Tsunami: Toll Could Hit 100,000

[george]

TSUNAMI: Toll could hit 100,000

BANGKOK: -- Massive rescue and relief operation now involves more than 13,000 from Kingdom and overseas

More than 13,000 rescuers and volunteers, from across the country and abroad, have headed south to help victims of the killer tsunami in the country’s biggest rescue and relief operation ever.

After Sunday’s deadly waves, six tsunami-hit provinces – especially Krabi’s Phi Phi Island, Phuket and Phang Nga – were filled with not just victims and dead bodies, but also rescuers and helicopters, ships and many other aid facilities.

International relief efforts have sent the Kingdom hi-tech rescue teams and equipment.

Rescuers and vehicles were sent out from government agencies individually, as the country has never set up a counter-emergency agency exclusively responsible for this kind of disaster.

The agencies at the scene are the Defence, Interior and Transport ministries, Royal Thai Police, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives’ Royal Fisheries Department, as well as many private rescue foundations.

Another large group of volunteers met yesterday after an urgent call to join the corpse search-and-removal teams, and they have already been taken on a Royal Thai Air Force C-130 to their destinations, armed with the necessary tools to deal with the mounting body count.

Meanwhile the death toll rose sharply yesterday to 1,657 – with 8,954 injured and 4,086 still missing – and there are still many dead bodies waiting to be removed.

The Royal Thai Navy and Royal Thai Police were the first to send out rescue teams, mainly to Phi Phi and Phuket early on Sunday morning.

Rear Admiral Sirichai Kanitthakul, the Navy’s deputy commander of division 3, admitted that the first day the Navy faced many difficulties, including limited numbers of rescuers and the fear of aftershock waves.

“So we focused more on moving the survivors to safe places before starting to search the islands and the sea for more survivors and victims”, said Sirichai.

As the limited rescue teams that were sent out to sea did not make contact back, it made it more difficult for the Navy to know their exact locations, the number of survivors and gauge the need for further rescuers and other facilities, he added.

On the second day, more rescuers came from navy bases in other provinces nearby and there were also several planes and helicopters from the Royal Thai Air Force.

“So we sent out more ships to many islands such as Similan, Surin, Phi Phi, Lanta, Rok and Payam, then helped transfer the survivors to Phuket”, he said.

Private ships such as the Andaman Princess and Ocean also helped transfer survivors and injured victims, he said, adding, “We have seven or eight ships operating in the area, which I think is enough.”

The Navy’s plan now is to search and remove dead bodies as he believes there are no more survivors left on the islands. “If we’re lucky, we might find more undiscovered survivors.”

However, the difficulty the authorities have been facing in removing the corpses is the lack of necessary tools and the change in water levels, Sirichai said.

Marine commander Police Maj-General Surapol Tuanthong referred to similar problems and said the first two days of searching for victims had been very difficult as the rescuers were faced with a breakdown of telecommunications. “We didn’t know where the victims needed help,” he said.

“Another big difficulty was that some survivors didn’t understand our limitations in the first few days”, he said.

“We couldn’t help all of them in the first round, so we prioritised the injured, women and children,” the marine commander added.

Rescue teams – especially underwater specialists from nearby provinces and Bangkok – were called out to maximise the search by marine police and the Navy on later days, he said.

Surapol said that his rescue teams lacked heavy machinery, as they only had simple weeding tools.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday that rescue teams had enough personnel but not sufficient equipment to search for the dead.

“The rescue teams could only take the corpses out of the debris with their bare hands – there was not enough heavy equipment”, he told reporters.

A couple of days later, however, as more dead bodies were discovered, the government supplied more equipment to the teams, enabling them to work quicker.

Meanwhile, international aid teams landed in Asia’s tsunami-devastated villages yesterday in a desperate race to prevent the spread of disease in one of the biggest catastrophe relief operations in history, said Reuters.

As grief-stricken survivors buried the dead in mass graves – the overall death toll from Sunday’s tsunami now standing at 70,000 – aid teams from Japan, India, Israel, Russia, France, Germany and Taiwan worked to restore drinking water and sanitation.

Many coastal villages and resorts – now nothing more than mud-covered and rubble blanketed with the stench of rotting corpses – remained inaccessible to the heavy earth-moving equipment needed to clear debris and dispose of bodies.

“We are especially concerned about people in remote coastal areas, which are difficult to reach because roads and bridges have been destroyed,” said Jeff Dick, the UN World Food Programme director in Sri Lanka.

“Communication lines remain extremely problematic and many key logistics routes needed to transport food have been blocked”, said Dick.

--The Nation 2004-12-30

[Lars]

UN now estimates death toll to about 120000.

[silentsoundcentre]

Looks very impessive, this list of rescue effort, a simple quick warning should have made all this partly unneccesary.

