DVI News 12 December 2011
12/Dec/2011
Identity of bus crash victims in doubt4 December 2011. Brazil.
Brazilian officials say 36 people died and 11 were injured after a bus and two trucks collided in the Bahia provincial city of Milagres.
Federal Transport Police say the bus was carrying illegal workers, making identification of the victims difficult, the Buenos Aires Herald reported
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/
USARPAC top NCO brings uncle's remains home
5 December 2011. USA.
The journey has taken more than six decades. A Korean War prisoner of war Pfc. Jimmie Gaitan's remains were escorted home to his family Nov. 22 by his nephew, U.S. Army Pacific's top noncommissioned officer Command Sgt. Maj. Frank M. Leota.
Leota's family received the call from the U.S. Army's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, just days after Leota and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III visited JPAC, located on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.
"We were given a detailed brief at JPAC on how the remains were identified and were told that in the next 48 hours, 19 families would be notified that their loved ones have been found," said Leota.
"JPAC has been able to make an identification of a lost family member every two and a half days," said Steve Thompson, external relations officer. "More than 1,743 members have been returned to their families thus far, Leota's uncle being among them."
Gaitan was a medic assigned to the Clearing Company, 2nd Medical Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, when he was taken prisoner while tending to his wounded comrades in South Korea on Feb. 13, 1951. He died while in prison on May 24, 1951.
"My aunt, Ruth Gaitan, has been waiting 60 years for her husband," Leota said." She's 83 years old. They were married for only a short time before he left for Korea, now she's waiting for me to bring him home."
"It's truly an honor for my family to ask me to bring the remains of my uncle home," he added.
"Thanks to the efforts of those who've worked tirelessly to identify my uncle, one more family finally has answers and one more American can finally come home," said Leota.
http://www.army.mil/article/
Bus-trailer collision kills 20 in Cameroon
5 December 2011.
A passenger bus collided with a parked trailer in the Central African nation of Cameroon, killing 20 people and injuring about 30 more, police said.
The incident occurred Monday on a road in the town of Tonga, north of the capital of Yaounde
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/
Wall collapse kills 11 in Makassar
5 December 2011. Indonesia.
Eleven people were killed when their houses were crushed by a collapsing section of the wall bordering their housing complex in Makassar, South Sulawesi on Sunday.Eight were injured while more victims were feared to still be buried under the debris in the Sinrijala, Panakkukang district, Makassar
According to data from the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) Agency, three of the victims were children.
“Data collected from four hospitals showed that 11 were killed, five male and three female,” DVI official Abdul Rahman said.
South Sulawesi police chief Maj. Gen. Johny Waenal Usman says the 7-meter-high wall collapsed and buried several houses Sunday in a housing estate in Makassar, the largest city in Sulawesi.
Usman says rescuers found 11 bodies, including a 7-year-old boy, buried under debris
http://www.thejakartapost.com/
7 Ayyappa devotees killed in accident
6 December 2011. India.
Seven Ayyappa devotees were killed and two others were injured in an accident on the Salem-Bangalore National Highway on Sunday night.
According to police, the accident occurred when a van in which the devotees from a village near Guntur in Andhra Pradesh were travelling collided with an omni-bus.
The dead were indentified
http://www.thehindu.com/news/
Unisys ID technology can get a head
7 December 2011. Australia.
Unisys is looking to export a facial recognition and imaging system developed for the NSW Police Force to law enforcement agencies in the UK, US and Hong Kong.
The vendor's Secure Image Management System (SIMS) technology uses CogniTech’s digital facial recognition technology to provide NSW Police with a 'digital vault' of stills and video data, the uses for which extend into the most gruesome aspects of law enforcement.
These include the identification of deceased victims from tattoos or even from a decapitated head.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/
Eight dead, 51 hurt in Thai bus crash
7 December 2011.
Eight people were killed and 51 others injured when a bus travelling from Chiang Mai to Bangkok left the road and crashed into the fence of a fuel station in Lampang's Thoen district early yesterday. It was suspected that the bus driver had dozed off behind wheel.
http://news.asiaone.com/News/
Seven killed, 22 Injured in Bus Crash in Algeria
8 December 2011.
Seven people were killed and 22 others injured on Wednesday in a bus crash near Algeria's Sidi Bouzid city in Laghouat province, some 300 km south of the capital Algiers.
http://english.cri.cn/6966/
Eleven dead in bus cylinder blast near Matiari
7 December 2011. Pakistan.
Eleven passengers including ten children have been killed and several others injured in a gas cylinder blast in a bus on National Highway near Matiari.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/
11 people burnt alive in CNG bus fire
7 December 2011. Pakistan.
According to Matiari SSP Abdul Hadi Bulo, nearly 11 people were burnt to death while another 11 were injured when a passenger van from Shahdadpur caught fire because of a CNG leak on Wednesday, nearly 26 kilometres from Hyderabad.
