Friday 16 August 2013

4 bodies recovered from sunken Indian navy submarine INS Sindhurakshak, bodies will be DNA tested


Four severely burned bodies have been recovered from an Indian navy submarine that sank in Mumbai this week after an explosion and fire on board, authorities said Friday.

The Indian government warned that there was almost no hope of finding any survivors among the 14 other sailors who were in the submarine when it was hit by the unexplained blast at a naval dockyard early Wednesday.

Navy divers have been searching for the trapped submarine personnel for the past two days.

Their task has been complicated by poor visibility inside the stricken submarine's passageways, which are full of oily, muddy water and wreckage. Adding to their difficulties, the heat of the explosion warped some of the hatches inside the vessel, blocking the divers' access to certain areas.

The four bodies they found Friday are unidentifiable because they were so severely burned, authorities said. They have been taken to a naval hospital for DNA identification.

Searching 'every inch'

The state of the bodies and conditions inside the INS Sindhurakshak, a Russian-built submarine, mean that "finding any surviving personnel within the submarine is unlikely," the ministry said.

"The feasibility of locating bodies of personnel in the forward part of the submarine is also very remote, as the explosion and very high temperatures, which melted steel within, would have incinerated the bodies, too," it warned.

But divers will continue to scour "every inch" of the submarine until all the bodies are recovered "or it can be stated with finality that no bodies remain to be found," the statement said.

Authorities say they have contacted the families of all the 18 missing personnel and are keeping them updated. The defense ministry has published the names of the three officers and 15 sailors concerned.

Friday 16 August 2013

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/16/world/asia/india-submarine-disaster/

continue reading

New questions raised over Canberra Air Disaster


New questions have been raised about Australia's most significant air disaster, including a claim that bodies of high profile victims may have been incorrectly identified.

The Canberra Air Disaster in 1940 killed 10 people, including three key members of then prime minister Robert Menzies' cabinet and the chief of the general staff.

It shocked the nation and contributed to the fall of the war-time government, it is said that Mr Menzies never really recovered.

The disaster has always generated debate about how it happened on a clear and still Canberra morning, and who was actually at the controls when the Hudson Bomber plane crashed 73 years ago this week.

Was it the listed pilot Robert 'Bob' Hitchcock or the air minister James Fairbairn?

'More uncertainty'

Andrew Tink sought to answer some of those questions in his book 'Air Disaster Canberra: the plane crash that destroyed a government', which was released in April this year.

"I didn't set out with an opinion, but during the course of writing the book it became clear to me that the air minister James Fairbairn was at the controls when the plane crashed," he said.

"I hesitate to use the word definitive.

"I say the evidence is strong and I'm confident in reaching the conclusion I have an expressing it publicly."

It was feedback from his book that led to Mr Tink's concerns about the identification of bodies.

"After I wrote my book someone approached me to say I got one of the ages of the victims wrong, I went and checked and sure enough that was the case," he said.

"I asked myself how could I have made this mistake, but the mistake was in fact made by the person identifying bodies at the morgue."

The bodies from the front of the plane were not identified or tagged at the scene.

They were examined at the Canberra morgue where one was found to be that of an older man, perhaps mistakenly thought to be Bob Hitchcock.

Mr Tink believes that was actually the body of James Fairbairn.

"The mistake was made by the group captain identifying the bodies, who assumed that Hitchcock was 10 years older than he in fact was," he said.

"The reality was that Hitchcock and Richard Wisener the co-pilot were almost exactly the same age.

"The person who was a little bit more than 10 years older, was Fairbairn."

Which body, which grave?

Mr Tink made his claims public this week at a forum at Questacon in Canberra hosted by the ACT Australian Science Communicators and the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Society.

He says the evidence is definitive that mistakes were made in the identification process, but he would not be drawn on what happened after that and whether bodies were eventually buried in the wrong graves.

"I can't say that, I'd prefer not to go there," he said.

"It's more uncertainty as to who was where [in the plane]."

Shadow of calamity

In 2007, then ABC Stateline producer and director Geoff Crane produced a detailed documentary about the disaster called 'Shadow of Calamity'.

The title is drawn from a speech former prime minister Robert Menzies made in parliament after the crash.

"It is a great calamity, the full significance of which even yet is not fully realised," Mr Menzies said.

"Every man concerned was doing an important war service. Each of my three cabinet colleagues was a man of character and intense loyalty.

"Their loss just does not bear thinking about."

During his research for the documentary, Mr Crane came across evidence of confusion in the process of identifying bodies.

"I've gone as deep as I was able to access and there was no evidence to confirm without reservation who was where in the plane when it crashed," he said.

"There are certainly some questions about the identification process, but the focus of my concern was how the bodies of Hitchcock and co-pilot Richard Wisener were identified.

"I believe there is more chance that the pilots identities were mixed up than there is of them getting Fairbairn wrong.

"The really hard part of human nature is to actually accept that there are some things that we may just never know."

Families reflect

Family members representing all 10 victims gathered at the site of the disaster near Canberra this week to mark the 73rd anniversary of the crash.

It is the first time all the families have been represented since Mr Menzies opened the original memorial at the site in 1960.

The memorial is tucked into scrubland at the end of a rough dirt road, several kilometres off the Queanbeyan road near the Canberra Airport.

It has been vandalised and damaged and the gates are usually locked.

James Fairbairn's granddaughter Mary Browne would like to see the site made more accessible and the disaster itself made more prominent in national history.

"My brother and his wife and children visited Canberra a few years ago and were shocked that the access was closed," she said.

"I think it is really vitally important that everybody can come up and see the place where so many men lost their lives on that day."

