Posted on 01/03/2005 5:44:46 PM PST by TexKat
FORENSIC experts have begun exhuming tsunami victims in Thailand after discovering that their bodies had been mislabelled in the rush to bury the dead in the wake of the disaster.
Teams of more than 200 forensic experts from Thailand and 18 other countries worked frantically at Buddhist temples across the island of Phuket yesterday, digging up makeshift morgues in a desperate bid to identify the dead, many of whom are foreign tourists posted as missing.
At one temple on the outskirts of Patong, several hundred bodies lay on the ground, covered by tarpaulin and body bags while another hundred lay exposed as they were sprayed with disinfectant.
According to Porntip Rojanasunan, a leading forensic expert, 300 victims, all Thais and other Asians, were being exhumed.
He said: "When the relatives came to try to claim the victims’ bodies, in many cases they were given the wrong remains. The trouble was the local offices did not put tags on the bodies properly, so we are trying to re-identify huge numbers of them.
"In the wake of the disasters nobody understood how important it was to have the appropriate tagging and labelling. The last two days, we have had the problem of digging up bodies."
It emerged last night that in one case, a Thai family admitted it had mistakenly claimed the body of a woman that was taken from Phuket to Bangkok. It turned out to be the body of a 23-year-old Philippine choreographer and ballet instructor, and not their loved one as they first thought.
Across Thailand the bodies of many foreigners are still being kept in air-conditioned containers specially flown in from the West, but most Thais are temporarily buried in cemeteries waiting for relatives to retrieve them for cremation. Rescuers are also packing some bodies in dry ice to slow down decomposition in the tropical heat.
Officials in Thailand have sought to increase their refrigeration capacity to store bodies while DNA samples, fingerprints and dental records are obtained so identification can be made later.
Sad; so sad.
I don't agree that the bodies should be dug up. Let them rest in peace. Don't spread disease by digging them up.
Bodies aren't the source of disease, it's all the sewage and eating of rotting food that will take the toll. Bodies just smell really bad.
I thought the exposed bodies were the source of contamination that could lead to disease.
From what I have read, only if the corpse died of some disease organism such as cholera is the corpse itself especially harmful. The bacteria which eats dead meat is not especially harmful to people. (Not that I'd drink corpse tea.) Of course, if cholera takes hold, then the bodies will be an added problem.
yeah i think they are afraid of already diseased corpses spreading even more misery
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