SINGAPORE FORENSICS TEAM STARTS WORK TO IDENTIFY VICTIMS OF NZ QUAKE

A five-man Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team from Singapore has started work to assist the New Zealand authorities to identify victims of the 22 Feb Christchurch earthquake.

Upon their arrival yesterday, the team immediately plunged into preparation work, visiting an identification centre and DVI-related installations where they were given a walk-through by their New Zealand counterparts.

According to DVI team-leader Colonel (COL) (Dr) Tan Peng Hui, Commander of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Military Medicine Institute, DVI work is a resource-intensive process requiring wide-ranging forensics expertise.

"It is normal for DVI expertise to be limited in most countries, as each country will only have enough to meet domestic demands arising from crime, or to identify victims of fatal road accidents," he said.

"Disaster situations where there are many victims are likely to overwhelm the existing pool of forensics expertise in the country and we arrived in time to help the New Zealand police and authorities."

The team started their work today in the various stations of the DVI process and will continue providing their assistance to the New Zealand authorities in the days to come.

In addition to COLTan, the team comprises two members from the Health Sciences Authority - Dr George Paul, Senior Consultant Pathologist, and Mr Simon Lim Eng Seng, Senior DNA Forensic Scientist - and two from the Singapore Police Force - Mr Sunny Low Hiok,Crime Scene Examiner and Ms Lee Mei Fun, Automated Fingerprint Identification System Supervisor.

The arrival of the DVI team is the latest in a series of SAF-led efforts to assist the city struck by the earthquake.

Since 1 Mar, five combat engineers from the SAF team have been deployed with the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) engineers to two separate locations in the Christchurch suburbs where they assisted local authorities in removing debris and carrying minor repair works to buildings affected by the earthquake.

As part of the SAF's contribution of two C-130 military aircraft to the relief efforts, one of the planes was dispatched to assist the NZDF in flying supplies from Auckland into Christchurch yesterday.