Tsunami nations lend disaster advice to U.S.<\/p>\n
Ed Cropley, Reuters\/Bangkok\/Jakarta<\/p>\n
Police in the United States must not rush to identify the bodies
\nof Hurricane Katrina victims too quickly or they will run the
\nrisk of countless mistakes, the head of Thailand's tsunami
\nidentification operations said on Monday.<\/p>\n
\"They need to examine the bodies slowly and put all the data
\ninto a computer,\" said Nopadol Somboonsub, a police general in
\ncharge of the Thailand Tsunami Victims Identification Center on
\nthe southern resort island of Phuket.<\/p>\n
\"It's very important to get it right. You cannot assume that
\nthis or that body is the right body simply because a relative
\nidentified it,\" he said, adding that identity theft and life
\ninsurance fraud were realities in the wake of massive disasters.<\/p>\n
As the head of the largest forensics operation in history,
\ntrying to put names to the 5,395 bodies of at least 25
\nnationalities left in Thailand by the Indian Ocean disaster,
\nNopadol does not speak without authority.<\/p>\n
Nor is he alone in Asia in seeing the TV images of bloated
\ncorpses in New Orleans and death tolls estimated in the thousands
\nand thinking how the experiences of the region after the Dec. 26
\ntsunami might help the United States after Katrina.<\/p>\n
Budi Atmadi, head of relief operations in the Indonesian
\nprovince of Aceh, which bore the brunt of the killer tsunami
\nwaves, said rescue workers must not let criticism from victims,
\npoliticians or the media deflect them from their jobs.<\/p>\n
\"The early days after the disaster are always panic
\nsituations,\" said Atmadi, the deputy secretary of Bakornas BPB,
\nIndonesia's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management
\nAgency (FEMA).<\/p>\n
\"In that period, the blame game is rampant because one person
\nwill always say the relief has been slow while another says there
\nare so many limitations,\" said Atmadi. \"The blame game will
\nalways be there so your ears need to be thick.<\/p>\n
\"The important thing is to stay committed and put humanitarian
\nconcerns at the top.\"<\/p>\n
In a sign of solidarity with the United States, which sent a
\nmassive military relief effort after the tsunami, Indonesia's
\nCoordinating Minister for People's Welfare Alwi Shihab plans to
\nfly to New Orleans with 5,000 blankets and 30 medical officials.<\/p>\n
In India, where officials say the grassroots are the key to
\nsuccessful relief operations, some felt the United States -- the
\nworld's most powerful nation -- might have slipped up by thinking
\nitself a match for anything Mother Nature could muster.<\/p>\n
\"In a disaster, the biggest fallibility can be to think you
\nare experts. Disasters have a way of humbling even the
\nmightiest,\" said one senior Indian official at the heart of New
\nDelhi's tsunami response.<\/p>\n
\"In India, for all its vastness, we have a very easily
\noperable contingency plan for disasters at the grassroots level.
\nIt is not a highly complicated national response system,\" said
\nthe official, who asked not to be identified.<\/p>\n
\"A person at the grassroots level knows that sandbags have to
\nbe organized, identifies likely places of breaches, plans
\nclearing debris and setting up relief camps and cooking centers,\"
\nhe said.<\/p>\n
\"From what I have read about Katrina, it doesn't seem to have
\nhappened this way there. They seemed to have focused on Florida
\nand got caught unawares in New Orleans,\" he said.<\/p>",
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