https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFKWg5eCVJw

PHUKET: The remarkable documentary 'After The Wave' is now available for viewing on YouTube. It tells the saga of the world's largest forensic identification project that followed the 2004 tsunami in Thailand.

The 90-minute documentary, screened across the world, was inspired by a long article about the ID process by Phuketwan editor Alan Morison that was first published in The Australian magazine in 2005.

''It's great to have the work of the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification unit recognised after all these years,'' Morison said this week. ''They and the hospital workers and the volunteers who recovered bodies then physically restored the region are the unsung heroes of the tragedy.''

The project was so little recognised at the time, Morison said, that the Thai government forgot it was happening.

''For the first anniversary of the tsunami, the government released a commemorative book for international journalists that recorded the death toll in Thailand as 8000. It is actually 5395.

''But ever since, the mistake has been perpetuated.''

Morison said he and another journalist realised the mistake and over the next few days, contacted 14 embassies to check details of their figures for dead and missing.

For privacy reasons, no overall figure was available.

''What happened was that many of the 5395 bodies were unidentified,'' Morison said. ''But as the bodies were identified by the TTVI, officials forgot to remove their names from the 'missing' list.

''The result was that at the end of the first 12 months, about 2600 people listed as 'missing' had actually been identified.

''In banging the two lists together, the official commemorative book killed those people twice.''

Morison said the tsunami did not drag thousands of people out to sea, as many speculated in its aftermath.

''There were no strong currents at that time of the year,'' he said. ''The waves simply swirled people along the coast, in a washing machine action. Very few people were not recovered.''

A total of 369 unidentified people remain in the Tsunami Victim Cemetery at Baan Bang Maruan, north of Phuket.

''People continue to get the toll in Thailand wrong,'' Morison said.

''Even the excellent 'After The Wave' opens with the factually incorrect 8000 figure. That just goes to show how mistakes are perpetuated if they appear in seemingly official documents.''

Morison said Phi Phi and the village of Nam Khem in Phang Nga were hard-hit by the tsunami, but not as hard-hit as some figures make out.

''It is still being reported that 2000 people died in Nam Khem yet the village chief told us this week what he told us back in 2005 - the toll in the village is actually 850.''

By calling 14 embassies back in 2005, Morison and his colleague established that the missing toll was only a fraction of the size that the official document claimed - thanks to the identification work by the Thai and international forensic team.

About half of the victims were Thai and half were non-Thai. Here's the list of the countries contacted back in 2005:



Germany 534 14

Sweden 526 17

Finland 177 7

Britain 150 6

Switzerland 110 5

France 90 5

Austria 86 2

Norway 84 0

Korea 78 0

Hong Kong 40 2

Holland 36 0

Japan 28 1

United States 24 0

Australia 23 0

*Figures supplied by individual embassies. Sweden was thought to have most victims, but now Germany narrowly tops the known toll. Of the seven Finns still missing, six are children. The United States tally includes several Asian-Americans and an 11-day-old baby. The British tally includes victims from Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Death certificates have been issued for four of the six missing Britons.