Reuters Posted online: Sunday, January 02, 2005 at 0400 hours IST Updated: Sunday, January 02, 2005 at 1145 hours IST
BANGKOK , January 2: Elephants, Thailand’s ancient war vehicles, are being brought in to help disaster workers retrieve and transport bloated bodies from tsunami-hit beaches and islands, an owner said on Saturday.
About 24 elephants were expected to land on the devastated resort island of Phuket and the mainland beaches of Khao Lak where rotting corpses lay buried beneath rubble and tonne of sand and debris following the devastating tsunami on Sunday.
“Elephants are better than four-wheel-drive trucks, better than back hoes. Those can’t go far, but elephants can,” Sompast Meephan said as he loaded elephants onto trucks for the 800-km (500-mile) ride from Ayutthaya, the former capital in central Thailand, to Phuket.
Thai rescue workers have struggled to unearth the dead, many of them foreign tourists, initially digging with their bare hands and shovels.
This is primarily because the rescue workers were unable to move heavy earth moving equipment into flooded areas and also for fear of buildings collapsing.
The final toll in Thailand could be nearer 8,000 than the 4,500 now known because many of the 6,500 missing were feared dead, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Saturday.
“We will be able to relieve many of those worn-out body retrievers,” Meephan said.
“The rescue workers know where the bodies are hidden, but they just don’t have enough manpower to retrieve them,” he said.
“Our fresh mahouts and elephants will help them, he added.”
Trucks have been ferrying the corpses to makeshift morgues in Buddhist temples in Khao Lak.
With some 300 dead bodies a day being found, the elephants will also be used to pull makeshift wagons carrying bodies.
