Authorities direct non-stop effort to handle the dead

By Rafael D. Frankel

LAEM PHRAO,Thailand—A patch of land that used to be jungle at the northern tip of Phuket island will be an morge housing thousands of bodies by Friday.

Bulldozers cleared brush and semi-trucks brought in cargo holds normally found on ocean freight vessles here, and at two other provinces along Thailand’s Southwest coast, in a race against time to prevent an epidemic just as dangerous to public health as the tsunami which struck here the day after Christmas.

With thousands of bodies unbagged, unbarried, and rapidly decomposing in the tropical heat, Thai authorities were working around the clock Thursday to finish construction of the make-shift mourges before infectious diseases like diheria and cholera could spread into the general population.

By the late afternoon, engineers were installing electricity to provide air conditioning for the 50 cargo, capable of holding 2,500 bodies in total, which were on their way from Bangkok and the southern port city Songklah.

So far, no wide spread infections have been reported here, Interior Minister Bhokin told foreign diplomats today during a briefing detailing the steps Thailand is taking to avoid any outbreaks, British Ambassador David Full said. The three stage process, Bhokin said, had already moved from the first stage of rescue and recovery, to the prevention of infection stage. The final task would be rehabilitation and reconstruction.

The minister expressed confidence that Thailand had control over the situation despite the reports of infections breaking out in at least one hospital in Phang Nga province, the worst stricken area of Thailand.

The infections “are what happens in disasters like this when hospitals are under such great pressure,” Ambassador Full said. “I think they’re doing a teriffic job.”

“The resources are there. They’re being innovative and sensitive to cultural concerns and they are being transparent about the whole thing,” he said.

As a Budhist country where the dead are cremated, Thailand is facing a particularly difficult dilema in dealing with so many foreign casulties. Cremating the bodies would be a far easier and faster way of staving off any epidemics.

But mindful of all the international attention focused on them right now, and as a society with a history of genuine respectf for foreign customs, they do not want to offend families from dozens of countries who lost loved one shere.

“This has never happened before so we are learning as we go,” said Pasan Teparak, the deputy chief of protocol for the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affaris. “We welcome any ideas and will listen to input from everyone.”

The mourges will be kept open until families of the dead from Thailand and around the world. arrive to identify the bodies and bring them home, or until embassy officials repatriate the remains.

Thailand is bracing for a deluge of foreigners from around the world who will come looking for missing relatives in addition to the survivors who are already searching the hospitals and temples here—there are still hundreds of bodies being storied at three Budhist sanctuaries.

Each day, hundreds more fliers displaying pictures of the missing and contact numbers are posted around Phuket.

While the dissemination of information regarding the dead and injured was halting and often times incoherant in the days since the waves struck, hospitals and mourges began to patch their data together on Wednesday.

On Thursday, though still incomplete and studded with unknown details, long casualty reports were available at the disaster relief center set up at Phuket Town Hall. Locals and foreigners alike perused the lists, sometimes finding a relative in hospital, but more often finding them listed as “dead.”

Suchart Seedee, 47, from Krabi province where hundreds were killed, found his daughter, Sutichai, listed as dead. “They found her burried underneath the Patong Merlin Hotel,” he said, as tears streamed down his face. His outward emotion was rare for a Thai man who, aside from laughing, are reserved almost as a rule.

“I came all this way and she’s dead, and I have nowhere to go,” he said.

There was at least one happy reunion Thursday. Frenchman Jacques Hanninot found his brother, Pierre, completely unharmed on his sailboat which he had just docked at the Similain Islands, 100 miles west of the Phang Nga coast in the Andaman Sea.

Until Jacques dropped a paper note from a private airplane he hired to look for his brother, Pierre had not even heard of the tsunami and resulting disaster.

“I thought that he was done. When I found him, the feeling was,” he said pausing and shaking his head, “like you can imagine.”

Forensics from Australia, Italy, France, Holland, Australia, and New Zealand, arrived in Phuket today, as did three helicopters and two destroyers from the Japanese navy sent for search and rescue operations. Foreign volunteers, some who flew in from overseas, continued to pour in as well, augmenting the already huge Thai volunteer contingent.

With the recent arrivals, Thailand had all the foreign aid it required, and could probably handle, in terms of manpower, Teparak said.

Donations of medical supplies, mostly broad spectrum anti-biotics, would be the most useful, he said. Body bags, coffins, and the refrigeration units were also needed, though Thailand had already received commitments from a number of countries and the United Nations to cover most of those requirements.

Rh-negative blood types, less common in Asia than in Europe, were also in somewhat short supply, according to health officials in Bangkok where the majority of the seriously injured were transferred to. Blood drives among the foreign community were underway there, a Bangkok doctor said.

© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune