The Hindu : International : Frantic search for relatives

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 02, 2005

International

International

Frantic search for relatives

By Jonathan Watts and Jason Burke— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

KHAO LAK/PHUKET, JAN. 1. A steady stream of desperate European and American relatives have flown into the holiday resort of Phuket to crowd round notice boards displaying photographs of bloated, blackened and bloodied bodies of unidentified people washed up on the local beaches in the past five days.

The anxious search for missing loved ones became even more hopeless as the body count on Thailand's worst-affected beach rose to more than 3,000.

Many of those arriving in Phuket are from the UK. Government sources acknowledged that the unofficial list of missing Britons is now in the ``several hundreds.''

More than half of the 4,500 casualties in Thailand came from a single stretch of beach on Khao Lak, a small resort just north of Phuket island which bore the brunt of the tsunami's impact.

Having been rapidly developed in recent years, the resort, which is particularly popular with honeymooners, has been all but wiped off the map. There is no hope of finding survivors, so bulldozers and tractors are being used to search for bodies among former multi-storey hotels that have been reduced to rubble and forests of twisted cables and wires.

Grim task

The resort is using all means at its disposal to speed up the grim task. Divers in brightly-coloured scuba-diving wetsuits are scouring lagoons for bodies and powered paragliders are searching the coastline for washed-up bodies. Police have been drafted in from all over Thailand.

According to the officers leading the search, the short stretch of beach has already yielded up a body for every one of its 3,000 metres. ``We had over 100 more today and we expect more,'' said Choum Phon, who is leading the search for bodies in Khao Lak. ``It's heartrending work. We're finding them under the buildings below us and washed up on the beach behind us. About 20 per cent are children.'' He estimates that 70 per cent are also foreigners. But local casualties are high in nearby fishing villages.

A few miles south at Tablamu, local people were still sifting through the debris that was all that remained of their fishing port. A Thai naval frigate, the Kraburi, was grounded on rocks. Other vessels could be found further inland, along with upturned police cars and mini-vans tossed among the coconut groves.

Many more are thought to have died a few kilometres north in the town of Ban Namkhem, which occupied a shallow depression behind the beach. Almost all the homes of 1,700 families have been flattened, leaving only the wreckage of a two-storey school and its water tower. Hundreds, possibly, thousands are thought to be buried in the mud.

Temporary refuge

Apart from a handful of people, the survivors have all fled inland. Many have sought temporary refuge at nearby Takuapu hospital and the temples that distribute aid supplies. A temporary morgue has been established at Takuapa temple.

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