by other families.

An Italian couple recently flew to Phang Nga province to dig up the body of their daughter, who was mistakenly buried by a Muslim family who thought she was their daughter.

The intricacies of forensic science and the complicated mechanism for distributing bodies can be blamed for almost all the confusion.

On November 18, Pol Corporal Sanya Buppasiri travelled from Nakhon Phanom to the Tsunami Victim Identification Centre in Phuket to locate his dead sister. Two days before, they said the body of his sister was identified from 1,143 other bodies at Mai Khao cemetery. His sister was left to freeze in a container with a temperature of minus 14 degrees Celsius.

Soon after the tsunami, Sanya informed authorities that his sister, a construction worker in Khao Lak, was missing. Since then the centre has been in touch many times to ask about her physical appearance and samples of items that might contain her DNA. He sent photographs, combs with fragments of her hair, and samples of saliva from her daughter and mother.

The centre found her body through DNA matching.

Since January 13, the centre has identified 2,645 bodies. Because 5,395 people perished from 38 countries, the identification of the victims presented a challenge for local and international forensics experts.

About 45 per cent of the victims – almost all of them foreigners – could be identified by dental records; 35 per cent – mostly Thais – were matched through fingerprints; and the rest were identified by DNA.

However, Pol Colonel Pornprasert Ganjanarintr, joint chief of the centre, noted that chaos reigned before international forensic experts could establish a suitable system and methodology of victim identification.

Dr Khunying Pornthip Rojanasunand, acting director of the Justice Ministry’s National Institute of Forensic Science, said it was a “headache” to identify bodies from so many countries because of lack of coordination between agencies.

“It was such a chaotic time. Authorities from various organisations came with their own system, rescue volunteers from many foundations collected bodies using odd methods and relatives all came seeking their loved ones.

“Nobody was there to coordinate or command all of those people,” she said.

Pornthip said it might be time for the country to have a national disaster-management agency to tackle disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. She suggested that the Army could handle that due to its experiences with mass deaths and its vast human resources.

Unlike Sanya, Paisan Chanakul is still waiting for the centre to call with news about his daughter. But he did get word that she was cremated by another family.

He has searched for 17-year-old Sudarat since the morning of the tsunami but it was not until late April that the centre informed him that the body was wrongly discharged to a family from Uttaradit province on January 4. Pornprasert retraced the case and found that the body belonging to the Uttaradit family was still kept at Had Mai Khao.

Paisan lost both his daughter and son. He received his son’s body a month after the disaster.

Though she couldn’t remember Paisal’s case, Pornthip said it was possible that such thing could happen.

“Just think about how many agencies are involved. Relatives only asked for their family members. They claim that they remember this and that. If we didn’t let them take the body they asked for, can you imagine what would happen?” she said.

Paisal seems to understand the situation. “I don’t want to blame anybody. I just want my daughter’s ashes back. The only concern right now is how to prove that the ashes are my daughter’s,” he said.

The centre and the Mai Khao cemetery in Phuket were closed early this month. All 1,143 bodies, 805 of which have yet to be identified, were transferred to the Tsunami Repatriation Centre in Phang Nga’s Bang Maruan. The centre’s facility in Phuket was transferred to the police headquarters in Bangkok.

Pornprasert said they will probably not identify all the bodies due to lack of DNA sampling references. He said most of the remaining bodies are probably illegal workers that are impossible to trace.

Pennapa Hongthong
The Nation