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THE SEARCH CONTINUES
One year after the December 26 tsunami a dedicated team of forensic experts are engaged in helping people identify the remains of their loved ones, reports Kumudini Hettiarachchi
Every single day of his working life, he would wake up early in his home in Batapola, have his morning cup of tea, change into his office clothes, get on his mo-bike, ride up to the Ambalangoda Railway Station, park there, show his pass and board the train to Galle. He was a clerk at the office of the Regional Director of Health.

He did just that on December 26, 2005. The only change being that he did not return home that evening as he usually did. There were numerous agonizing questions for his family. They assumed he was on that fateful train that took the impact of the tsunami that day, a year ago, at Peraliya. What happened to him? Is he among the living, having lost his mind after the disaster, wandering the streets, with them unable to locate him? The uncertainty was eating into their lives.

This December they got an answer to their heartbreaking search, a search that lasted nearly a year. Maybe it was an answer their hearts could not bear.
The answer came thanks to a dedicated team both from the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital and Department of Forensic Medicine of the Galle Medical Faculty, who have unrelentingly and laboriously collected, whenever they were informed, bodies from around the coastal stretch in the area -- after the disaster dubbed the most devastating in recent times -- cleaned them carefully retaining all possible clothing and other accessories including documents, for identification of the victims.

“We had a number of ‘late recoveries’ after the disaster, post-tsunami. In the first week, it was near-impossible to identify the bodies because of decomposition and bloating but after the tsunami there was a drought and skeletal remains surfaced in shallow waters and the low lands,” says Dr. Clifford Perera, Lecturer and Consultant Judicial Medical Officer of the Medical Faculty, Department of Forensic Medicine, Ruhuna University.

While chatting to us at the Karapitiya Hospital, he checks out an ‘anthropometric board’ built by his staff, he is about to take to Deberawewa in Tissamaharama, explaining to us that this tool is used to measure the length of long bones. “On formulae derived earlier we can get the ‘length’ of a body from crown to heel,” he says adding that it is called length because the person is no more and it would not be height.

The forensic team collected remains of one or what could be more bodies from different sites in Ambalangoda, Peraliya and Hikkaduwa until mid-April, kept them in the morgue of the Karapitiya Hospital and began the arduous and lengthy task of cleaning them. This process had to be step-wise and required a team with multi-skills. No artificial means were used -- only water and sunlight to wash and dry the bones.

“Our target was to finish before December 26, 2005. In June we displayed 40 skeletal remains of which three were identified. Now we have 112 specimens and two more have been identified. We feel 10 more could be identified easily because of the clothing and jewellery,” he says.

Detailing when such techniques were first used in Sri Lanka, Dr. Perera says the early 1990s saw a team led by Prof. Niriellage Chandrasiri checking out the remains found at Suriyakanda. “It could not be pursued because of political interference.” Then in 1999, the Chemmani graves were dug and all the remains were identified, with more than 50% being done on skeletal features and personal belongings such as clothes, documents (identity cards etc) and jewellery.

He says identification of remains falls into two categories. Under the ‘general’ category, they ascertain whether the remains are of a human, if so the age, gender and height. The ‘specific’ category would cover the clothes, personal documents, external marks such as tattoos and jewellery.

In the case of foreigners who died in the tsunami, their relatives working through their respective embassies and the Foreign Ministry here submitted applications before Magistrates for exhumation of certain sites believed to have their remains. “Two such exhumations were done in Kirinde, two more in Peraliya and one in Unawatuna,” says Dr. Perera who was about to set off for Deberawewa the afternoon we met him for one more exhumation. Most specimens were then sent for DNA testing. “The remains of two foreign women -- German and French – were identified after DNA testing in Austria.” (See box on page 6).

Dr. Perera takes us around a room in the morgue where the skeletal remains are tagged and arranged systematically along with the clothes and other items found with the bodies, pointing out one specimen of a youth between 20-30 years from Moratuwa whose mother identified him. “See these are the remains of a little girl, whose hair band with a pink bauble is still intact on her hair,” he says adding that as children’s bones are immature they come off easily, especially the skulls that break up at the “sutures” (joints). Another woman’s remains have two gold chains, one with a pendant which has an ‘S’ on it. Two more sets of bones are together and according to Dr. Perera one is a woman because they found a light pink saree with a gold border on her and the other most probably a child who may have been on her lap.

A few of the bodies, due to the drought which followed the tsunami, had become mummified with the system getting dehydrated, he says showing us a corpse with the earring still intact. However, he laments the fact that in some clearing operations service personnel had set fire to whole areas, leaving only charred remains, making identification impossible. “We need to have a coordinated team effort after such disasters,” he stresses.

The first step is potential identification where the relatives would check out the accessories and clothes. The second step would include facial reconstruction, dental verification and DNA studies with samples taken from the victim’s bones and blood from a maternal relative being matched.

In the case of the person who travelled to his job as a clerk everyday by train, word of mouth and a few reports in the Sinhala newspapers made five potential relatives seek verification. “We found a mo-bike key in the victim’s pocket.” There was also a case with spectacles and the clincher came when they fished out a worse-for-weather railway pass with a slightly defaced number (86784) and a name,” says Dr. Perera.

The name was………..P.H. Jayatissa Silva. When his son brought the duplicate key of the mo-bike, the family’s search for their father ended and they could lay to rest the haunting doubts: Is he out there somewhere? Now they can conduct the last rites and hold an alms-giving, though heavy at heart, with the certainty that their father is no more.

Looking for your loved ones?
The present display of skeletal remains of tsunami victims, numbered and with all personal possessions found on the bodies by their side, will be on till morrow at the Karapitiya Hospital.

The skeletal remains will be retained at the hospital throughout 2006 and anyone who wishes to check out whether they could identify their loved ones could contact either Dr. Perera (Dept. of Forensic Medicine,Galle Medical Faculty, Phone: 091-2234416) or Consultant JMO of Karapitiya Dr. P.R. Ruwanpura (JMO’s Office, Phone: 091-2234522).

“We are hoping to take DNA samples from the bony remains before they disintegrate and keep them so that even at a later date people could do a check,” says Dr. Perera, explaining that this is what America did after the September 11 attacks.

He pleads with individuals or organizations to come forward and support DNA testing which costs a little money so that the less affluent tsunami survivors could verify whether the remains of their loved ones are there.

A register of all the deceased and missing, especially in the Peraliya train tragedy, is also being maintained. People can write in to us at the department. There is also a web page linked to the Asian Human Rights Commission, says Dr. Perera adding that they are collecting the names to build a memorial.

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