Refusing To Give Up

[sriracha john]

Rescue team searching near a bungalow in the Sofitel resort. Reuterspics

European teams return to Thailand under pressure from families

June 21, 2005

KHAO LAK (Thailand): Water churning “like a washing machine” swept away Patrice Gicquel's wife, daughter and twin babies when the Indian Ocean tsunami slammed into their beach villa in southern Thailand.

Six months later, he stands in the gutted Sofitel resort in this town, a strip of white beaches and luxury hotels where most of Thailand's 5,395 deaths occurred, hoping a renewed search will find the body of his 22-month-old son.

“I have no idea why I'm still alive. It's a mystery to me,” Gicquel said as highly-trained French sniffer dogs scoured the ruined hotel and nearby mangrove forests where bodies may be still be buried under the mud.

“My pain is huge. I want to find my son and bury him,” said Gicquel, who has returned seven times since the 9m waves wrecked the hotel and its villas on Dec 26.

More than 200 guests and workers were killed.

“I was with my family and then it was just like a washing machine and I was swept out of the room,” said the food company executive, who helped form a victim support group to press the French government to continue the search for bodies.

His seven-year-old daughter's body was found quickly, but it was almost three months before the remains of his wife and 22-month-old daughter were recovered.

The other twin baby, Arthur, is still missing.

Under pressure from grieving families, search teams from Germany, France and Nordic countries have returned to its shattered hotels and debris-strewn mangrove fields to look again.

They are part of the world's largest forensics operation involving experts from 16 countries who have identified nearly 1,700 bodies so far, most of them foreigners.

More than 2,000 bodies remain unidentified and more than 2,900 people are listed as missing, including about 370 foreigners.

The search for remains was officially called off months ago, but resumed in May at selected sites here.

“Some families have raised concerns and we have listened to their concerns,” said British detective Derek Forest, co-commander of the disaster victim identification (DVI) operation.

Forest sympathised with the families' need for closure, but said some bodies may never be found, including those swept out to sea.

For the roughly 2,000 missing Thais, the government is considering declaring them dead to allow families to forego a two-year waiting period and claim inheritances and benefits.

The DVI operation, which now has enough funding for the rest of the year after donor governments were lambasted for a cash shortfall last month, is entering its toughest phase.

After relying mainly on dental records and fingerprints, the teams face a bigger challenge in analysing DNA samples taken from bodies exposed to days of salt water and tropical heat.

They have sent bone and tissue samples to Sarajevo-based war crimes investigators, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), after prior testing by other laboratories failed.

The ICMP, which uses DNA analysis to match bone samples with relatives' blood samples, will speed up the process, Forest said.

But some of the dead may never be known.

“It's a distinct possibility that a very small number of bodies may never be identified,” he said. – Reuters

-----------------------------------------------------

As for me, I don't consider almost 5,000 missing or unidentified persons as "a very small number." Certainly it's a very difficult task, but I believe all humanly possible efforts should be made as well as suggesting him to be more careful with his word selection.

[khall64au]

Rescue team searching near a bungalow in the Sofitel resort. Reuterspics

European teams return to Thailand under pressure from families

June 21, 2005

KHAO LAK (Thailand): Water churning “like a washing machine” swept away Patrice Gicquel's wife, daughter and twin babies when the Indian Ocean tsunami slammed into their beach villa in southern Thailand.

Six months later, he stands in the gutted Sofitel resort in this town, a strip of white beaches and luxury hotels where most of Thailand's 5,395 deaths occurred, hoping a renewed search will find the body of his 22-month-old son.

“I have no idea why I'm still alive. It's a mystery to me,” Gicquel said as highly-trained French sniffer dogs scoured the ruined hotel and nearby mangrove forests where bodies may be still be buried under the mud. 

“My pain is huge. I want to find my son and bury him,” said Gicquel, who has returned seven times since the 9m waves wrecked the hotel and its villas on Dec 26.

More than 200 guests and workers were killed.

“I was with my family and then it was just like a washing machine and I was swept out of the room,” said the food company executive, who helped form a victim support group to press the French government to continue the search for bodies.

His seven-year-old daughter's body was found quickly, but it was almost three months before the remains of his wife and 22-month-old daughter were recovered.

The other twin baby, Arthur, is still missing.

Under pressure from grieving families, search teams from Germany, France and Nordic countries have returned to its shattered hotels and debris-strewn mangrove fields to look again.

They are part of the world's largest forensics operation involving experts from 16 countries who have identified nearly 1,700 bodies so far, most of them foreigners.

More than 2,000 bodies remain unidentified and more than 2,900 people are listed as missing, including about 370 foreigners.

The search for remains was officially called off months ago, but resumed in May at selected sites here.

“Some families have raised concerns and we have listened to their concerns,” said British detective Derek Forest, co-commander of the disaster victim identification (DVI) operation.

Forest sympathised with the families' need for closure, but said some bodies may never be found, including those swept out to sea.

For the roughly 2,000 missing Thais, the government is considering declaring them dead to allow families to forego a two-year waiting period and claim inheritances and benefits.

The DVI operation, which now has enough funding for the rest of the year after donor governments were lambasted for a cash shortfall last month, is entering its toughest phase.

After relying mainly on dental records and fingerprints, the teams face a bigger challenge in analysing DNA samples taken from bodies exposed to days of salt water and tropical heat.

They have sent bone and tissue samples to Sarajevo-based war crimes investigators, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), after prior testing by other laboratories failed.

The ICMP, which uses DNA analysis to match bone samples with relatives' blood samples, will speed up the process, Forest said.

But some of the dead may never be known.

“It's a distinct possibility that a very small number of bodies may never be identified,” he said. – Reuters 

-----------------------------------------------------

As for me, I don't consider almost 5,000 missing or unidentified persons as "a very small number."  Certainly it's a very difficult task, but I believe all humanly possible efforts should be made as well as suggesting him to be more careful with his word selection.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Where did you find this news article?

[sriracha john]

Reuterspics

– Reuters 

Where did you find this news article?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

uhhmm ... Reuters.com?

not sure of the exact report #