Mass burial for crash victims

Mass burial for crash victims

Ridwan Max Sijabat and Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan

A forensic team at the Adam Malik General Hospital in Medan has
been working around the clock to try to identify badly charred
bodies of Mandala aircraft crash victims, with the government
planning to conduct a mass burial for unidentified bodies on
Wednesday.

Experts from the National Transportation Safety Committee
began investigations on Tuesday, looking for clues from burned
wreckage at the crash site to help determine what caused the
Mandala Airlines Indonesia Boeing 737-200 airliner to fail at
takeoff.

The aircraft slammed into a heavily populated area near the
Polonia Airport in Medan on Monday, killing 103 on board, and 47
on the ground. Fourteen passengers survived the country's worst
plane crash in eight years, including a two-year old baby who was
sitting on her mother's lap.

Head of the forensic team Guntur Bumi said that until Tuesday
afternoon, only 73 bodies had been identified. These included the
bodies of North Sumatra governor Tengku Rizal Nurdin and his
predecessor Raja Inal Siregar, as well as the five crew members.

"The identified bodies have already been handed over to their
relatives. Of the 73 identified bodies, 39 are passengers, four
are crew members and the rest were residents killed in the
accident," he said, adding that identification work had been
tough as many of the victims had been charred beyond recognition.

Sukri, a forensic professor at the Airlangga University
medical school in Surabaya, East Java, said that the forensic
team conducted the identification procedure by examining the
victims' fingerprints and dental records to ensure their ante-
mortem data was the same as their postmortem data.

North Sumatra provincial administration spokesman Edi Sofyan
said that the forensic experts were given until 11 a.m. on
Wednesday to finish the identification work, as unidentified
bodies would be buried in a mass grave. This grave would be
located near the mass burial site for the 1997 Garuda air crash
victims, which killed more than 200.

"Unidentified bodies will be buried en masse at around 2
p.m.," he said.

Islamic religious custom calls for quick burial of the dead.

Medan, the country's third largest city which has become a hub
for the flow of tsunami aid to Aceh, was in mourning on Tuesday
with residents flying national flags at half mast.

A somber President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono flew to Medan on
Tuesday where he visited the wreckage-strewn site on Jl. Djamin
Ginting as hundreds of people thronged about to get a glimpse of
him.

He also presided over the funeral ceremony for North Sumatra
governor Tengku Rizal Nurdin and visited the Adam Malik Hospital.

Meanwhile, a member of the National Transportation Safety
Committee Rita Wijaya said that the recovered black boxes which
included the flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder would be
sent to the U.S., Australia or Taiwan for analysis.

Meanwhile, the engines would be taken to Jakarta to determine
if the crash was caused by engine failure.

But committee chairman Setyo Rahardjo said that it could take
up to a year for a conclusion to be drawn, promising that it
would unveil the report to the public.

The ill-fated aircraft was manufactured in 1981, but was
claimed by Mandala to be airworthy until 2016.

Survivors said the plane started to shake heavily seconds
after takeoff, and failed to clear landing systems at the end of
the runway. The aircraft clipped a river bank, swerved right and
burst into flames as it ploughed into homes on one of the city's
busiest roads.