Disaster as I mentioned and explained in previous post is something that cannot be predicted in some cases. This is true for the tsunami that hit Thailand in December 26, 2004. No one expected that earthquake with 9.0 Richter scale in Aceh would result in an estimated 5,395 death 8,500 injured people in Thailand. In my discussion below, I would emphasize more on the forensic management in Thailand specifically and not related to other countries affected by this mass disaster. Before we go further, I would like to give definition of mass disaster. Mass disaster is the disaster that killed 12 or more people in a single event.
In mass disaster, forensic team plays a very important role in the management of dead body. In Thailand’s tsunami situation, only the identification of the dead body was focussed instead of general purpose of forensic investigation that include the identification of the victim, the time and location, cause and the manner of death.
Basically, dead bodies scattered in tsunami affected area must be recovered soon before it undergo decomposition. Decomposition would make the forensic identification become more difficult. According to my lecturer, Dr. Yudha, there can be primary such as dental or secondary methods for identification. In this case, there were four major identification methods used that are dental (85.5%), fingerprints (12.6%), DNA (0.4%) and physical (1.2%). The physical method is less accurate when the duration taken for investigation was prolonged because of decomposition and the refrigerator available for dead body storage was not sufficient. This is different for Thai citizen. For Thai citizen, dental method contributed about 55% for the investigation, whilst fingerprints contributed around 39% but was getting increased due to the increased in ante mortem fingerprints data from family members of the victims. The DNA method used DNA sample from buccal mucosa, hair, and muscle tissues before decomposition but after that period the sample taken from tooth, femur and rib were more useful.
The dead bodies in this disaster were managed by some organizations as mentioned below:
a. Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation of Ministry of Interior.
b. Royal Thai Police.
c. Forensic science Institute, Ministry of Justice.
d. Universities.
e. Military.
f. Local Government.
- Helped in identification and released of the bodies to the family members of the victims.
g. Public health personnel.
- provide additional equipments and supplies.
h. Non-government organizations.
i. Ministry of Public Health
- provide the equipments and supplies
j. Other volunteers.
- Helped in transferring the bodies, numbering and tagging, cleaning of the bodies.
Even though these elements collaborated each other but the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation of Ministry of Interior had taken the responsibility and provided the guidelines for dead body management and ordered the Royal Thai Police to consolidate the identification. TTVI that stand for Thai Tsunami Victim Identification was established later when the Royal Thai government realized the bodies were getting more decomposed. This situation need more experienced expert in handling this. So TTVI was the solution formed under Thai authority that allowed international collaboration to provide equitable treatment of the bodies.
In conclusion, the management of the mass disaster like tsunami really need proper guidelines and immediate action taken in order to make it cost-effective and increase the pace of the management.
References:
1. Sribanditmongkol, P. Et al. Forensic aspect of disaster casualty management
Tsunami Victim Identification in Thailand [online accessed on November 22th 2010]
URL: http://www.who.int/hac/events/tsunamiconf/presentations/2_16_forensic_pongruk_doc.pdf
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