It might have been numbness, exhaustion or simply that she was too young to realise what she was doing, but six-year-old Dana Trickett made barely a murmur when the Thai volunteer nurse asked her to contribute a DNA sample to help the authorities track down her missing mother and brother — both lost at Khao Lak beach in last week’s tsunami.
Putting down the paper that she had been doodling on, she offered her hand for three nail clippings, allowed the nurse to take a few strands of hair and opened her mouth wide so that a saliva swab could be taken with a cotton bud.
After checking the samples, the police forensic-science officer at Phuket town hall slipped the materials inside a brown envelope, marked it “d44” and stapled it to the missing person’s forms filled in by her British father, Michael.
The entire process took less than half an hour, but the results are not likely to come back for months, if they come back at all, because Dana and Michael’s contribution is part of the biggest and most difficult victim-identification operation the world has seen.
While corpses are usually disposed of in days, or weeks in the case of murder investigations, the complexity and scale of the tsunami disaster is likely to mean that thousands of cadavers will have to be kept on ice for months.
Returning the thousands of dead in Thailand to their families around the world is such a giant data-management exercise that microchips are being inserted in bodies to ensure they are not confused. The need for care was highlighted by the exhumation of 300 bodies that were belatedly discovered to have been wrongly identified in the chaotic days after the tsunami struck.
While authorities in Aceh and Sri Lanka are simply burying the dead, the large number of tourists in Thailand has prompted calls for identification and repatriation of the bodies.
Huge task
It will be a huge task. With 5Â 046 confirmed deaths and 3Â 810 people still listed as missing, Thailand’s official death toll could be as high as 8Â 000, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has warned. Search teams are still finding more than 100 bodies a day.
The spread of devastation is also unparalleled. After the Bali bomb in 2002, an international team of forensic experts took more than five months to identify 300 burnt and decomposing cadavers.
In Thailand, the devastation was spread over hundreds of kilometres of coastline and the victims came from a far higher number of nations. At least 30 countries have reported nationals missing in Phuket, Khao Lak and Phi Phi island.
Such is the complexity of the operation that the British government refused for two days to give even an approximate figure for the number of fatalities and missing.
Forensic experts from around the world have flown in to help identify bodies. Britain has dispatched a team of about 20 pathologists, forensic dentists, logistic experts and counsellors to help the international operation. It is being led by Australia, whose team was the first to arrive on the scene and has experience in dealing with the Bali bomb.
There are two picture galleries in Phukhet town hall. The first are the notice boards for the missing, which feature hundreds of pictures of honeymooners, holidaying families and retirees — in almost every case healthy and smiling.
The second set of boards depicts the ranks of the dead — close-up photographs of the victims, most of whom have been bloated by sea water and stiffened by rigor mortis. They are horrifying images of distended, twisted, blackened children and adults turned into blood-splattered, grey balloons.
It is hard to reconcile the smiling faces with the grotesque death masks. Doing so scientifically is likely to be even more difficult.
In the first few days, families were allowed to visually identify their lost relatives. They scoured temples turned into temporary morgues, paced through seven-high avenues of stinking coffins and opened one body bag after another to identify the missing by appearance, dental records, fingerprints or personal effects.
As the bodies decomposed in the heat, the task became increasingly hit and miss. In one instance, three families fought over one body. Finally, on Saturday, police announced that no bodies will be released without DNA confirmation.
What follows is likely to be a long process of collecting DNA samples from families around the world and matching them with materials from the victims, according to Interpol principles on disaster-victim identification.
Every corpse will be tagged with an identity number, details on where it was found and distinguishing marks. Every family claimant must provide DNA samples and, where possible, the dental records, fingerprints and last-known location of their lost relatives.
The Trickett family is one of 30 providing such information every day at the police forensic-science centre in Phuket. The volunteer nurses, most of whom work for the local telephone company, say the materials are sent to Bangkok for analysis. But with similar samples now being collected from around the world, the final reconciliation of data from the relatives and the victims is likely to be collated in China.
