It’s been 20 years since a massive tsunami struck Asia on Boxing Day 2004.
Dr Jodie Leditschke, Manager of Forensic Technical Services and Coronial Admissions and Enquiries, was one of the team from the VIFM who helped identify victims.
These are her compelling recollections.
I arrived in Thailand Phuket on the 16th of January. I was greeted by Beck who had just finished a very hectic period of examining most of the deceased. The first thing I notice was the close team camaraderie; they had achieved so much in just a few weeks. Most of the first round of postmortem examinations were complete. Beck was to spend one day with me at the mortuary as a handover and then she was flying home.
The drive from Phuket to Khao Lak mortuary was over 2 hours. Seeing the destruction of the tsunami was hard to describe, even though by then I had seen many news reports. The bus was full of officers and specialists who were seeing this for the first time. Most of the ride was in silence.
Khao Lak was a makeshift mortuary with rows and rows of containers. At the time there were still over 1000 unidentified bodies being stored at this location, one of three sites spread around the area.
When you arrive, you enter through the temple gates. The mortuary, known as Site 1, was set up in a Buddhist temple. It was like a very busy town. There were Thai medical specialists, police, photo boards with family photos of the missing, mixed with photos of bodies and families roaming around still looking for their missing family members. This was mixed with Thai people selling food and their wares. It was hot, humid, and there was the distinctive smell of decomposing bodies.
As most of the examinations were complete, my role was to receive a list of cases each day with possible identification, or cases which required re-examination as the data was thought not to be accurate. Each day we would enter the containers to find certain case numbers, retrieve the bodies, and along with a photographer, scribe, dentist and pathologist, complete the examination. Additionally, I would quality check all paperwork, ensure the bodies were correctly labelled, and return the body to the container. Occasionally, a funeral director or transport company would arrive to collect a person who was identified, this would then be checked again and the body released. We would then travel the two plus hours back to the hotel, shower to remove the smell, and then repeat the process the next day. In the final days, I was also involved in setting up a new mortuary made up of containers- at another location called “Site 2”.
The sheer size of this disaster was hard to comprehend. By this time, I had already worked in Indonesia on the 2002 Bali bombing, so knew the DVI process well. But the sheer numbers, so many different tourists from different parts of the world mixed with Thai nationals, where whole family groups may have died, made this disaster so complex. There was also the expectations of Thailand, our country, and many other countries that every person must be identified. I remember seeing a little girl each day in one of the containers. She probably wasn’t much older than 5 years old. Very few of her features were recognisable due to the time that had passed. But I remember always thinking why she had not been identified after all this time, as surely someone must be looking for her. This just reiterated how complex the process was. We all knew our roles and the DVI processes, which we trusted, but when something this big happens there are limits to how quickly we can complete the task.
What changed? Knowing that despite all planning for disasters, at some point, we may reach a limit that we cannot cope. All we can do is try, plan, and hope that we never get to that point.
