Tag Archives: bone fragments

Search for remains in California’s deadliest wildfire officially ends

FILE PHOTO: A man looks at a map of the Camp Fire at a Red Cross shelter in Chico, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File Photo

By Lee van der Voo

CHICO, Calif. (Reuters) – Three weeks after flames incinerated most of a Northern California town in the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century, the search for more human remains has officially ended with at least 88 people confirmed dead and nearly 200 still listed as missing.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said he was optimistic that some who remain unaccounted for will turn up alive, but he also left open the possibility that “bones or bone fragments” of additional victims could turn up as evacuation zones are reopened to civilians.

With the fire reduced to embers, the National Weather Service on Thursday issued a flash-flood warning for the burn zone as showers and thunderstorms heightened the risk of heavy runoff in areas stripped of vegetation by the fire.

At a news conference on Wednesday night, Honea said search and recovery teams had finished combing through the ruins of approximately 18,000 homes and other buildings leveled by the Camp Fire, which ranks as the most destructive in state history.

The bulk of the devastation occurred in and around the hamlet of Paradise, a town once home to nearly 27,000 people, many of them retirees, in the Sierra foothills about 175 miles (280 km) north of San Francisco.

More than 1,000 personnel, including cadaver dog teams, forensic anthropologists, coroners and National Guard troops from five states, took part in the grim effort.

“I believe that we have done our due diligence with regard to searching for human remains. My sincere hope is that no additional human remains will be located,” Honea told reporters in the nearby town of Chico.

Asked directly whether authorities had ceased actively searching burned structures, the sheriff answered yes.

The current death toll of 88 already stands as the greatest loss of life on record from a single wildfire in California and the most from a wildfire anywhere in the United States dating back to Minnesota’s 1918 Cloquet Fire, which killed as many as 1,000 people. The Camp Fire also exceeds the 87 lives lost in the Big Burn firestorm that swept the Northern Rockies in 1910.

Authorities attribute the Camp Fire’s high casualty count in large part to the tremendous speed with which flames raced through Paradise with little advance warning, driven by howling winds and fueled by drought-desiccated scrub and trees.

The remains of many victims were found in the ashen rubble of homes, others inside or near the burned-out wreckage of vehicles.

The cause of the blaze, which was fully contained earlier this week, remained under investigation. But PG&E Corp reported equipment problems near the origin of the fire around the time it began on Nov. 8.

The official roster of people unaccounted for has fluctuated widely from day to day, but as of Wednesday night, the list was winnowed to 196 names, down from a peak of 1,200-plus over a week ago.

The sheriff said the list had since been scrubbed of all duplicate names and that investigators had caught up with a backlog of unprocessed missing-persons reports.

(Reporting by Lee van der Voo in Chico, Calif.; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Hunt for U.S. Korean War dead will take months to resume, search chief says

U.S. Defence POW/MIA Accounting Agency Kelly McKeague, whose agency tracks down and repatriates remains of U.S. soldiers lost on foreign battlefields, speaks at an interview with Reuters in Tokyo, Japan, July 9, 2018. Picture taken on July 9, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

By Tim Kelly

TOKYO (Reuters) – North Korea may allow the United States to resume a search for thousands of American war dead from the 1950-53 Korean War, but it will be months before excavations can begin and years until bone fragments are identified, a senior US official said.

“It takes anywhere from a few months to, in many cases, years, before we can make an identification,” Kelly McKeague, head of the U.S. agency that tracks down remains of U.S. soldiers lost on foreign battlefields, said in an interview.

Thirteen years after its last work in North Korea, the agency could return after leader Kim Jong Un agreed at a June 12 summit with President Donald Trump to resume the recovery and repatriation of U.S. remains.

After the summit, Trump said Pyongyang had already “sent back” the remains of 200 U.S. troops. McKeague said no new remains had been returned since the Trump-Kim talks.

“We have yet to see any specifics from that commitment,” said McKeague, director of the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

The process could get a kickstart when North Korean and United Nations officials meet on Thursday in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides the Koreas to discuss service members missing in action (MIA). DPAA advisers will attend the talks.

“We are hopeful these discussions on July 12 will lead to further discussions and negotiations directly with the North Koreans by which we can actually get down to the detailed planning,” McKeague said.

DPAA investigators face a narrow weather window in North Korea, where the ground is soft enough for digging from mid-March to late September, and rains can stop work in June and August.

The last return of U.S. remains between 1990 and 1995 involved just over 200 caskets. U.S. investigators collected a further 230 boxes of bones and material in a decade of digging.

Using DNA testing, they have identified 630 individuals, of which 330 were matched to missing service members, said Dr. John Byrd, the agency’s director of scientific analysis.

Each person receives a military funeral with full honors.

WORKING IN THE NORTH

Byrd, a forensic anthropologist, was part of a 15-strong DPAA team in North Korea 20 years ago. They lived in tents and traveled to battle sites such as the Chosin Reservoir, where outnumbered U.S. Marine and Army units fought a retreat through overwhelming numbers of Chinese forces in a bitter winter.

Guarded by North Korean soldiers, Byrd said they were careful to avoid arguments that could halt their work.

“We made sure we only brought in really mature experienced people,” he said, adding each day was “going to be negotiated”.

The remains of a South Korean service member identified from that operation will be returned in Seoul on Friday. About 120,000 South Koreans are still missing, according to the DPAA.

Some 7,700 Americans are unaccounted for on the peninsula, with 5,300 believed to be somewhere north of the DMZ.

Detailed historical records allow investigators to locate battlefields, prisoner of war camps and aircraft crash sites.

The Korean peninsula’s colder climate limits digging time, but helps to preserve remains, unlike tropical areas of Asia, where bones rot quickly, McKeague said.

The agency has built up a DNA database from relatives that covers 92 percent of the Korean War missing, versus 85 percent for the Vietnam War and about 5 percent for World War Two.

The North’s lack of economic development since the war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, meant it built fewer roads, dams and buildings to disturb or cover remains.

South Korea’s urbanization is one reason why more than a 1,000 U.S. service members are unaccounted for, said McKeague.

If the agency does return to North Korea, he said cooperation will be key. “The most difficult thing in working with the North Koreans was the trust,” he said.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Darren Schuettler)