The SSP said that the victims also included six children. He added that the bodies were severely disfigured and thus unrecognizable.
Authorities suggest that doctors might have to carry out DNA tests to identify the dead
http://tribune.com.pk/story/
Dead diver Identified — 26 years later
7 December 2011. Canada.
The B.C. Coroners Service has identified the body of a scuba diver found in Burrard Inlet in October.
Coroner Stephen Fonseca, manager of the BC Coroners Service Identification and Disaster Response Unit, said the remains are those of Peter Devoe, a scuba diver who disappeared during a dive on March 13, 1985.
The BC Coroners Service, assisted by North Vancouver RCMP and the RCMP Underwater Recovery Team, took on the job of identifying the remains. Following up on tips received, they were able to confirm the diver's identity
http://www.bclocalnews.com/
Crews Recover Five Bodies From Helicopter Tour Crash
8 December 2011. USA.
Rescue crews completed the difficult process of recovering bodies Thursday from a remote canyon outside Las Vegas after the crash of a tour helicopter belonging to a company with repeated aviation violations
The recovery of the bodies and the investigation were complicated by the remoteness of the rugged canyon accessible only by helicopter and four-wheel-drive. The helicopter went down in the River Mountains bordering Lake Mead.
Clark County Coroner Michael Murphy said Thursday that all five bodies had been recovered, but they were not easily recognizable.
Murphy said he could not release the names of the dead until medical examiners make identifications. The process may involve the use of DNA, fingerprint and dental records.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/
Ashes of the nameless and unclaimed buried in L.A. County ritual
8 December 2011. USA.
They are the unidentified, the estranged, those whose loved ones just couldn't afford to bury them.
In a simple yet poignant ceremony Wednesday near a busy Boyle Heights intersection, the ashes of more than 1,600 people who had never been identified or whose bodies were never claimed were buried in a single grave.
The mass burial has become a custom each December at the Los Angeles County Crematory and Cemetery. This year's ceremony was attended by just a few, none of whom knew the deceased.
The Rev. Chris Ponnet, a chaplain at County-USC Medical Center, led the service for "the nameless and the named but unclaimed" — 1,639 bodies in all.
Bodies at the county morgue are kept in storage for two to three years before being sent to the common grave, according to the coroner's office. There currently are 5,199 people on the coroner's unclaimed persons list.
http://www.latimes.com/news/
Complete list of unclaimed is at: http://coroner.co.la.ca.us/
3 policemen die when boat sinks after mission
9 December 2011. Vietnam
Three police officers from Vu Quang District, Ha Tinh Province drowned when their basket boat was sucked under the Ngan Sau River by a whirlpool yesterday.
Their vessel was about 15 meters from the river’s bank, it was capsized and sunk by a powerful whirlpool, witnesses said.
All three officers tried to swim away, but they failed and were submerged by the swift current
Local rescuers could not find their bodies until 6 pm.
http://www.tuoitrenews.vn/
Airplane involved in fatal crash was trying to return to airport
9 December 2011. USA.
Four people died in a plane crash this afternoon near the intersection of Benson Road and Westport Avenue.
The twin-engine plane was destroyed.
The cause of the crash is not known, and the names of the dead have not been released
http://www.argusleader.com/
All four victims in fatal plane crash identified
9 December 2011. USA.
Police have identified the four people aboard the plane that crashed this afternoon near Sioux Falls Regional Airport
Next of kin have been notified; however, positive identification has not been made at this point, according to the release
http://www.argusleader.com/
Fire in Kolkata's AMRI hospital: 73 killed, several injured
9 December 2011. India.
At least 73 people, including three hospital staff, were killed and several others injured in a massive fire that broke out at the AMRI hospital in south Kolkata early this morning.
Initial report hinted that most of the victims were admitted at orthopaedic ward and majority of them were immovable.
Locals and fire officials who started the rescue work alleged that most of the hospital staffs fled soon after fire broke out.
The report also confirmed that most of the patients are victim of suffocation as thick smoke covered the entire building.
The fire broke out in the early hours at the basement where hospital chemicals and medical waste were stocked.
http://timesofindia.
UPDATE: - Fire in Kolkata's AMRI hospital: 73 killed, several injured
9 December 2011. India.
The death toll at the Amri (Dhakuria) Hospital has risen to 73. The multistoreyed private hospital, turned into a towering inferno in the wee hours of the morning.
The fire spread fast from the basement of the hospital, engulfing one ward after the other. While many patients died of burns, most died due to suffocation caused by carbon monoxide accumulation all over the building. About 50 bodies have been sent to the SSKM Hospital where post mortem has already been conducted on 42 bodies.
The worst affected were the ICU patients who did not die of burns but due to asphyxiation.
