The Swedish Foreign Ministry has totalled its costs following the tsunami disaster at 315 million Swedish Kronor. The highest single cost – 97.4 million kronor – was incurred by the police. Of this, 49.2 million was spent on overtime, travel, transport of equipment, accommodation abroad and other extraordinary items.
58.3 million Swedish Kronor went to the Swedish Rescue Services Agency that coordinated efforts in Thailand. The amount also included the costs of recruiting temporary funeral directors. A further 18 million kronor was spent on transporting coffins and cold storage units with the Swedish Armed Forces’ Hercules planes.
The armed forces, for their part, reported costs of around 9 million kronor – mostly for the use of the base outside Uppsala, where the deceased were first taken.
The ID Commission, which carried out the forensic work in identifying the bodies, cost the foreign ministry and the police 15 million kronor. Ulf Westerberg, the director general of the National Board of Forensic Medicine, said that 9.4 million kronor was spent on forensics.
“We had dentists, medical examiners and assistants employed on a project basis in Thailand,” said Westerberg.
The rest of the costs were incurred by the work at the morgue in Sweden including DNA analysis of relatives and the victims.
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs also paid 38.5 million kronor to airlines for transport, according to the Swedish Rescue Services Agency paper, Sirenen.
A support group set up for victims and relatives cost 35 million kronor, while travel companies were reimbursed for 31.3 million kronor of extra costs. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ own costs were 20 million kronor while the National Board of Health and Welfare reported costs of 10.5 million kronor.
