Experiences in tsunami victim identification

Abstract

Sir, On 26 December 2004, giant tsunami waves devastated the coast lines of 12 south-east Asian countries, with the number of persons confirmed dead or still missing exceeding 300,000 as of 30 June 2005. Directly after the tsunami had struck Thailand’s holiday resorts on the southwestern coast, tens of thousands of locals and Western holidaymakers were missing, and hourly, more and more were confirmed dead by local authorities via the national and international media. As members of the German Federal Police’s disaster victim identification (DVI), these authors arrived on the island of Phuket, Thailand, on 28 and 30 December 2004, and worked in the region of Phuket and Khao Lak until returning to Germany on 14 January 2005. During the first 2 days after the tsunami had struck, hurried disposal of corpses by cremation or mass burials was performed in the region of Phuket and Khao Lak at some places under the surveillance of local authorities, resulting in bodies being either wrongly or not identified. Thai (local) tsunami victims had been visually “identified” by relatives and friends and were hastily cremated at Wat Yan Yao, at least until 29 December 2004; in addition, mass burials of corpses of believed Thai citizens (as determined by their black hair color, in contrast to those with blonde hair who were believed to be foreigners) were conducted during the first 2 weeks of January 2005 near the city of Phang Nga, not far from the region of Khao Lak (Fig. 1). Under the leadership of the Thai police, the German DVI team worked at three different provisional mortuaries during the early phase of the tsunami operation, handling approximately 400 bodies during the first 3 weeks after the tsunami. Over the first days, identification procedures had to be performed in the open, at a site not far from Phuket airport, since no provisional mortuaries were installed in the region at that time. Most of the deceased that underwent identification procedures at this work site were tsunami victims who had died in Phuket hospital shortly after the disaster had occurred. Since the Thai medical system was not prepared to give those who survived the tsunami immediate and appropriate medical care directly after the disaster—as the medical supply system of any country confronted with a disaster of such vast dimensions would be overstretched—at least hundreds of tsunami victims who initially survived died during the first days after the disaster from respiratory tract infections as a sequel of near-drowning, blunt force trauma or sepsis originating from wound infections. M. Tsokos (*) Institute of Legal Medicine, Department of Forensic Pathology, University of Hamburg, Butenfeld 34, 22529 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: mtsokos@web.de Tel.: +49-40-428032748 Fax: +49-40-428033934