As many as 100 Finns could remain unaccounted for after tsunami

Parliament passes law to ease declaring people dead

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Up to as many as 100 Finns lost in Thailand in the tsunami in Southeast Asia might never be found. Forensic experts have initially identified the bodies of 26 Finns. A total of 151 remain officially listed as missing.
      Ismo Kopra, the head of the victim identification unit of the National Bureau of Investigation said in the Thai resort of Phuket that the number of Finns who will still be identified will probably be in the "dozens".
      This in turn means that many bodies will never be found.
      "It is an unfortunate fact. We want to send home as many Finnish bodies as possible, but we cannot find everyone", Kopra said in his office, which has been set up in a Phuket hotel room.
     
On December 26th a large number of Finnish tourists holidaying in Thailand were in Khao Lak, which was the part of the western coast that was worst hit by the tsunami. Many were washed away by the flooding sea-water. Kopra said that it had been clear from the outset that not all of the missing people would be found.
      About 5,300 bodies were collected in Thailand in the aftermath of the disaster, and the Finnish identification team has been working for the past five weeks to find Finns from among them.
      "All of the Finns among the dead that have been found can certainly be identified. This is quite clear", Kopra said.
     
The task of the Finnish investigators has been considerably facilitated by the fact that good dental records exist from the Finns who are missing; the investigators of many other countries have no such records available. In some cases, DNA testing might prove necessary.
      The Thai victims and the foreigners have been separated, and the bodies of the tourists are being kept in refrigerated containers in Phuket. The international victim identification centre operates on the edge of a palm forest.
     
The work has also been made easier by the arrival of a mobile hospital unit brought to the area from Norway.
      On Tuesday the investigators from Finland and other countries, clad in white overalls, were carrying human remains into a complex of barrack huts for the identification process.
      Although the smell is strong, police investigator Pia Käki says that she barely notices it.
      Outside the temperature is 33 degrees Celsius. There is air conditioning inside, but the investigators say that they still perspire.
     
Only about 80 of the foreigners' remains are yet to be examined, and the job should be completed during this week. However, the work will continue, as the information collected from the bodies is compared with the data of those reported missing.
      Meanwhile, the search for remains continues. International investigators are still finding individual corpses from under layers of mud, for instance.
      The team of about 40 Finnish investigators has worked in Thailand from early morning to late evening with few days off for about five weeks. This week and next, about ten of them will return home.
      Some will be replaced by new experts. Kopra says that it will be possible to reduce the number of people involved in the work, as the focus of the task shifts.
      According to Kopra, the Finnish team may stay beyond the end of February, which was supposed to have been the time that the investigation was brought to an end.
     
It goes without saying that the grisly work in immensely demanding conditions has taken a strain on all those involved, even the most hardened of investigators. Forensic dentist Helena Ranta, a veteran of several war-zones including the Balkans, admitted that she was physically worn out. Ranta herself has people she knows among the missing, an unsurprising fact given the numbers and the relative size of the Finnish population.
      "For the investigators, every single body that can be identified is a gift. Every identified Finn is a special gift. That's the way it is. We are only human", said Ranta on Tuesday.
     
The Finnish Parliament has voted to ease the process required to declare a missing person legally dead.
      The aim of the law is to shorten the amount of time that must elapse before a missing person can be officially declared to have died, even if it is not certain that the body had been destroyed.
      The measure also eases the bureaucracy linked with the process.
      Parliament also decided that in addition to a missing person's spouse, or his or her heirs, people defined as "another close person" - for example a common-law spouse - should be allowed to initiate the process to declare that person dead.
      The passage of the law was expedited by the Asian tsunami disaster.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Mourning of catastrophe victims begins in schools and workplaces (4.1.2005)
  Finnish forensic team leaving for Thailand (30.12.2004)

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