They were worry about the tourist industry, and how does it looks today?

I saw thai army sitting around, and burmese body corpses laying around in Taplamour.

Oh, maybe they where not dead!?

Blessings for all the volonteers, stay in Thailand andyou will have plenty work!

I try to ignore like them, but I feel louzy!

TSUNAMI: Toll could hit 100,000

BANGKOK: -- Massive rescue and relief operation now involves more than 13,000 from Kingdom and overseas

More than 13,000 rescuers and volunteers, from across the country and abroad, have headed south to help victims of the killer tsunami in the country’s biggest rescue and relief operation ever.

After Sunday’s deadly waves, six tsunami-hit provinces – especially Krabi’s Phi Phi Island, Phuket and Phang Nga – were filled with not just victims and dead bodies, but also rescuers and helicopters, ships and many other aid facilities.

International relief efforts have sent the Kingdom hi-tech rescue teams and equipment.

Rescuers and vehicles were sent out from government agencies individually, as the country has never set up a counter-emergency agency exclusively responsible for this kind of disaster.

The agencies at the scene are the Defence, Interior and Transport ministries, Royal Thai Police, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives’ Royal Fisheries Department, as well as many private rescue foundations.

Another large group of volunteers met yesterday after an urgent call to join the corpse search-and-removal teams, and they have already been taken on a Royal Thai Air Force C-130 to their destinations, armed with the necessary tools to deal with the mounting body count.

Meanwhile the death toll rose sharply yesterday to 1,657 – with 8,954 injured and 4,086 still missing – and there are still many dead bodies waiting to be removed.

The Royal Thai Navy and Royal Thai Police were the first to send out rescue teams, mainly to Phi Phi and Phuket early on Sunday morning.

Rear Admiral Sirichai Kanitthakul, the Navy’s deputy commander of division 3, admitted that the first day the Navy faced many difficulties, including limited numbers of rescuers and the fear of aftershock waves.

“So we focused more on moving the survivors to safe places before starting to search the islands and the sea for more survivors and victims”, said Sirichai.

As the limited rescue teams that were sent out to sea did not make contact back, it made it more difficult for the Navy to know their exact locations, the number of survivors and gauge the need for further rescuers and other facilities, he added.

On the second day, more rescuers came from navy bases in other provinces nearby and there were also several planes and helicopters from the Royal Thai Air Force.

“So we sent out more ships to many islands such as Similan, Surin, Phi Phi, Lanta, Rok and Payam, then helped transfer the survivors to Phuket”, he said.

Private ships such as the Andaman Princess and Ocean also helped transfer survivors and injured victims, he said, adding, “We have seven or eight ships operating in the area, which I think is enough.”

The Navy’s plan now is to search and remove dead bodies as he believes there are no more survivors left on the islands. “If we’re lucky, we might find more undiscovered survivors.”

However, the difficulty the authorities have been facing in removing the corpses is the lack of necessary tools and the change in water levels, Sirichai said.

Marine commander Police Maj-General Surapol Tuanthong referred to similar problems and said the first two days of searching for victims had been very difficult as the rescuers were faced with a breakdown of telecommunications. “We didn’t know where the victims needed help,” he said.

“Another big difficulty was that some survivors didn’t understand our limitations in the first few days”, he said.

“We couldn’t help all of them in the first round, so we prioritised the injured, women and children,” the marine commander added.

Rescue teams – especially underwater specialists from nearby provinces and Bangkok – were called out to maximise the search by marine police and the Navy on later days, he said.

Surapol said that his rescue teams lacked heavy machinery, as they only had simple weeding tools.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday that rescue teams had enough personnel but not sufficient equipment to search for the dead.

“The rescue teams could only take the corpses out of the debris with their bare hands – there was not enough heavy equipment”, he told reporters.

A couple of days later, however, as more dead bodies were discovered, the government supplied more equipment to the teams, enabling them to work quicker.

Meanwhile, international aid teams landed in Asia’s tsunami-devastated villages yesterday in a desperate race to prevent the spread of disease in one of the biggest catastrophe relief operations in history, said Reuters.

As grief-stricken survivors buried the dead in mass graves – the overall death toll from Sunday’s tsunami now standing at 70,000 – aid teams from Japan, India, Israel, Russia, France, Germany and Taiwan worked to restore drinking water and sanitation.

Many coastal villages and resorts – now nothing more than mud-covered and rubble blanketed with the stench of rotting corpses – remained inaccessible to the heavy earth-moving equipment needed to clear debris and dispose of bodies.

“We are especially concerned about people in remote coastal areas, which are difficult to reach because roads and bridges have been destroyed,” said Jeff Dick, the UN World Food Programme director in Sri Lanka.

“Communication lines remain extremely problematic and many key logistics routes needed to transport food have been blocked”, said Dick.

--The Nation 2004-12-30

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