Kevin Sites is a freelance reporter who, until recently, was covering events in Iraq for NBC. He’s been in Thailand covering the aftermath of Sunday’s tsunami. He’s written some of his impressions on his blog and they’re just heartbreaking. Kevin writes:
One-hundred and fifty-nine pine coffins have been stacked in the garage — many of them big enough to hold refrigerators — built to accommodate the now bloated and rapidly decomposing bodies inside.
Thai soldiers, wearing surgical masks, race against time to arrest the process — before the bodies become impossible to identify.
In a well-choreographed drill — they use hammers to smash square blocks of dry ice, carrying the shards on sheets of plastic and dumping them inside the coffins with the remains. They work at a very high tempo — almost as if they were trying to rescue the living — rather than preserve the dead.
On the sides of the coffins are photographs of the deceased as they were found, special attention paid to jewelry or tattoos, anything that can help in identifying who they once were.
I cannot even begin to imagine the horror of such a scene. You can read the rest here.
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