“We’ve been told it is the only place big enough to cope. They will coordinate everything there,” said John Charlesibe, a nephew of Michael Trickett who has flown to Thailand to offer moral support. As the far smaller operation in Bali took more than five months, patience will be important.
“It will take a long, long time,” said Acting Sergeant Tony Matheson of the New Zealand police force disaster-victim identification team.
“Although the process is similar to that used after the Bali bombing, everything is on a far bigger scale. We’ve been told there may be 10Â 000 victims. This is the greatest natural disaster in recent history.”
Bush plea tries to rebuild US image
United States President George Bush on Monday recruited two former presidents, his father and Bill Clinton, to launch a joint appeal to the American people for emergency donations to victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
They stood side by side in the White House’s Roosevelt Room as Bush told reporters: “We’re here to ask our fellow citizens to join in a broad humanitarian relief effort.
“In the coming days, presidents Clinton and Bush will ask Americans to donate directly to reliable charities already providing help to tsunami victims. In this situation, cash donations are most useful, and I’ve asked the former presidents to solicit contributions both large and small. I ask every American to contribute as they are able to do so.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans have so far given about $100-million to US-based charities.
As the presidential appeal was launched, the US flag on the White House was lowered to half-mast, marking the start of a week of mourning. The three presidents were also due to visit the Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Indian and Thai embassies in Washington to offer their condolences.
The US embassy in South Africa in Pretoria and its consulates in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg have joined US installations around the world in flying the American flag at half-mast from Monday until Friday.
Clinton and the president’s father were expected to give a string of media interviews to publicise the appeal.
The president’s brother, Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida, is already involved in the relief effort and is accompanying the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, on a tour of the disaster zone. Bush said they will brief him personally on their return.
So far, the US administration has offered $350-million in humanitarian aid, but White House and congressional officials predicted that figure will rise.
Since being criticised last week for being slow to respond to the disaster, the White House has moved to play a leading role in the relief efforts. US helicopters and planes have begun delivering emergency supplies to some of the most remote and badly-hit areas, such as the west coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province.
One airlift at a time, they have begun to rebuild the US’s reputation — particularly in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, whose people overwhelmingly opposed the invasion of Iraq.
Colonel Yani Basuki, a spokesperson for the Indonesian government’s emergency relief mission, said the US’s assistance was appreciated.
“It has made a big difference,” he told The Guardian. “We do not have enough helicopters and so the American aircraft are enabling us to reach many more people … than would otherwise have been the case. They are certainly saving lives.”
The Seahawk helicopters are based on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which arrived off the coast of Aceh on Saturday.
The ship’s commander, Captain Kendall Card, said the Seahawks flew 27 missions on Monday, delivering 36 tonnes of aid.
The Pentagon has also sent the USNS Mercy, a 1Â 000-bed hospital ship, to the region to help treat victims and help prevent the outbreak of water-borne epidemics. One senior Jakarta-based Asian diplomat said such missions will “make a huge difference” to Indonesians’ view of the US government.
“Washington has lost most Indonesians’ hearts and many of their minds,” he said. “Provided they play this right, it stands to win back many friends it has lost over Iraq and Palestine.”
Ken Conboy, a security analyst in Jakarta, agreed although he thought Washington would probably have reacted equally generously if Indonesia had not been a prominent Muslim country.
“Having said that, the US will be extra careful to make sure they get it right,” he told The Guardian. “They have a great opportunity here to win back some of the support they have lost. Even if it’s a by-product of what they would want to do anyway, they won’t want to pass up the opportunity.”
But he said it will be impossible to win over all the sceptics.
“They could do backflips and they wouldn’t be appreciated by some,” he said.
European diplomats in Jakarta are also watching how Washington responds to the crisis.
“It could be very good for the US,” one told The Guardian. — I-Net Bridge, Guardian Unlimited Â