DNA, fingerprints and photos: Singapore police join international effort to identify Nepal flood dead

At Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, photographs and names cover a wall in a makeshift bulletin board for people missing after Nepal’s devastating Aug. 26 flood. Families have posted images of locals, newlyweds, foreigners, soldiers and children, searching for any clue about what happened.

Sahil Dewan, 29, is looking for his brother Samim, a cargo driver working near the Nepal-China border. Samim sent his family a photograph shortly before the flood and spoke to them by phone. Since then, they have heard nothing.

“All of us have been trying to locate him. Our entire family has been praying and trying to find him,” Dewan said. He plans to travel to the disaster zone himself in what he described as a desperate final effort.

“

All of us have been trying to locate him. Our entire family has been praying and trying to find him.

More than a week after the flood, the search is confronting an increasingly grim reality. Most of the people being found are dead, even as several extraordinary rescues have offered brief flashes of hope. As of Sept. 5, authorities had recovered 1,342 bodies, but fewer than 100 had been identified and returned to their families. Police said 4,886 people remained missing or out of contact, leaving the final scale of the disaster unclear.

The recovery of bodies is far outpacing identification. Authorities have collected more than 2,200 DNA samples, including samples from 1,260 bodies and more than 1,000 relatives. They have also uploaded details of 1,270 unidentified bodies online to help families establish possible matches. A 35-person team of Singapore Police Force forensic specialists began arriving on Sept. 1, joining experts from India, China and South Korea. The team is examining bodies and gathering DNA, fingerprints and photographs. “I think typically in a flood situation, especially at this point in time, the bodies are quite badly decomposed, and the effect of the water actually causes some damage to the bodies,” said Eugene Wang, the team’s disaster victim identification commander. Photographs of unidentified victims, many showing severe decomposition, hang inside the hospital awaiting a match.

“

I think typically in a flood situation, especially at this point in time, the bodies are quite badly decomposed, and the effect of the water actually causes some damage to the bodies.