Time on athena.inet.co.th is now 2013-05-21 16:51.
This page was last modified on 2010-02-01 13:44.

WHAT WE ARE DOING

This site was setup a day after the Indian Ocean Tsunami struck on 2004-12-26. It started out as a real-time news bulletin. But as more information were coming in, the site had turned into an information portal for tsunami relief, mitigation, statistics and victim database in Thailand.

From what we have learned over the first year on tsunami relief efforts, we created OpenCARE -- the Open Exchange for Collaborative Activities in Response to Emergencies -- which is an open-source information exchange to collaborate relief efforts around the world.

By December 2006, the Royal Thai Government buried all unidentified tsunami victims. While it is unlikely that new information on victims will be updated, the victim database will continue to work but will not be updated after January 2007 when web mining software license, loaned by QL2 Software during the past two years, expires.

We would like to thank Magenta Sites Ltd for hosting the European Mirror of this site for the first 2 years, and Parisian Ltd for continuing hosting support.

ABOUT THIS SITE - WHAT WE HAVE HERE

This site contains information about relief procedures and victim information of the 2004 south asia tsunami disaster occured on 2004-12-26. The original site is located in Bangkok, Thailand. The site is also replicated to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. If you know victims of the incident, we suggest that you visit the traumatic stress page.

The entire site, available in 11 languages - through "Translation service" on the left of each page, comprises of 7 main dynamic pages:

• Situation - this page, what you should know: Counting missing people, Identifying bodies, and Tourism
• News - English news relevant to aftermaths of the incident
• Procedures - official procedures related to identifying+matching casualties, how to contact international co-ordination centers and procedures to bring the casualties home
• Science of tsunami/worst-hit areas - documentaries, scientific findings, satellite pictures, situation and description of areas devastated by the tsunami: Khao Lak, Phi Phi, and their recovery processes
• Search - victim search engine, also available in Thai

To find an identified victim - search here. Please make sure you read this page first.

We have found a major discrepancy in the number of missing people.

• The only active database is the missingpersons database at NECTEC/Redcross which have comprehensive information to track down missing persons with 1,471 cases resolved (34.4% success rate) but still another 2,801 unresolved cases. Records on this database were registered on the Internet prior to February 14, 2005.
• The official number (2,481) came from the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM website, search). This figure is the number of unresolved cases registered at the DDPM in Thailand from a total of 3,768 (34.2% success rate).
• Then, we have learned that there were another 3,040 cases reported missing with the Central Institute of Forensic Science of which information is not published online. This dataset is comprehensive because CIFS interviewed relatives trying to identify bodies at the morgues. Unfortunately, this is for Khao Lak area only.
• Then, the TTVI center in Phuket which handles foreign bodies may have another set of information. There is no public knowledge of information compiled by this center
• The International Commitee of the Red Cross is operating a website to help locating victims of this particular tsunami disaster. Information about your relatives will be published on the Net. Once you can locate your relatives, kindly notify op_prot_as.gva@icrc.org so that the names are removed. Currently there are around 1,800 records there but we do not include these into our system because there is no guarantee that names on the list are still missing as people tend to forget to ask that the names are removed once found.

Adding the first three up, we have 8,322 unresolved cases of people reported missings. Cross referencing DDPM, NECTEC and CIFS missing people databases by WebQL, a web mining tool from QL2 Software, can eliminate 1,689 cross registrations (duplicated and unresolved) and 219 cases resolved at NECTEC but are still reported as missing on other two databases. For now, we still see the outstanding missing cases as 6,414 -- this figure stood at 9,000+ in April 2005. We would like to mention QL2 Software in particular for their generous and continuing support, since the incident, throughout all these months. Without their software, we would not be able to consolidate victim information in a timely manner and our victim search engine would not always have the latest information.

We will continue to consolidate information from various sites. Please also note that there is no list of bodies issued by the TTVI. We do not know if those 2,923 bodies already released are still classified missing on other active databases or not. TTVI/DVI Center in Phuket is closing down and moved to Bangkok. Nonetheless, the latest statistics was published in an interview in a Thai newspaper on 2005-12-11.

Top 10 nationality of casualties released by TTVI: Thai (1,108) Swede (502) German (472) Finn (162) Swiss (84) British (80) Norwegian (79) Burmese (77) Austrian (70) French (67). Victims from these 10 countries are 92% of bodies released by the TTVI/DVI.

There are three "official" ways to identify a body:

1. Fingerprints,
2. DNA matching, and,
3. Dental records

Some disasters might have relied heavily on DNA matching, the tsunami disaster is different in many ways. Decomposition rate is much slower in dry/cool situation like the 9/11 WTC disaster, or "wet" cases of inorganic compounds like undersea treasure or sunk ships. In the tsunami situation, bodies were drowned in sea water and later recovered to a dry area. When combining with tropical climate, they decay rapidly, both outside-in and inside-out. Keeping the body in temperature-controlled morgue does not stop decomposition process. Despite all these unfortunate conditions, DNA is still collected and some are useable for the indentification process. To understand the accuracy/complexity of this process, see the followings (1) DNA interactive (2) DNA forensics (3) Scale of tsunami tragedy complicates DNA matching (4) interactive DNA profiling tutorial and (5) Forensic identification of 9/11 victims ends.

Dental record, particularly X-ray films, can overcome decomposition problem. If you post pictures of your loved ones on the bulleting boards/web boards, choose picture with a broad smile so that front teeth can be seen. A better approach is to post dental X-ray films and leave email/phone number of the dentist in addition to picture of victims wearing cloths they wore on the day tsunami struck.

Should all the above fail, identification by spotting a picture of clothing or other artifacts also helps. Unfortunately, it may not be enough to claim the body. Cloth may be similar, tattoo can be of a popular pattern.

• Claiming a body of foreign national must be done through embassy or consulate office in conjunction with the TTVI center in Phuket. See also Data Tracking page.
• Getting reference number of the picture helps narrowing down the search and speed up identification process but will not be enough to get the body released.

Tourism is the main source of income for people in the the tsunami-hit areas. UNDP has estimated that 120,000 people in Thailand have lost their jobs in the tourism sector alone due to tsunami. In a country with average family size of four, that means half a million people were affected.

The two seriously affected areas: Khao Lak and Phi Phi Island are coming back gradually. But recovery process takes time. Even for the much less affected Phuket province -- which is a 57,000 hectares (140,000 acres) big island and the tidal waves came a hundred metre inland -- its name is synonymous with tsunami disaster. Resort areas in Krabi and Phang Nga provinces are also affected by unfounded fear of devestation.

We appreciate all kind of support you think of these affected people. But if you want to do something for these living victims, won't it be better to pay them a visit; help them restoring their hopes and their ways of life? They have sufferred three years in a row from 2002 SARS in the region, 2003 Avian flu/Bird flu in the region and in some other parts of Thailand. The Andaman provinces were not a danger zone but they were helplessly affected. In 2004, they had high hope for the recovery, the 2004 tsunami took it away.

For additional information, please refer to the donation information page.

Suggestions, feedback about this site, drop a mail to < tsunami [ at ] thai / dot / com > without those misplaced symbols. Emails with attachment(s) are not read.