Up to 3,000 may have died at Khao Lak

[Fidel]

Up to 3,000 may have died at Thailand's Khao Lak beach

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by DARREN SCHUETTLER

 

A rescue worker looks at dead bodies at a relief center set up at a temple in Khao Lak, north of the devastated Thai tourist resort island of Phuket following the massive tsunami that slammed into the Thai coastline.

 

PHUKET, Thailand (29 Dec 2004) -- The tsunami which ripped apart tourist-packed Khao Lak beach in southern Thailand may have killed 3,000 people there, district police chief Col Aroon Klaewvatee said on Wednesday.

 

Some 1,200 bodies had already been recovered from the beach and its luxury hotels popular with western and Asian tourists, especially Scandinavians and Germans escaping the long, dark winter back home.

 

"The final death toll may rise to 2,500 or 3,000," he said of Khao Lak, by far the worst-hit beach in Thailand's Andaman Sea playground where tourists dive and snorkel among coral reefs.

 

That matched estimates by local hotel owners, who said most of the 5,000 rooms on the 10-km (six-mile) strip -- where a luxury room could cost $200 a night -- were full when the monster wave crashed ashore on Sunday.

 

Counting Thais working in the tourist industry, there could have been as many as 10,000 people at Khao Lak, they said.

 

Sweden said around 1,500 of its citizens were still missing after the tsunami carried death and destruction around the Indian Ocean, and hundreds of them may have died.

 

At least 54 Swedes were known to be dead, according to a Thai government list which said at least 473 foreigners were killed.

 

Norway said it was missing 800 people. Eighteen Norwegians were on the list.

 

Chantima Saengli, owner of the Blue Village Pagarang hotel, told a Bangkok radio station she knew about 60 of her Scandinavian guests were safe.

 

She feared the other 340 were dead, their bodies swept into the lush rain forest covering the hills behind the beach.

 

IDENTIFICATION PROBLEMS

 

For search and rescue teams in Khao Lak -- where a two-year-old fisherman's son survived for more than two days after being swept into a tree top -- the problem is not finding bodies. The smell of rotting corpses is too strong to miss.

 

But identifying them may take a long time and one top government forensic scientist said some of them may never be.

 

Pornthip Rojanasunant told Reuters at a Khao Lak Buddhist temple acting as a temporary morgue for 300 bodies -- about 20 percent of them foreigners -- she was collecting DNA samples of all the corpses by swabbing mouths or taking hair.

 

The samples could be matched to relatives later, she said.

 

But Pornthip said she suspected such meticulous procedures were not being followed at three other temples in the area, each housing 100-200 bodies.

 

"I don't think they understand the forensic way of managing these cases, how to deal with the dead" and the government was not helping much, she said.

 

There was no coordination between the four Khao Lak temples, the only equipment available was what she had borrowed and what little the government was supplying was the wrong stuff.

 

"The government has sent us cloth bags instead of plastic bags" for wrapping the bodies in, she said. "Cloth is useless in preventing disease.

 

"I would like to tell the Prime Minister we have to set up a coordination centre here, not in Phuket," the island just to the south which is one of Asia's premier resorts and where 230 people are known to have been killed.

 

"This is where most of the people are coming from."

 

EQUIPMENT PROBLEMS

 

Another problem is getting the mechanical equipment to replace the spades, hoes and saws rescue workers have been using to uncover bodies, then get it to the right place.

 

"We need more machines, excavators, tools," said local official Surasit Khantipantakul. "We need boats to pick up bodies floating around the beach."

 

"The problem is the structures are not stable and we need to get backhoes in there, but it is very difficult," said volunteer Chumpon Bunpakdee. "We have to carry the bodies out by hand. There are many people trapped inside."

 

Koh Phi Phi, the island southeast of Phuket made famous by "The Beach" movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, was also devastated.

 

By the end of Tuesday's search, more than 300 bodies had been recovered from Phi Phi, where most buildings were flattened by the wall of water generated by the 9.0-magnitude quake, the world's biggest in 40 years.

 

Bloated and decaying bodies continued to wash ashore on the island as hopes of finding survivors amid the rubble of hotels and shops faded slowly.

 

"It's hard to tell which bodies are foreign because they are just unrecognisable," said 43-year-old French rescue volunteer, Serge Barros.