DVI News 23 January 2012
23/Jan/2012
9 killed, 1 missing in E China fire16 January 2012.
The death toll in a fire in East China's Fujian province on Monday has risen to nine as two more bodies were found in the afternoon. One was still missing and another injured was treated at hospital.
The fire affected 12 households, killing seven people at the scene. Two more bodies were retrieved on Monday afternoon.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
Coroner praises balloon disaster team
17 January 2012. New Zealand.
Coroner Peter Ryan has praised the work of the disaster victim identification team working on the Carterton balloon tragedy.
Mr Ryan has now formally identified all of 11 people.
The coroner says experts faced a very difficult challenge due to the horrific nature of the accident.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/
Truck accident in Haiti's capital kills at least 26
17 January 2012.
A truck loaded with rubble from Haiti's earthquake two years ago killed at least 26 people and injured 57 others after its driver lost control of the vehicle in a hilly area of the impoverished Caribbean nation's capital, authorities said on Tuesday.
http://www.reuters.com/
4,000 Forensic Elite to Convene in Atlanta for Scientific Meeting in February
18 January 2012. USA.
The American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) 64th annual scientific meeting will take place February 20-25, 2012
Wednesday, Feb. 22, the Academy presents an informative opening Plenary Session focusing on Global Research: The Forensic Science Edge, where international experts representing the International Commission on Missing Persons, United States Department of Justice International Criminal Investigation Training and Assistance Program, International Committee of the Red Cross and the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Portugal, will discuss harnessing the expertise and knowledge of forensic sciences through collaboration with scientists. The rapid exchange of information around the world is essential for effective crime fighting and disaster victim identification.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/
Beirut building collapse toll reaches 27
18 January 2012.
The death toll from the collapse of a six-storey building in the Lebanese capital rose to 27 people on Tuesday with 12 others injured, a Red Cross official said.
"We have recovered 27 bodies from the site. Rescue efforts have stopped under orders from the interior ministry," Red Cross head of operations Georges Kettaneh told AFP.
Among those killed are Lebanese -- including a 15-year-old girl -- Sudanese, Filipinos, Egyptians and a Jordanian family.
http://www.google.com/
Database tool seeks to ID unknown dead
18 January 2012. USA.
NamUs is a dual database system that offers a quick way to compare large numbers of cases of unidentified human bodies with reports of missing people.
"It is the only system like that, where you can cross-check these cases," said Amy Dobbs, criminal analyst for the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Squad. She is one of the state's five key NamUs associates.
Later, NamUs will feature a publicly searchable database of dead people who have been identified but for whom no family member has been located. NamUs is less than 3 years old. Many police remain unfamiliar with it. Dobbs and some of her colleagues around the country offer training sessions. Part of NamUs is available to the general public. Its website, http://www.namus.gov, is available free of charge to the public as well as police departments. Anyone can view the cases or even add a missing person to the system once the information is verified by a NamUs case manager, Dobbs said. Dobbs also is available to make educational presentations to organizations such as civic clubs and school groups, although those sessions will differ from the ones given to law enforcement.
NamUs grew out of a 2005 conference of law enforcement officials, forensic scientists, criminologists and victim advocates to discuss the need for a central source of information for unidentified dead body cases. In 2007, the database for unidentified body cases was set up. In July 2009, the missing people database and the ability for cross-checking was set up.
http://www.policeone.com/
‘I carry guilt for what happened and I’ll carry it to my grave’
19 January 2012. U.K.
Former detective and disaster victim identification expert Dick Venables tells Martin Smith how his life was changed by the events of April 1989
HE’S helped identify thousands of bodies all over the world, pieced together fragments from tsunamis and plane crashes to help trace their victims.
But when Dick Venables closes his eyes on a bad day he is always haunted by the same thing.
The desperate faces of the Hillsborough disaster victims.
