The process of sifting through debris and rocks along Greater Kaohsiung’s Kaisyuan Road was temporarily suspended on Saturday as the police and fire department awaited DNA test results on human remains to see whether they belong to missing Kaohsiung Government Fire Department Secretary-General Lin Chi-tse (林基澤) and section head of the department’s Ruei-lung branch, Liu Yao-wen (劉耀文).
Both have been missing since the explosions on July 31 and Aug. 1.
Lin arrived on the scene as the temporary commander when the fire department set up a center beside the Yichin Furniture Store near the intersection of Kaisyuan Third and Ersheng First roads late in the evening of July 31, a few hours before the explosions.
Liu was acting as deputy commander at the time.
The city government said street surveillance cameras showed that the two were walking near the intersection and were right above the culvert suspected to be the source of the explosions, adding that the two had not been seen since the blasts that struck minutes later at 11:57pm.
“The area of their last appearance had seen continuous fire due to the large amounts of propene, and after a carpet search had not turned up Lin and Liu’s bodies, we decided to dig up all the excess debris to search,” city government officials said.
At first, the process was manual, with fire department personnel attempting to find the bodies by smelling handfuls of dirt, but later shoveled dirt onto filters to expedite the process.
Lin’s daughter, Lin Yu-chen (林郁珍), was also on site trying to find her father.
Despite the discovery of charred clothing and what seemed like bones, the fire department eventually excluded everything except the bone-like items from testing.
Greater Kaohsiung Fire Department Director Chen Hung-lung (陳虹龍) said that despite the lack of results from the remains, the two had most likely been burned to ashes in the intense prolonged heat of the blasts.
The city government has issued death certificates to Lin and Liu’s families, bringing the official number of deceased to 30, Chen said.
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