More Hawai'i teams sent to help with relief
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE — Three more teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command are deploying to the devastated tourist resort area of Phuket, Thailand, to help recover and identify the dead from the Dec. 26 tsunami.
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The 21 military and civilian team members, including forensic anthropologists, odontologists, mortuary affairs specialists and medics, will join two accounting command teams in Thailand.
Sgt. Ronald Taylor, Sgt. 1st Class David Groce and Sgt. 1st Class Devon Escoffery, from left, stack food boxes destined for Thailand.
One estimate put the number of confirmed dead at more than 5,000 in Thailand, with 4,500 still missing. Half are foreigners.
"Generally, because we're working with remains from World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War, (this) is a different effort for sure. Time is of the essence," said Elizabeth Goodman, a forensic anthropologist with the command. "Generally, we have some time to work things out, but this is going to be move, move, move."
The nature of identification is changing by the day. Increasingly, fingerprints and photographs don't help as decomposition progresses.
"So we have to start moving towards, are there dental records available?" Goodman said. Dental samples are being taken to do nuclear DNA analysis.
The teams will be used to identify Americans, many of whom were vacationing in Thailand.
"That's a burden that they will take off the Thais and other countries," said Lt. Col. Mark Brown, a spokesman for the accounting command.
Goodman said there were 300 forensic anthropologists in South Asia from 18 countries. Personnel are working frantically at makeshift morgues, including ones in Buddhist temples, to identify the dead.
Army Sgt. Ronald Taylor, 29, a photographer who was helping pack water, military rations, tents and duffel bags yesterday, said, "It's going to be emotional. But the main thing is helping the people that need to be helped."
The three latest teams are expected to leave tonight on a C-17 transport. Taylor, from Beaumont, Texas, will go as a photographer and videographer tasked with documenting the mission, but he also will be attached to a Marine unit.
"Whatever mission they have for me to do, that's what I'll do," he said. "I might be delivering water."
The teams are joining up with 14 other accounting command personnel already in Phuket. Teams also could be sent to Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Derek Benedix, 34, a civilian forensic anthropologist who's making the trip, described the recoveries the accounting command usually goes out on as "bio-archaeological" missions.
"This is more of a strictly forensic anthropological investigation," he said. "For me, it's OK, because I worked at the medical examiner's office when I was in grad school."
Goodman said the teams already in Thailand are on their second or third day of "really working" after hammering out the logistics of getting to Phuket and setting up.
Thirty-nine members of the Hawai'i Air National Guard's 154th Security Forces Squadron are preparing to deploy today to help in the relief effort.
The deployments are the latest from Hawai'i ordered by U.S. Pacific Command, headquartered at Camp Smith. Adm. Thomas B. Fargo said about about 13,000 U.S. military personnel are in theater or on the way.
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.
