No burns found on victims' bodies: DVI team
East Java Police's Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team working on the bodies of the victims from AirAsia Indonesia flight QZ8501 said that they had found no trace of burns on the bodies.
National Police’s DVI executive director Sr. Comr. Anton Castelani said that the bodies were in a relatively clean condition, suggesting that the plane did not catch fire or explode before impacting the water and killing 162 people on Dec. 28, 2014.
“No burns were found on the victims. Regarding the report on [how the plane crashed], the KNKT [National Transportation Safety Commission] will publish it,” Anton said on Tuesday as quoted by kompas.com.
He added that the bodies found have experienced advanced signs of decomposition, making it more difficult for the DVI team to identify the bodies.
“In such a case, we will use other identification methods, such as the teeth and their DNA. There are not many worries regarding the decomposition process, they can still be identified,” Anton added.
As of Tuesday morning, the DVI team had successfully identified 13 out of 37 bodies recovered from the Karimata Strait of the Java Sea, where the AirAsia Airbus A320 crashed.
The process involves comparing the postmortem data of the victims with the antemortem data obtained from the victims’ families.
Meanwhile, National Police chief Gen. Sutarman said that all bodies found would be and could be identified, submitting to the reality that the bodies found later will take more time to identify.