The ACT Government is looking at ways to allow better access to the site and in turn provide greater understanding of Australia's most contentious air disaster.

Friday 16 august 2013

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-16/new-questions-raised-over-canberra-air-disaster/4893354

continue reading

Indonesia boat accident death toll rises to 13


Indonesian rescuers found five more bodies on Friday after a boat taking people home following holidays at the end of Ramadan sank, an official said, taking the death toll from the accident to 13.

The small wooden vessel, which was holding more than double its capacity of about 20 people, went down yesterday as it travelled back from Panjang island to a beach in Central Java province.

Thirty-four people were plucked to safety from waters off the main island of Java and sustained only minor injuries, according to local search and rescue official Agung Hari Prabowo.

But search teams found eight bodies immediately after the accident and five more today, he said. There were three children among the dead.

Prabowo warned the death toll could rise. "The problem is that we don't know exactly how many people were on the boat when it sank," he said.

The travellers had been performing a ceremony to mark the end of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, which comes after the fasting month of Ramadan.

It involved putting an offering of a buffalo head into the sea to ask for good fortune and express thanks to God.

The Eid holiday fell last week in Indonesia, which has the world's biggest Muslim population, but many people are still off work and celebrating.

Indonesia's 240 million people are spread across more than 17,000 islands and are heavily dependent on boats for transport, but the country has a poor maritime safety record.

Friday 16 August 2013

http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/indonesia-boat-accident-death-toll-rises-to-13_869425.html

continue reading

Boat overturned, nine dead on Jepara waters


A motorized boat carrying 47 passengers overturned on Thursday afternoon on the Jepara waters, Central Java, near Panjang Island, killing nine including children and injuring others.

The boat overturned as it was participating in the local traditional lomban ketupat celebration to mark the seventh day after Idul Fitri. Twenty eight of the passengers were treated at the nearby RSUD RA Kartini hospital while six others were outpatients.

“The boat was overcapacity. It should only take 15 to 20 passengers at one time,” Jepara Police Chief Adj. Sr. Comr. M. Taslim Chairudin said, Thursday.

Like previously, the annual tradition was held at the Kartini tourist resort, Jepara, during which locals use fishing boats to travel to the Panjang Island which is located some four kilometers from Kartini Beach to enjoy the beauty of the small island.

The ill-fated boat overturned some 500 meters off Panjang Island as it was heading home to Jepara. The boat already looked sideways as it left Panjang Island due to overcapacity. It never became stable and finally overturned.

As of Thursday afternoon the Jepara Water Police and the Search and Rescue (SAR) was still searching for the missing passengers. The bodies found were sent to the Kartini hospital. Jepara Regent Marzuki visited the victims at the hospital and met with their respective family members.

“On behalf of the local administration we express our condolence,” Marzuki said.

The search was halted temporarily due to darkness. The search effort is to be continued the following morning.

Friday 16 August 2013

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/08/15/boat-overturned-nine-dead-jepara-waters.html

continue reading

Divers find 3 bodies inside INS Sindhurakshak, 15 still missing


India's navy said on Friday divers had found the bodies of three sailors who were on board a submarine badly damaged by a fire and explosions and that it was unlikely any of 15 other missing crew members would be found alive.

"The state of these bodies and conditions within the submarine leads to firm conclusion that finding any surviving personnel within the submarine is unlikely," the navy said in a statement.

"The damage and destruction within the submarine around the control room area indicates that the feasibility of locating bodies of personnel in the forward part of the submarine is also very remote as the explosion and very high temperatures, which melted steel within, would have incinerated the bodies too."

The sinking of the diesel-powered submarine is the biggest blow for the navy, both in terms of lives and the loss of a vessel, since a frigate was sunk in the 1971 war with Pakistan.

It has turned the spotlight on the navy's ageing submarine fleet even as it spends billions of rupees on aircraft carriers to counter the rising influence of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean.

The Sindhurakshak is a Kilo class vessel, which were built in former Soviet and later Russian shipyards for the Indian navy from 1985 to 2000. The navy has 10 of the submarines and four German HDW boats.

A defence source said the navy did not have a deep submergence rescue vehicle that other navies use to save trapped sailors, although in this case the incident occurred while it was docked and not in the deep seas.

The navy said divers couldn't enter the Sindhurakshak for more than 12 hours because of boiling water inside parts of the vessel. Access was "almost impossible due to jammed doors and hatches, distorted ladders, oily and muddy waters".

Only one diver could work at a time initially to clear a path inside the submarine. Divers are trying to reach further inside to find the remaining bodies, the navy said.

Despite putting in their best efforts, rescuers have been finding it difficult to break into the submarine as the heat of the explosion has melted parts of the internal hull deforming the submarine hatches and has prevented access to the compartments. The main hatch was opened last afternoon.

The Navy has also been trying to pump out water from the ship but the operation has met with limited success till now as there has been large scale ingress of sea water into the submarine due to the explosion.

The diesel-electric submarine was commissioned into the Indian Navy in 1997 at a cost of around Rs 400 crore and had gone through a Rs 450-crore extensive upgrade in Russia.

The 2300-tonne Kilo class submarine, powered by a combination of diesel generators and electric batteries, had potent weapons package including the anti-ship 'Club' missiles.

A naval board of inquiry has been ordered into how weapons went off while the vessel was berthed in the high-security Mumbai base.

Friday 16 August 2013

http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/divers-find-3-bodies-inside-ins-sindhurakshak-15-still-missing_869387.html

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/08/16/uk-india-submarine-bodies-idUKBRE97F04G20130816

continue reading