Bid to retrieve bodies of Thai students in US begins tonight

[webfact]

Bid to retrieve bodies of Thai students in US begins tonight 

By The Nation

 

Recovery area map//Photo : Fresno Sheriff's Office

 

FRESNO, CA: -- Efforts to recover the bodies of two Thai students, trapped in a car that plunged into a river in the US more than a month ago, will start at 6am local time (8pm Bangkok time) on Friday.

 

The Thai Consulate-General’s Office in Los Angeles has been informed by the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office that it was not sure how long the recovery operation will take, according to the Consulate’s Facebook page.

 

The sheriff’s office suggested that consulate officials and relatives of the students arrive at the site at around 8am-9am.

 

Efforts to find the bodies of Thiwadee Saengsuriyarit, 24, and Bhakapon Chairattanasongporn, 28, have been delayed because of the high water level in the river and bad weather, which could have threatened the safety of the rescue teams.

 

The two postgraduate students of the University of South Florida went missing on July 26. They were believed to have been heading to Kings Canyon National Park. The rented car reportedly went off the road in Sierra Nevada and crashed some 150 metres into the swollen Kings River. Hotel staff alerted police after the two failed to return to the hotel, as they were due to check out on July 27.

 

At the request of the families of the victims, the Consulate will seek permission from local authorities to bring a monk to the site to conduct a religious ceremony for both students.

 

After the remains of Thiwadee and Bhakapon are collected, they would be sent for an autopsy and identity confirmation before being transferred to a temple in Los Angeles for Buddhist rites and cremation.

 

The family of Thiwadee intends to bring the ashes back to Thailand while Bhakapon’s family plans to scatter the ashes in California.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30325477

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2017-09-01

[oldgent]

Hooray at last hope everything goes ok. didn,t hear no more about the second car

[Foozool]

You never know ? There could be a 2nd car that caused the crash. ? 

I have seen a real psycho who was driving a long mobile home with powered engin and loved to race with cars that were going to pass by and get cars stuck on opposite lane Close to the Grand Canyon, Arizona. 

There are other kind of psychos out there as well. 

In Thailand reckless drivers are either stupid or drunk, but in the US they are sick or psychos mostly. 

Edited September 1, 2017 by Foozool

[blackson]

RTP would conclude "suicide".

[IAMHERE]

3 hours ago, blackson said:

RTP would conclude "suicide".

Has that been ruled out? I thought nobody knew for sure what happened other than the car ended up on a rock in the river.

[Elkski]

I thought they tried weeks ago to recover them.  I guess that was just a feeble attempt to satisfy the heat from the parents.   Search and rescue had great pictures.  They probably had drone footage too.   From what I saw it looked risky for a recovery. 

I think someone just distracted it speeding and those roads are twisty.  

RIP

[khwaibah]

A month after the crash, Thai students’ bodies are recovered from Kings River

BY JIM GUY

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CEDAR GROVE 

Aided by a California Highway Patrol helicopter and special equipment obtained in Southern California, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team on Friday recovered a car carrying two Thai students that plunged off a cliff and into the Kings River in July.

The car was pulled from the fast-moving water to the bank of the Kings. There, the recovery team freed the bodies from the mangled wreckage and hoisted them up to the roadside of Highway 180 where a coroner’s vehicle was waiting.

 

The car remains in the canyon and will be recovered later, the sheriff’s office said Friday afternoon.

The extraction of the car from the river was a first-of-its-kind recovery, according to officials. As described by Sheriff Margaret Mims, the helicopter lifted members of the team down a 500-foot cliff to a riverbank near the car. There, a member of the team braved chest-high swift water to secure both bodies in the car and then attach two cables to it. From there, the team used a hoist obtained in Southern California and tethered to a rock, slowly ratcheting the cable to pull the car from the river. 

Mims explained that the recovery method, which had never been attempted in the same way before, reduced the amount of cable needed to only about 100 feet instead of the 500 that would have been needed for a cliff-top recovery.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article170734067.html#storylink=cpy

[ToddinChonburi]

Good job guys !! 

[Mrjlh]

From their Facebook page:

 

[richard_smith237]

18 hours ago, Foozool said:

You never know ? There could be a 2nd car that caused the crash. ? 

I have seen a real psycho who was driving a long mobile home with powered engin and loved to race with cars that were going to pass by and get cars stuck on opposite lane Close to the Grand Canyon, Arizona. 

