Many give up search for missing loved ones

Many give up search for missing loved ones

Miranda Leitsinger, Associated Prest, Phuket, Thailand

After spending days poring over photos of corpses, wandering
through Thai beach resorts destroyed by the tsunami and searching
through hospital wards, Canadians Catherine and David Smith
decided to end their search for their two missing friends.

The first turning point came when a nurse said there were no
unidentified foreign tourists left in the nearby hospitals. The
second came when the Smiths traveled 150 kilometers (90 miles)
north to the Andaman Beach Resort in Khao Lak, where John and
Jackie Knill of North Vancouver had stayed. The couple's hotel
had been obliterated by the tsunami that struck Dec. 26, killing
more than 157,000 people in 11 countries.

"That removed most, if not all, of the uncertainty," David
Smith said.

So, joined by two Knill relatives, the Smiths recently held a
memorial service on that beach, complete with a Buddhist prayer
and flowers tossed into the sea.

"We said our goodbye. All the time we were looking out to the
surf, where everything looked like it should. It was beautiful,"
David Smith said. "And we had our back to what was once Khao
Lak."

When the tsunami struck Asia, many of the dead were hastily
buried in mass graves, cremated, swept out to sea, or held in
morgues for identification, leaving loved ones with few answers.
Some of the buried were later exhumed to take DNA samples.

But nearly three weeks after the disaster, even the most
persistent are giving up their search for the thousands of people
who disappeared during the tsunami. Many foreigners had little
choice but to return to their jobs and households after days of
searching.

But for grieving locals, the memories of their missing loved
ones could be harder to shake, since they are surrounded by death
and destruction in a rebuilding process that could take years.

"As time goes by with not finding a loved one, reality will
sink in. Viewing the devastation of the area also helps to face
reality that 'yes this terrible awful thing did happen,"' said
Margaret Miles, a professor at the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill in the United States who has worked with disaster
survivors and grieving parents.

"On the other hand, not giving up the search may occur if
individuals want to hold on to the notion that this really didn't
happen, like it's still a bad dream." she said in a telephone
interview.

In Thai beach resorts such as Phuket, the relief centers,
hospitals and morgues set up in Buddhist temples are no longer
filled with dazed and crying people searching for their friends
and relatives.

But in Sri Lanka, where children accounted for a staggering
12,000 of the 31,000 dead, many parents are continuing to search
for their missing children.

"The parents never give up," said Tahirih Qurratulayn, a
therapist who works with Save the Children in Sri Lanka. "Only
the intensity of the searches goes down." She said many parents
feel guilty for being unable to perform what they see as their
primary responsibility in life: protecting their children.

In Banda Aceh, the hardest-hit area of Indonesia, few people
seemed to hold out much hope that the missing would be found
alive.

At a souvenir shop-turned-information center, damp fliers
bearing photos of the lost hung on boards outside. Few people
were there hunting for the missing.

Three days after the disaster, about 800 people a day were
coming in to search for clues to their missing relatives'
whereabouts, said Asyraf, 29, a relief worker there. Now there
are about 100 a day, he said.

Of the 10,000 people who had come to the office for help
finding relatives, only about 70 succeeded, said Asyraf, who like
many Indonesians uses only one name.

Hope was dwindling quickly because thousands of tsunami
victims were buried in mass graves and will never be identified.

"Some people gave up after a week, some people are still
looking today," Asyraf said. Many people finally "faced reality"
after seeing that the areas where their loved ones had been were
flattened.

In Thailand, a mostly Buddhist country, many local people
appeared to accept that their loved ones were lost, believing the
disaster was fate. But half of the 5,300 people who died here are
believed to be foreigners, and some had a very hard time giving
up their search.

Consider Carl Michael Bergman, 40, of Sweden, whose country
suffered the most deaths among Western nations with 52 dead and
637 missing.

Bergman was diving in the Andaman Sea off the Khao Lak resort
area in Thailand when the tsunami struck, and he made it back to
shore safely. His 3-year-old son Nils was on an elephant ride
nearby and also survived. Bergman's 37-year-old wife, Cecilia,
and their 18-month-old son Hannes were swept away by the killer
wave outside their bungalow near the beach. She remains missing,
but Hannes was rescued by local people.

After talking to witnesses and extensively searching the area,
mortuaries and hospitals, Bergman drew a map showing where
Cecilia and Hannes had been sitting by a swimming pool near their
bungalow when the tsunami struck. He drew a line showing where
they had run to escape, and an "X" where he had found their beige
backpack.

Finally on Thursday, Jan. 6, just hours before he was
scheduled to leave Phuket for Bangkok to fly home to Stockholm,
Bergman sat down to talk with the manager of the destroyed
Mukdara Beach Resort.

The manager said he had visited it soon after the disaster,
and had seen Cecilia's naked body, her swimsuit likely ripped off
by the tsunami. He believed she had been taken to a mortuary, but
he didn't know which one.

Bergman didn't cry. He had done that too many times since the
tsunami.

As he left, some Thais, sitting at a restaurant nearby, waved
to him. "Goodbye! You go?"

"She's dead. I know now. She's dead. I'm going home," he said
to them from the street, and went to gather his belongings for
the long journey home.