96 Liverpool supporters died that day and what he saw will haunt him for the rest of his life.
“I carry guilt for what happened that day and I will carry it to my grave,” said Dick Venables, now aged 54 and a world-renowned expert in Disaster Victim Identification who plans to tell his story in a new book.
In the years that followed the disaster miner’s son Dick Venables’ career took an unusual turn.
He went on to get involved in identifying bodies and designed training courses in victim recovery and mortuary procedures that have trained more than 3,000 officers from 37 UK forces.
That day inevitably shaped his life as it did the lives of so many others.
By 1995 Dick Venables had become deeply involved in planning for disasters that was drafted in to help North Yorkshire police to set up their temporary mortuary following the Dunkeswick air disaster and was invited to join the police’s Major Disaster Advisory Team.
He went on to become a national expert and was deployed as advisor and mortuary operations manager follwing the Selby rail crash in 2001, the Morecambe Bay deaths of 2004, the Hotham air crash on Humberside in 2004, the Berkshire rail crash and Blackpool helicopter crash of 2006.
Dick retired from the police force in 2006 but continued to deliver DVI training to police forces until 2009.
http://www.thestar.co.uk/
Baru Empat Jenazah Imigran Gelap Dipulangkan
Four bodies of Immigrants Repatriated
19 January 2012
After a month after the shipwreck in the waters Prigi, Parade, East Java, late last year, most of the bodies of illegal immigrants who are victims still can not be identified.
Of the 24 bodies that have been identified, to date only four bodies have been repatriated to their country.
Head of Medical and Health East Java Regional Police who is also Head of the Disaster Victim Identification team (DVI) Central Regional Commissioner Didi Mintadi Agus said, the identification process takes a long time due to the high level of difficulty.
www.Kompas.com
Italy IDs Four More Cruise Ship Victims
19 January 2012.
Italian authorities have released the identities of four victims who perished when the Costa Concordia cruise ship ran into rocks off the Tuscan coast.
The four — two more French, an Italian and a Peruvian — were among those recovered in the first hours after the disaster Friday night.
Divers resumed the search Thursday for 21 people still missing after a cruise ship capsized off the Tuscan coast, but rough seas forecast for later in the day added an element of uncertainty to the operation
Eleven people have been confirmed dead, their bodies removed from the ship and frigid waters
http://www.time.com/time/
Avalanches kill 29 in northeastern Afghanistan
19 January 2012.
Avalanches have killed at least 29 people in Afghanistan's mountainous northeast as rescuers struggled to reach the worst-hit areas cut off by heavy snows, officials said.
The Afghan National Disaster Management Agency said Thursday that at least 40 more people have been injured in a series of avalanches since Monday in Badakhshan province.
In February 2010, an avalanche killed at least 171 people near the Salang Pass, a major route through the Hindu Kush mountains that connects the capital of Kabul to the north of the country.
http://articles.timesofindia.
Six Killed In Afghan Helicopter Crash
20 January 2012. Afghanistan.
NATO says six foreign troops have been killed in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan.
The helicopter crash is the worst such incident since August last year when 30 soldiers died when their helicopter came down in eastern Afghanistan.
http://www.rferl.org/content/
Five Die in Helicopter Crash in Venezuela
20 January 2012.
All five people aboard were killed when a helicopter crashed near Salto Angel in southeastern Venezuelan. The Bell 206 Long Ranger went down Wednesday.
The search for the helicopter began Wednesday, but had to be suspended due to bad weather.
On Thursday an aerial search spotted the wreckage in the Auyantepui mountains.
http://www.laht.com/article.
Japan to repatriate remains of WWII dead from Papua
20 January 2012.
The Japanese government plans to repatriate the remains of Japanese World War II dead still to be found in several parts of Papua province, a local tourism official said.
The Japanese government had formed a team to handle the repatriation and it was scheduled to meet the Indonesian government in Jakarta next March.
