3000-4000 Corpses In Kao Lak

[Darknight]

Tsunami toll soars at Thailand's Khao Lak beach

Reuters

By Darren Schuettler

KHAO LAK, Thailand, Dec 29 (Reuters) - The tsunami which ripped apart tourist-packed Khao Lak beach in south Thailand may have killed 3,000 people there, local police said on Wednesday.

Major Chakrit Kaewwattana told Reuters more than 1,800 bodies had been recovered from the beach and its luxury hotels popular with Western and Asian tourists, especially Scandinavians and Germans escaping the long, dark winter back home.

The ghastly toil of recovering bodies was far from over in Khao Lak, the worst-hit beach in Thailand's Andaman Sea playground where tourists dive and snorkel among coral reefs, he said.

He was still awaiting news from Kho Khao, an island just north of the beach where searchers expected to find several hundred more.

"The final death toll may rise to 2,500 or 3,000," said district police chief, Colonel Aroon Klaewvateehe.

That matched estimates by local hotel owners, who said most of the 5,000 rooms on the 10-km (six-mile) strip -- which can cost up to $200 a night -- were full when the monster wave crashed ashore on Sunday.

Counting Thais working in the tourist industry, there could have been as many as 10,000 people at Khao Lak, they said.

Sweden said around 1,500 of its citizens were still missing after the tsunami carried death and destruction around the Indian Ocean and hundreds of them may have died.

At least 54 Swedes were known to be dead, according to a list issued by government disaster officials in Bangkok which said at least 473 foreigners were killed. Norway said it was missing 800 people. Eighteen Norwegians were on the list.

Chantima Saengli, owner of the Blue Village Pagarang hotel, told a Bangkok radio station about 60 of her Scandinavian guests were safe.

She feared the other 340 were dead, their bodies swept into the lush rain forest covering the hills behind the beach.

The official national toll issued by the Thai government was 1,657 dead and 8,954 injured, with 4,086 still missing.

IDENTIFICATION PROBLEMS

For search and rescue teams in Khao Lak -- where a four-year-old fisherman's son survived for more than two days after being swept into a tree top -- the problem is not finding bodies. The smell of rotting corpses is too strong to miss.

But identifying them may take a long time and one top government forensic scientist said some may never be named.

Pornthip Rojanasunant told Reuters at a Khao Lak Buddhist temple acting as a temporary morgue for 300 bodies -- about a fifth of them foreigners -- that she was collecting DNA samples of all the corpses by swabbing mouths or taking hair.

The samples could be matched to relatives later, she said.

But Pornthip said she suspected such meticulous procedures were not being followed at three other temples in the area, each housing 100-200 bodies.

"I don't think they understand the forensic way of managing these cases, how to deal with the dead," she said. The government was not helping much, she added.

There was no coordination between the four Khao Lak temples, the only equipment available was what she had borrowed and what little the government was supplying was the wrong stuff.

"The government has sent us cloth bags instead of plastic bags" for wrapping the bodies in, she said. "Cloth is useless in preventing disease.

"I would like to tell the prime minister we have to set up a coordination centre here, not in Phuket," the island just to the south which is one of Asia's premier resorts and where 233 people are known to have been killed.

"This is where most of the people are coming from."

EQUIPMENT PROBLEMS

Another problem is getting the mechanical equipment to replace the spades, hoes and saws rescue workers have been using to uncover bodies, then get it to the right place.

"We need more machines, excavators, tools," said local official Surasit Khantipantakul. "We need boats to pick up bodies floating around the beach." Many local boats have been destroyed.

"The problem is the structures are not stable and we need to get backhoes (excavators) in there, but it is very difficult," said volunteer Chumpon Bunpakdee, referring to the difficulty of moving heavy machinery over sodden land.

"We have to carry the bodies out by hand. There are many people trapped inside."

Koh Phi Phi, the island southeast of Phuket made famous by "The Beach" movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, was also devastated.

More than 300 bodies had been recovered from Phi Phi, where most buildings were flattened by the wall of water generated by the 9.0-magnitude quake, the world's biggest in 40 years.

Bloated and decaying bodies continued to wash ashore on the island as hopes of finding survivors amid the rubble of hotels and shops faded slowly.

"It's hard to tell which bodies are foreign because they are just unrecognisable," said one French rescue volunteer, Serge Barros. (Additional reporting by Vithoon Amorn and Karishma Vyas)

[etxkgh]

According to reports in Swedish newspapers there are 3000-4000 corpses in Kao Lak.

