Thailand's Biggest Ever Rescue Operation Scours For Missing, Rushes To Identify Dead
PHUKET, Thailand (AP) -- International teams and thousands of Thais were mounting the country's largest ever rescue and relief operation Thursday, with Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra fearing the death toll will soar to nearly 7,000.
``There are many people listed as missing and we think that 80 percent of them are feared dead. Twenty percent may have lost contact,'' he told reporters.
Officials say more than 6,000 people are missing, while 2,394, including 710 foreigners, are confirmed to have perished in Sunday's tsunami disaster.
By Thaksin's calculation, the dead would number about 6,800.
As Thaksin spoke, crack rescue and forensic teams from Australia, Japan, Germany, Israel and other countries fanned out across still corpse-strewn areas of southern Thailand, racing against time to find survivors and identify rapidly decomposing corpses.
``We have to have hope that we'll find somebody,'' said Ulf Langemeier, chief of 15 German veterans of earthquake disasters who along with three sniffer dogs combed a wrecked resort under huge flood lamps early Thursday.
Langemeier sounded an ominous note: there's always a chance of finding survivors trapped under rubble when earthquakes strike on land, but ``when waves enter a building you have no chance.''
Underscoring his pessimism, thousands of coffins and body bags poured into the country from nations including Britain, the United States and Japan.
But Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Suwit Khunkitti refused to give up hope.
``Anything can happen,'' he said. ``When these kind of things have happened everywhere in the world, some people have lived for nine days, without food and water even if injured. So we keep our hopes high and we fight for it.''
The rescue and identification teams focused their efforts on a 30-kilometer (18.6-mile) stretch of beach in Phang Nga province, north of the internationally popular resort of Phuket Island.
More than half of Thailand's confirmed deaths occurred in Phang Nga province, and police there say as many as 3,000 bodies may yet be found among the five-star hotels as well as poor fishing villages.
``Villagers say that the search teams want to help the foreigners first and they don't care about them,'' said Jurit Laksanawisit, a member of Parliament from Phang Nga. Describing the rescue effort as slow and chaotic, he said some victims might have been saved since on Wednesday a number were found to have just expired.
Thaksin admitted problems of coordination existed because of the multiple areas that were hit.
``Everybody going to these areas has good intentions as they go with their heart and a sense of dedication. These are not good places to stay, no comfort, no toilets, only the smell of corpses. If there are any misunderstandings, we can discuss them,'' he said.
In some places sniffer dogs weren't necessary to find corpses, ``as we can smell it the corpses even before the helicopter lands,'' Thaksin said.
As rescue workers toiled at Khao Lak, hundreds of people darted from the beach in panic after a siren sounded warning of another possible tsunami. But only small waves followed the alarm.
The warning, which was also issued in India, following information that several aftershocks in the region had pushed up the water level.
The government said 6,130 Thais and foreigners were still missing. They include some 1,500 Swedes, 200 Finns, 200 Danes and hundreds of Norwegians, according to reports from Scandinavian capitals.
Karl Kent, head of the Australian team, said the pressure of time is always present in a disaster victim identification process.
The pressure, he said, came from families who wanted dead loved ones identified and repatriated and from the rapid deterioration of corpses that eventually makes identification impossible. He said proper refrigeration of the dead was crucial.
Trucks loaded with refrigeration units were seen dispersing over the area, as Thai volunteers and rescue teams rushed in from around the country.
Even prisoners were mobilized to clear away debris and build coffins for the foreigners, media reports said. Most of the Buddhist Thais killed were being cremated at local monasteries.
Monks chanted for the victims at many monasteries throughout the country in religious services which began simultaneously at 7 p.m. (1200 GMT). The government had asked that Buddhist and Christians offer their prayers at the same time, while Muslims follow during their regular Friday services.
Nationals of more than 40 countries were reported vacationing in six provinces of southern Thailand when disaster struck.
There are about 114,000 people confirmed dead around southern Asia and as far away as Somalia on Africa's eastern coast, most of them by tidal waves from the 9.0 magnitude earthquake off Indonesia's coast on Sunday.
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