The strategies to DVI challenges in Typhoon Morakot.
Small village populations in which there is a high amount of kinship can cause complications in cases of disaster victim identification. This problem was highlighted by the loss of life after Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan where over 500 people from small isolated communities lost their lives. Most of the victims were buried by landslides in the remote mountainous areas of southern Taiwan. Only 146 pieces of human remains were recovered after searching for 4 months. Most of the human remains were received for examination as severely damaged fragments prevented possible identification by morphological features. DNA testing using the traditional duo parent/child or sibling screening by STR data opens the possibility of including not only the actual victim but also false positives. Variable likelihood ratios were obtained when comparing DNA types from human remains to those from potential relatives; however, with the DNA typing of numerous members of the same living family, multiple matches to potential families were avoided. Of the 146 samples obtained and collapsed to 130 victims, they were linked to 124 individuals resulting in their identification when compared to a pool of 588 potential relatives. Six of the human remains could not be linked to any living relative and remain unknown.
Lin
Chun-Yen
CY
Institute of Forensic Medicine, Ministry of Justice, No. 166-1 Keelung Road Section 2, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Huang
Tsun-Ying
TY
Shih
Hsuan-Cheng
HC
Yuan
Chiao-Hsuan
CH
Chen
Liang-Ju
LJ
Tsai
Hua-Sheng
HS
Pan
Chih-Hsin
CH
Chiang
Hui-Ming
HM
Liu
Hsin-Lin
HL
Su
Wen-Chi
WC
Wu
Kun-Tien
KT
Chao
Chi-Hsiang
CH
Huang
Nu-En
NE
Yang
Kun-Da
KD
Hsieh
Hsing-Mei
HM
Tsai
Li-Chin
LC
Linacre
Adrian
A
Yu
Yu-Jen
YJ
Lin
Yen-Yang
YY
Chu
Pao-Ching
PC
Lee
James Chun-I
JC
D055867:Cyclonic Storms; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D004190:Disasters; D018732:Forensic Anthropology / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D005787:Gene Frequency; D056426:Genetic Loci / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D054527:Mass Casualty Incidents / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics; D010334:Paternity; D010375:Pedigree; D011180:Postmortem Changes; D011336:Probability; D013624:Taiwan