Last New Zealand earthquake victims identified

Final nine victims declared dead after DNA testing could not be used to identify them Nine final victims of New Zealand’s devastating earthquake have been declared dead, ending an agonising wait for families of people whose remains have not been found. Even DNA testing proved unable to identify nine of the 181 people killed in Christchurch on 22 February, so the government set up a special coroner’s inquest to examine other evidence. On Monday the chief coroner, Neil MacLean, made his official finding of death for nine people whose mobile phones, bank accounts and passports have not been used and whose remains could not be located. He concluded they died from traumatic injuries as a result of the quake. MacLean said their families deserved closure. The nine were six women and three men. Four were Chinese and one Filipino. Others were born in Peru and Russia. Witnesses reported seeing all nine in the Canterbury Television building before the earthquake, but no one had seen any of them since. A total of 115 lives were lost when the CTV building collapsed. The magnitude 6.3 quake is one of New Zealand’s worst disasters. Some 10,000 houses and nearly 1,000 commercial buildings in the city centre will have to be demolished and some parts of suburban Christchurch will most likely have to be abandoned altogether. The quake is New Zealand’s most expensive natural disaster, costing an estimated $15bn (£9.3bn). Police earlier identified 172 victims and told the inquest they had names for a further nine people but any remains of them that were recovered were too incomplete to be identified forensically. Fingerprints, dental remains, pathological examinations and DNA analysis were among the methods unable to identify the nine, Detective Inspector Paul Kench said. “To say that this is an extraordinary type of inquiry is an understatement,” MacLean told the hearing. The six women MacLean ruled dead were: Jinyan Leng, 30, Xiujuan Xu, 47, Didi Zhang, 23, and Xiaoli Zhou, 26, of China; Rhea Mae Sumalpong, 25, of the Philippines; and Elsa Torres De Frood, 53, a Peru-born New Zealand resident. The men were: Matthew Lyle Beaumont, 31, and Shawn Lucas, 40, of Christchurch; and Valeri Volnov, 41, a Russian-born New Zealand resident. New Zealand Natural disasters and extreme weather guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.