This new report comes after a team of doctors & investigators have visited the various collection points.

from the swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

Enbart i semesterbyn Khao Lak i Thailand finns 3 000– 4 000 lik.

Det uppger en företrädare för den norska ambassaden i Thailand.

Den nya och kraftigt höjda uppskattningen av antalet döda kommer sedan en grupp läkare och utredare gått genom samlingsplatserna för döda på vägsträckor, i tempel och på andra platser i staden.

Tidigare har det sagts att ett tusental kroppar påträffats i området.

Khao Lak är den semesterby på den thailändska kusten som drabbats hårdast av katastrofen. Det är också den by där många av svenskar som ännu saknas befann sig när jättevågorna kom.

[Darknight]

/merged with previous thread

[Tornado]

I have just heard that the Thai Army base in Phang Nga has been devastated from the Tsunami. I am told that there is 2000 Army personel dead.

[Darknight]

Foreign experts race to identify dead in Thailand

reuters

By Mark Bendeich

KHAO LAK, Thailand, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Foreign forensic experts joined the desperate race to identify Thailand's tsunami victims as the death toll and the number of missing mounted on Thursday and people gave up hope of finding loved ones alive.

With much of Europe transfixed by a disaster which killed hundreds of its tourists escaping a dark, cold winter for the warmth of Thailand's Andaman Sea shores, German, Swiss, Dutch, Australian and other forensic teams started their gruesome task.

On Khao Lak, the worst-hit beach in Thailand, a German team was called out late on Wednesday, shortly after arriving, because villagers thought they heard calls from people trapped inside a half-built luxury hotel. Sniffer dogs found no trace of life.

French, Italian and Danish teams were also in Phuket -- one of Asia's premier resort islands, just south of Khao Lak. A New Zealand team was on the way.

"It will be challenging," said Karl Kent, head of a 17-member forensic team from the Australian Federal Police of the kind sent to Bali in the wake of the 2002 bombings that killed 202 people.

"The scale is of a magnitude that Australia and other countries have not experienced," he said.

The death toll from the tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Indonesia on Sunday, is more than 87,000 people.

In Thailand, the government said at least 1,976 were known to have died and 345 of them were foreigners -- the first time it has issued a separate number in its national toll.

The final toll will certainly be much higher, with local police saying more than 1,800 bodies have been recovered from Khao Lak alone.

Police believe as many as 3,000 people may have died around Khao Lak when the wall of water rolled up the gently sloping beach -- which made it an ideal family holiday spot with safe swimming for children.

It smashed into a line of luxury hotels and drove up to 1 km (1,000 yards) inland from a beach particularly popular among Scandinavians and Germans.

More than 2,200 Scandinavians, including 1,500 Swedes, are missing in countries around the Indian Ocean along with 1,000 Germans. Many of them could be among Thailand's 6,043 missing.

"WEEKS MORE WORK"

Khao Lak is yielding at least 300 bodies a day, despite a search and rescue operation officials admit is struggling to cope in a country which rarely suffers natural disasters worse than floods during the annual monsoon.

The grim task of retrieving them was interrupted briefly by a tremor which cleared the sand of people in a flash, the fear of another tsunami flashing through every mind in the stampede.

How long it will take to finish finding the missing and identify the dead, nobody knows.

"It's going to be a huge operation," said Australian envoy Bill Patterson. "I think it could take weeks."

After days in the sub-tropical heat, most of the bodies are beyond recognition and survivors searching for loved ones are faced with gruesome mosaics of photographs at Buddhist temples used as a temporary morgue.

For some, there no photographs, only hints -- a watch, a ring, a mobile telephone.

Briton Rob Ward was handing out photographs of the young son of a friend in what he acknowledged was a vain attempt to find someone who might know he is alive.

"It would be some comfort for the parents to know definitely what happened," he said.

The forensic teams will collect dental evidence and DNA samples, take fingerprints, photographs and X-rays, and will look for jewellery or documents that may help identify bodies.

An immediate need was refrigeration to preserve bodies and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra promised refrigerated containers.

Aid teams were also starting to worry about disease on the coast, where local sources of drinking water are likely to have been contaminated by sea water.

"We are very concerned that there will be later disease outbreaks in places with lesser availability of medical and public health facilities," said Australian Drew Richardson, part of medical team from Canberra Hospital. (Additional reporting by Darren Schuettler and Vithoon Amorn)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP181760.htm