The New Zealand Urban Search and Rescue (Usar) team which went to Japan, returned home today. They said there was nothing more they could do in Japan. There is no hope of finding any survivors now because of the extreme cold.
This is different from the scene in Christchurch where Usar teams from many different countries worked for more than two weeks trying to rescue people from buildings which had collapsed. The weather was still warm and there was still a slight hope of finding survivors. In other earthquakes around the world, sometimes there have been miracles – survivors found after 10 days or more. However, in Christchurch there were no more survivors after the first two days.
The police said they have found 166 bodies. About 140 of those have been identified so far.
It has been difficult to identify some of the bodies. NZ experts and experts from other countries have worked hard to make sure there are no mistakes. They spent time with families and friends asking about physical details of the missing person including clothes worn that day. They asked dentists for dental records and they used DNA. This process takes time. The fire in the CVT building has made identification more difficult. More than half of the bodies came from the CTV building.
Vocabulary
A miracle is a wonderful happening that is hard to believe.
Identify – verb; identification – noun meaning the process of finding out who the person is; an ID card is an identity card. You need an ID – e.g. your passport in some situations.
So far – up till now. There will be more later e.g. So far, we have had x after-shocks bigger than 5.0.
It takes time – a useful phrase to explain a long process.
Grammar
“The fire in the CVT building has made identification more difficult.” This is a useful structure: to make something (more) difficult / harder / easier/ better / hotter / sweeter / bigger etc.
Note the number of present perfect verbs used to show something that happened in the past but still true now.
Questions
What physical details are important for identifying someone?