In Thailand around 5,000 people are thought to have been killed when the giant wave struck on Boxing Day 2004. The number of foreigners reported missing in the disaster prompted the Thai government to enlist the help of forensic experts from across the globe. They set up a specialist disaster victim identification centre, where identification work is still continuing months after the disaster hit. For those who lost relatives in the disaster the identification and repatriation of a body is essential in allowing them to start rebuilding their lives. Identifying the victims
The tsunami swept through an area of Thailand hundreds of miles across, scattering debris and the dead alike. Simply recovering all the bodies was a mammoth task for a police force already stretched to the limit rescuing injured survivors. With so many bodies being recovered, temples were being used as temporary mortuaries. With no electricity or running water they were hardly ideal. But there was simply nowhere else to take them. Photographs of the bodies had been posted outside these temples. Friends and relatives desperately trawled them for any signs. But for the forensic experts, the idea that relatives could be relying on visual identification was worrying. Mistakes can always be made when distressed relatives try to confirm the identity of their loved ones by sight. In Thailand the conditions made identification even more difficult. The heat of the Thai sun accelerated the decomposition process, leading to discolouration of the skin and causing the outer layers of skin to begin peeling off. The heat also meant bacteria grew at an extreme rate. Bacteria give off gases which can cause bodies to swell, further hampering visual identification. The situation was eventually brought under control. A new mortuary was constructed with refrigerated containers for storage of the bodies and purpose-built examination rooms. Only now could the full forensic procedures begin. The forensic challenge
Many immediately think of DNA as the most useful tool in forensic science. In recent disasters this 21st century technology has played a key role. DNA evidence contributed to the identification of over 90% of the victims of the Twin Towers attack. In Thailand samples of muscle tissue were taken from the bodies in the early days, in the hope of getting DNA profiles from them. But decomposition had already affected these samples to such a degree that they were useless. Instead, the forensic experts began to use other evidence to identify the victims. Police forces across the world visited the homes of the victims, looking for fingerprint evidence. Even with a badly decomposed body, experts can often obtain fingerprints of sufficient quality to make a match. For those from countries with fingerprint ID cards, the work was even easier. Dental records were also used. These can very rapidly be compared with a dental X-ray from the body, and an identification made. Dentists can sometimes even use photographs of the victims in life, to analyse their teeth and make a comparison to a body. In fact, dentistry has so far been the most effective technology used by the forensic teams in Thailand. By the end of April it had played a key role in over 1,300 identifications. Results, however, had started to come in more slowly as it became increasingly difficult to make identifications – even by the methods which were initially successful. The experts knew they needed to find a way to start using DNA successfully. Solving the DNA problem
The tissue samples taken in the early days were of no use for DNA. But the pathologists were hoping there might still be usable DNA deep inside the bones of the victims. They knew there was a lab in Bosnia that might be able to help them extract it. For nearly a decade forensic scientists at the International Commission for Missing Persons (IC-MP) in Sarajevo have been trying to identify the remains of those who went missing during the 1991-1995 conflict. They faced an uphill struggle. The human remains they were uncovering in mass graves were mostly bones that were at least ten years old. But finally, in 2001 a breakthrough was achieved when scientists devised a unique chemical formula to extract DNA from the bones. The Thailand team of experts sent the bones from the bodies recovered in Thailand to the IC-MP and, as a result, at the end of August 2005, 209 tsunami victims had been identified using DNA. This brings the total number of identifications by the forensic teams in Thailand to 2,200, including 114 of the 121 missing Britons. There are, though, 1,546 bodies still unidentified in the Thailand mortuary. Back to top Back to the Horizon homepage | 