Till late in the day the hospital looked like a morgue as bodies lay in rows, waiting to be sent to the SSKM Hospital for post mortem. Wails of relatives filled the air as they helplessly went looking among the bodies trying to identify their loved ones. Some sat staring at the bodies, while some repeatedly tried to wake them up from their everlasting sleep
http://timesofindia.
UPDATE: 90 killed in Kolkata hospital fire
9 December 2011. India.
At least 90 people were killed in a fire that ravaged a hospital here in the early hours of Friday. Most of the victims choked to death on the upper floors, even as the toxic smoke engulfed the building.
Some relatives of the patients broke down as news of the death of their loved ones came in, while the rest frantically searched for their kin, scanning the list of the deceased.
Trepidation rose as the hospital authorities informed the firefighters of the presence of a biomedical department in the basement, where radioactive material for treatment of cancer patients was stored.
Six directors of the hospital have been arrested and the institute will be sealed once the rescue operations are over, said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who visited the hospital as well as the morgue at the state-run SSKM Hospital, where the bodies were taken.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/
Relatives of hospital fire victims fight tears, anger at morgue
9 December 2011. India.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said: "61 bodies have been brought here so far. Of them post mortem has been performed already on 46 and 16 of the bodies have been identified."
However, relatives of the dead were angry at the delays and the provision.
"Why my son had to be cut into pieces. I know he is dead... I don’t want to know why he is dead. Why could they not spare my child the pain of post mortem?” shouted a father over the body of son which was handed to him after the autopsy.
Ronojoy Guha, who lost his sister-in-law Parama Chakraborty in the tragedy, accused the hospital staff of being "inhuman".
"The bodies recovered from the site were kept in a heap. I and my brother had to find out Parama from the heap. How can they be so inhuman to treat the bodies as lifeless objects?"
http://www.hindustantimes.com/
14 Dead as Tuck Plows Into Religious Procession in Brazil Town
9 December 2011.
14 people were killed when an out-of-control truck plowed into a religious procession in the northeastern Brazilian town of Feira Grande.
http://www.
AMRI hospital fire in Kolkata: After endless wait, hopes flicker out at SSKM morgue
10 December 2011. India.
As one lifeless body after another was retrieved from the smoke-filled intestines of the AMRI Hospitals on Friday morning and put in ambulances for post-mortem and identification, the scene of the tragedy shifted to SSKM Hospital. Numbed by shock and clueless about the plight of loved ones who were admitted to AMRI, friends and family members trooped to the SSKM morgue, where 86 bodies were brought till 7pm. Outside the morgue, near a shamiana where the bodies were kept, a queue of grim-faced and tearful people, young and old, braced for the worst. The little hope they had perished once the identification process began.
The SSKM morgue has a capacity of 30, so the bodies not being examined had to kept outside.
By 7pm, around 35 bodies had been identified and handed over to family members, with the 40 morgue staff, including autopsy surgeons and forensic experts, working tirelessly
http://timesofindia.
Kolkata fire: AMRI directors to be produced in court
10 December 2011. India.
Six directors of Kolkata’s AMRI Hospital – where a fire on Friday killed 90 people, majority of them patients – will be produced before a local court here on Saturday.
A case of negligence and culpable homicide has already been registered against the six.
The fire brigade, many alleged, came over two hours late. The fire brigade blamed it on narrow lanes leading to the hospital.
The autopsy has been completed on 87 victims and 84 have been identified when reports last came in.
Till late on Friday evening, rescuers were trying to drill holes in the wall and smash the glass-panes in a last ditch effort to look for survivors and bodies, and extinguish still smouldering fires.
http://zeenews.india.com/news/
At least 30 killed in horror minibus crash near Harrismith
10 December 2011. South Africa.
Thirty people were killed and seven others were injured, two of whom critically, when a minibus taxi and a heavy goods truck collided head-on on the N3 approximately two kilometres from Harrismith in the Free State in the early hours of this morning.
Bodies of the injured and the dead lay strewn about the scene. Several appeared to have been flung from the wreckage on impact. Others lay entrapped in the wreckage
http://www.arrivealive.co.za/
14 killed as plane crashes into slum area
11 December 2011. Philippines.
A four-seater cargo plane crashed into a slum area in Parañaque City yesterday, triggering an inferno that left at least 14 people, including two children, dead and scores injured, officials said.
Mayor Florencio Bernabe said rescuers recovered the charred bodies of at least 12 people, including two victims believed to be the pilot and co-pilot of the twin engine Beechcraft light plane.
Chief Inspector Enrique Sy of the Parañaque City police said at least five people were killed instantly when the plane crashed and exploded near F. Serrano Elementary School at Annex 35 Taiwan in Barangay Don Bosco.
Mayor Florencio Bernabe said “Most of the victims were children who were playing and some residents doing their daily chores.”
At the crash site, rescuers retrieved several bodies, which they described as having been burned beyond recognition
http://www.philstar.com/
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