There are other kind of psychos out there as well. 

In Thailand reckless drivers are either stupid or drunk, but in the US they are sick or psychos mostly. 

 

There is nothing better than a healthy balanced and unbiased opinion.... 

[Foozool]

2 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

There is nothing better than a healthy balanced and unbiased opinion.... 

my guess is you must be one of those I mentioned in my post since you did not like my post much. 

You will get well, don't worry , someday. ?????

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by Foozool

[oldgent]

my congratulations to the rescue team

[LomSak27]

22 hours ago, Foozool said:

You never know ? There could be a 2nd car that caused the crash. ? 

I have seen a real psycho who was driving a long mobile home with powered engin and loved to race with cars that were going to pass by and get cars stuck on opposite lane Close to the Grand Canyon, Arizona. 

There are other kind of psychos out there as well. 

In Thailand reckless drivers are either stupid or drunk, but in the US they are sick or psychos mostly

Well Maybe it was a UFO ... or a Mastodon.  As you have no evidence at all,  why not a vortex?! 

Ridiculous deflections aside, that road is dangerous, you have to be driving serious. If they were not paying attention, taking a phone photo, a moments inattention would be fatal.

 

[YetAnother]

we can all winge with each other and basically other-speak all the same things; thais need the slightest little crack to speak and believe (somehow) their superiority ;

strange, if correct, then they have effectively bottomed it; it is all falseness based on insecurity

[Foozool]

9 minutes ago, LomSak27 said:

Well Maybe it was a UFO ... or a Mastodon.  As you have no evidence at all,  why not a vortex?! 

Ridiculous deflections aside, that road is dangerous, you have to be driving serious. If they were not paying attention, taking a phone photo, a moments inattention would be fatal.

 

You speak like an ex-cop who never been promoted. "case closed" simple as that since there is no benefit for them, but too much work.

Some smart ones go after "cold cases".

 

Posts like this very much bothers some people, why?  Because they believe that they are a whole brain. 

We call it freedom of speech,

[LomSak27]

As I have driven that road, it does not suprise me in the least that someone could plow through a guardrail and over the cliff due to inattention and carelessness.

 

 It happens almost every year.

 

 

 

 

[Hank Gunn]

21 minutes ago, LomSak27 said:

As I have driven that road, it does not suprise me in the least that someone could plow through a guardrail and over the cliff due to inattention and carelessness.

 

 It happens almost every year.

 

 

 

 

Growing up in Northern California and riding motorcycles for over 30 years, I've done a lot of miles in both the coastal mountains and the Sierra Nevada (although not in this particular area). In the warm, summer months, it's not unusual to have a fatality pretty much every weekend in popular areas driving/riding areas. This is typically caused by people who are not skilled enough or prepared to navigate such challenging roads, or those who think they are and try to "push the envelope" a little too far. As the great, Formula One driver, Stirling Moss apparently once said, "It's better to go into a turn too slow and come out fast, than to go into a turn too fast and come out dead."

 

From the photos I saw in the original story, it looked like a classic case of "overcooking a corner" (going too fast through a turn) and drifting out wide. In this case, out across the opposite lane and through the guardrail. Being grad students in Florida, ostensible on holiday in Calif., they may not have been used to the nature of those high mountain roads (i.e. extremely twisty, where you can go from highway speeds [60-90 mph] to very slow/second-gear speed [20 mph]). On a beautiful sunny day while on holidays, driving through the very beautiful southern Sierra Nevada, it would have been very tempting to "push that envelope" just a little bit. Sadly, if that's the case, the results were tragic.

 

While I know this sounds callous, and a gross generalization, from my experience of driving here in Thailand, most Thai drivers are horrible at taking corners, often cutting across lanes to navigate turns, often times when they don't even need to (i.e. they're going at the proper speed for their vehicle and the turn). Still, however it happened, a very sad tale of two young people who's lives were cut short while still in their primes.

[YetAnother]

On 9/1/2017 at 9:42 AM, webfact said:

have been delayed because of the high water level in the river and bad weather, which could have threatened the safety of the rescue teams.

let the usa-bashers alight; if we reverse the scenes, the thais would get around to it next year and have so many excuses, it would require a team to unravel them

[blackson]

i would used one of those ginormous magnets found in scrap yards around America, lowered it down with one of them ginormous 100t cranes and jerked the car up and outta the canyon.

 

That's why they pay me the big bucks and call me Mister!