Scandinavians brace for bad news as thousands remain missing

SCANDINAVIAN countries are preparing themselves for national tragedies as the realisation dawns that most of the Europeans missing after the south Asian tsunami are from Sweden and Norway.

After local media accused authorities of being slow to respond, Sweden sent Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds to Thailand, and the Scandinavian airline SAS scrambled extra planes to bring its citizens home.

“There are not many people in Sweden who do not have some kind of personal link to this tragedy,” Ms Freivalds said.

Of 3,500 foreigners unaccounted for, around 1,500 were from Sweden, 440 from Norway and 200 from Finland.

More than 3,000 people may have died at Khao Lak, a Thai beach resort north of Phuket island popular with Scandinavians and Germans. Yesterday, 1,200 bodies had been recovered there.

Scandinavia’s biggest disaster of recent times was in 1994, when 852 people died on the Baltic ferry Estonia, 551 of them Swedes.

Apart from the Scandinavians, authorities had lost track of more than 200 Czechs, 188 Israelis, 100 Germans and 100 Italians holidaying in the region.

Faced with the enormity of the catastrophe, some countries appeared at a loss even to count the dead.

“According to estimates from our embassy, in Sri Lanka there should be 1,000 Italians today, almost all along the coast,” Guido Bertolaso, the head of Italy’s civil protection agency, said.

“Only 250 have returned home so far. The others? There are no reports of missing, but until we get there, how can we be sure? The same goes for Thailand.”

Mr Bertolaso said he had dispatched teams with DNA kits to zones where there were large numbers of unnamed European dead. Thailand has so far identified around 500 of the dead foreigners.

“In Phuket, for example, there are a hundred or so bodies that have not been identified,” Mr Bertolaso said.

“I’m talking about European bodies, in addition to the thousands of Thai bodies that haven’t got names yet.

“How can you figure out who among the Westerners is Italian? For that reason, our team of DNA experts has been sent.”

Governments around Europe were offering telephone helplines for relatives. Friends and families were also posting the names of their missing loved ones on internet message boards in the hope of receiving news. Britain’s Sky News was scrolling contact messages about missing individuals across its screen.

In the resorts, relatives and friends flocked to stricken areas, posting appeals or examining photographs on bulletin boards.

But one Swedish toddler was miraculously reunited with relatives, including his grandmother, after his picture was posted on the internet. Hannes Bergstrom, 14 months old, was rescued by a Thai villager, and found by an American couple on Sunday, wrapped in blankets on a hillside.