TTVI center denies deadline for victim IDs

PHUKET: Detective Chief Superintendent Nick Bracken, the Commander of the Information Management Center (IMC) at the Thai Tsunami Victims Identification (TTVI) center, today denied that the TTVI will stop identifying bodies of tsunami victims within two months.

An IMC spokeswoman also denied there are any plans to bury bodies that remain unidentified two months from now.

The announcement follows one by Phuket Provincial Police Deputy Commander Pol Col Kokiat Wongvorachart on Monday, in which he said that the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) teams at the TTVI must complete their work within two months.

Col Kokiat also said that the TTVI center would then be closed and any bodies still unidentified would be buried in the sea gypsy cemetery at Mai Khao.

However, DCS Bracken said today, “As far as [I] am concerned, there has been no decision made to close the DVI center within the next two months, as there are still many months of work to be undertaken and forensic comparisons will continue to be made.

“The gathering of forensic data is ongoing and [data] will continue to be collected until such time as all possible identifications have been made.”

The IMC collates all the information used to identify tsunami victims, and also liaises with the families of the deceased about what to do with a body once it has been identified.

IMC Press and Public Relations Officer Gemma Bell told the Gazette, “Currently we have no plans to dispose of any bodies that have yet to be identified. There is still a lot of work to be done, and that work will go on until we can identify as many bodies as possible.

“Quite what will happen when we get to the end of that process, I don’t know. But we do not have a timeline for that at the moment.”