Israel Police

The Tsunami

* Around five thousand tourists found their deaths on the coasts of Thailand that morning * Among seven Israelis * The forensics delegation succeeded in identifying the bodies of all seven of the missing Israelis, initiated an enterprise of international cooperation, that led to the setting up of casualty stations and the creation of an international D.N.A database * accumulated experience and professional knowledge against the waves.

On the morning of December the 26th, the tsunami hit the coasts of southeast Asia. Four weeks after the giant waves swept the golden sands, around three hundred thousand victims were counted. Seven Israelis found their deaths in Thailand's waves. All the bodies of them were identified.

"When we were on our way to Thailand I prayed in my heart that we'd manage to identify at least one body.

A sort of a plea", says Commander Shalom Zarom, the head of the field aid unit in the forensics division, that led the forensics division's delegation to Thailand.

In accordance with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' request, the forensics division of the Israel's Police took upon itself the responsibility to search for the bodies of the missing Israelis who were on Thailand’s coasts when those gargantuan waves rose from the sea. In two days the search party was ready to go. Twenty-three people. A forensics engineer, detectives, doctors, pathologists from the Institute for Forensic Medicine, a volunteer dentist, and Zaka volunteers. With them a ton and a half of personal protection gear and equipment for the care of disaster survivors was sent. Several hours after they arrived on Phuket island, the members of the delegation split. A small team was sent to Krabi, about three and a half hours' drive from the island. According to their information, during the disaster Israelis were staying in the place.

"The identification method was determined by the existing circumstances", Commander Shalom Zarom explains, "it was possible to try and identify the deceased’s' bodies using information on a certain person and attempting to locate him among the many bodies. This kind of identification can work in the first few days after a disaster, when the bodies are still in a reasonable state. The long-term identification does not depend on the state of the bodies, it is based on building a database, the data are taken from the bodies themselves and fed into the computer". He further described how, in the first days of the identification work, a single work method was formed, with the full collaboration of field identification delegations from around the world that came to Thailand. With the help of the Israel Police representative in Thailand, Gadi Siso, an international work group, that included representatives from about twenty different countries, formed, and it began to meet twice a day, to discuss, share information, and make decisions concerning the work methods.

"In the first days after the disaster, photographs of the thousands of bodies that were found in the stricken areas were circulated in each and every place. The photos focused on distinct marks found on the numbered bodies, such as tattoos, piercing, scars, and jewelry", says Commander Zarom. "Computer posts were put up in the hospitals, with all the data that were found on the victims. Every person could search this database for his loved ones.

We received all the information in the database and the identification process began. First, with the information given by family members who came to the disaster areas and identified their loved ones' bodies in published photographs, and later – using the missing persons’ dental records, that were sent from Israel via email, and their fingerprints sent by the IDF Adjutancy". Thus already in the first day of the delegation’s stay in Krabi was the body of Sharon Haniel o.b.m identified, and in the second day five more people were identified, three of whom were Israelis - Hemda Cohen o.b.m, Zohar Aloni o.b.m, and Ester Levi o.b.m.
Several days later the body of Mary Folity o.b.m was identified. The body of Aya Shapira o.b.m was identified after the forensics delegation returned to Israel.

"The first stages of the identification process were carried out in extremely harsh conditions" notes Commander Zarom. "The bodies, all of them, were in an advanced state of decomposition, bloated and twisted, both in color and in size. Accompanying that was the awful smell, the maggots and the worms. Those sights left us devoid of feeling. We did our best to focus on the job, which was almost non-stop, instead of thinking about the horrific sights".

During the identification process it was decided to organize all the bodies in two sites – Krabi and Khao Lok. The Israeli delegation was asked to take charge of the identification site in Krabi. According to Commander Shalom Zarom, there were about six hundred and fifty bodies scattered in the site. All the members of the delegations from Canada, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, and Thailand itself worked in the site following the workplan he formulated, and a D.N.A database was built in order to identify the bodies. The Chinese government offered to perform the D.N.A sampling comparisons in its labs free of charge. All the information to be yielded from these labs in Beijing will be passed on to a data cross-referencing center that was established in Phuket.

Around five thousand tourists died on the coasts of Thailand. Using this database, each country can receive information on its missing persons by cross referencing D.N.A samples and so, in a production-line method, D.N.A samples were taken from all the hundreds of bodies that were found in Krabi, and attempts were made to identify them by dental records, X-rays, and unique marks if any were found.

"If the identification by D.N.A samples continues", says Commander Shalom Zarom, "then the work in Khao Lok could be finished in several weeks".

After ten days in Phuket and Krabi, which called for enormous amounts of emotional energy on the part of the members of the delegation, the decision was made to bring them back to the country. "It was a tough decision, very tough", Commander Zarom explains, "we knew we're only half way through, and we also knew, that there may have been two more Israelis in Khao Lok, Aya Shapira and Uzi Sagi, and we must locate their bodies". (Aya's body was identified, as mentioned above, after the Israeli delegation returned to Israel).

"In the forensics division delegation's work the accumulated experience and vast professional knowledge gained by the forensics division during the years of the Intifada and terrorist attacks came into play". Says Brigadier General Azi Zadok, head of the forensics division "The members of the delegation proved that even in the most difficult of situations, with methodical, proper, professional work it is possible, in a relatively short time, to locate and identify most of the missing Israelis' bodies". He adds that in addition to identifying the Israeli victims the forensics division’s delegation identified eighteen missing people from other countries. "The forensics department’s delegation which won much appreciation both from the delegations from around the globe and from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Silvan Shalom and Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi, initiated the beginning of the international cooperation that led to the setting up of the casualty centers based on the Israeli model and even the creation of an international D.N.A database. And the seventh Israeli, Uzi Sagi, is still missing.