"It is estimated that the remains of 20 thousand to 53 thousand Japanese soldiers who died during World War II are still buried across several districts in Papua," said Ch Wim Rumbino, head of Papua`s tourism and culture office.
http://www.antaranews.com/en/
Aussie father among 43 dead in Ethiopian bus plunge
20 January 2012.
Dawit Fantaye Taye, from Tarneit in Melbourne's west, was initially pulled alive from the wreckage of the bus, which plunged about 80 metres into a gorge north of the capital Addis Ababa on Tuesday, killing 43 people on board.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/
New Zealand's cops: The new blue line
21 January 2012.
The police are laying their ghosts to rest with different methods and a fresh culture.
The country's top cop, Peter Marshall, was out with the rank and file on the late shift on New Year's Eve helping staff deal with a young woman cutting her wrists with a knife.
A few days later one of Marshall's deputies, Mike Bush, and a few other senior officers went to the mortuary while Disaster Victim Identification staff were assisting with the post-mortems of the Carterton balloon tragedy victims.
This is the new top echelon of the New Zealand police, and staff all the way down the hierarchy seem to be highly impressed.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/
Maluku police join search for missing speedboat passengers
21 January 2012. Indonesia.
Maluku marine and air police are taking part in a search for nine people who went missing after their speedboat capsized on its way from Ambon to Seram island on Saturday evening.
The search operation was focused on the waters around Pombo island which was the scene of the incident to find the wreckage of the boat.
The Kairatu police sector chief, in the western part of Seram, Yanni Prinussa, confirmed that nine people had gone missing.
http://www.antaranews.com/en/
Death toll of Concordia rises to 12 – 20 still missing
21 January 2012. Italy.
The death toll of the Concordia sinking rose to 12, with twenty still missing. Italian Navy's deep-sea divers recovered the body of a woman on deck 5
http://www.agi.it/english-
Scores dead after Kano blasts
21 January 2012. Nigeria.
Co-ordinated attacks by Islamist militants in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on Friday killed about 150 people, witnesses and reports say.
Hospitals are struggling to deal with the numbers of killed and injured.
A series of explosions ripped apart police buildings, passport offices and immigration centres around the city, which is now under a 24-hour curfew
On Saturday in Kano, a city of nine million people, most of them Muslims, Red Cross teams have been collecting bodies from the streets and taking them to mortuaries.
A BBC reporter in Kano said he had counted 150 bodies in the mortuary of the city's main hospital.
A medical official told the AP news agency that 143 people had been killed, and another official told AFP that 162 bodies had been counted.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
More bones found at Diyarbakir mass grave
22 January 2012. Turkey
The number human skulls found in the vicinity of a former gendarmerie building in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır has increased to 11 as the prosecutor’s office deepens the investigation.
“In the past, Turkey was proud of its underground mine treasures; now Turkey has more to be proud of, such as skulls and bones from unsolved murders,” Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Sezgin Tanrıkulu said Jan. 15 during a visit to the area.
The skulls and bones were found during restoration works of a building that was formerly used by the Gendarmerie Intelligence Anti-Terrorism Unit (JİTEM) in Diyarbakır
The Diyarbakır Public Prosecution first conducted an investigation on Jan. 11 with excavations carried out by investigation teams, forensic medicine experts and archaeologists
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.
Many drown in Iran boat accident
22 January 2012.
At least 16 people have died after a passenger boat sank off Iran's southern coast, the official IRNA news agency has reported.
The boat sank on Saturday evening while sailing between Hormuz island and the port city of Bandar Abbas on the mainland, local media reported.
Rescue teams saved five passengers and recovered 16 bodies. One passenger remains missing
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/
Italy cruise ship death toll rises to 13
23 January 2012.
Divers found another woman's body in the Costa Concordia cruise wreck off the coast of Italy, raising the death toll to 13, as families of the missing attended a remembrance mass nine days after the tragedy struck.
"Divers from the fire services found the body of a woman at deck seven at the stern of the ship, in the area underwater. She was wearing a life-jacket," spokeswoman Francesca Maffini from the Civil Protection Agency said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/
(Tags: dvi)