GOVT LEADERS, LOCALS DEBATE MASS BURIAL
[PHOTO - SILENT SCREAM: This seemingly
peaceful seascape is what remains of Bayug Island after rampaging floodwaters
from the Mandulog River smashed through it early Saturday morning at the height
of Tropical Storm "Sendong." A settlement of Hinaplanon village, 3.7 kilometers
northeast of the Iligan City poblacion, Bayug is considered the first Christian
community in Iligan City. Before Saturday, it was home to 341 families. Only 100
families have been accounted for. The rest are missing and feared dead. RICHEL V. UMEL / INQUIRER MINDANAO]
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, DECEMBER
21,
2011 (INQUIRER) By DJ Yap Philippine Daily Inquirer -
Guillermo Uriarte hung on for dear life as he swam then floated on a wave of mud
that carried him from his flood-devastated riverside home in Cagayan de Oro to
Macajalar Bay off the coast of El Salvador 20 kilometers away.
He was barely breathing when rescuers plucked him from the sea. He told the
Philippine Daily Inquirer he had started to swim at 11 a.m. At some point, he
said he was carried away by the current and reached El Salvador 12 hours later.
But the extraordinary escape from death's clutches offered scant comfort to
the 32-year-old appliance salesman, as he mounted a frantic search for his wife
and three children who got separated from him at the height of the storm.
He was not alone.
On Day 3, as locals continued reeling from the effects of Tropical Storm
"Sendong," which laid to waste vast sections of Northern Mindanao, the focus
shifted from ensuring their survival to finding, retrieving and burying the
unfortunate scores who did not make it.
"I feel that I was saved only so that I can find them," a distraught Uriarte
said of his wife Rosalyn and their children, Jhean Russel, 11, and Jill Anne
Rose, 7. He had not found them yet when he talked to the Inquirer Monday.
The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) put the death toll from the storm's weekend
onslaught at more than 700 late Monday night, with about 900 others listed as
missing. The Department of Health (DOH) officially listed 533 fatalities and 239
missing, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management
Council.
Health officials in Manila and in Cagayan de Oro debated whether they should
first help the National Bureau of Investigation identify the bodies before
burying them.
"We do not recommend mass burials," said Dr. Eric Tayag, a DOH director in
Manila. "The families should be able to mourn and bury their dead."
Dumped at landfill
But local officials concerned with health risks from rotting cadavers had
begun preparing common graves.
At least 40 unidentified and rotting bodies were dumped into the city's
sanitary landfill to await mass burial, said Senior Superintendent Jesus
Vinluan.
He said the bodies had been left lying along a corridor and two rooms of
Bollozos Funeral Homes, which announced it could no longer accommodate them.
At Barangay (village) Pala-o, officials began digging up a 45-square-meter
concrete grave in the village cemetery where 100 or so unidentified bodies were
to be deposited.
Teresita Badiang-Herrera of the city mayor's office said the local government
would ensure that the burial ground would be "dignified."
She said she understood the qualms of families who did not want their dead
buried in a mass grave but the urgency of the situation demanded drastic
measures.
"We don't want a health problem in our hands," Herrera said.
She said it was not only the community's physical health they sought to
protect but also its psychological state.
"When they smell the bodies in their villages, it will only serve to remind
people of the tragedy. And even if it's no longer the dead that they smell, any
rotten smell would evoke sad memories," Herrera said.
Mass burial in Iligan
[PHOTO COURTESY OF GMA NEWS TV - Despite an
appeal from the Department of Health (DOH), a number of decomposing bodies in
the northern Mindanao cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro — the two hardest hit
areas by tropical storm Sendong — were buried in mass graves on Monday
afternoon.]
A similar move was being undertaken in Iligan City. "Today, we will dig a
mass grave and bury the unclaimed bodies as well as those in an advanced state
of decomposition," said Mayor Lawrence Cruz.
Up to 50 of about 300 bodies recovered in Iligan since Sendong struck early
Saturday morning will be placed in a common grave, Cruz said in a TV interview.
The bodies awaiting burial were wrapped in white plastic bags bound tightly
with tan-colored packaging tape.
The mayor said funeral homes were already crammed with unclaimed corpses and
were now turning away newly recovered dead.
But he told reporters later in the day that he had abandoned plans for a mass
grave when told of Manila's position on the issue ahead of a visit by President
Benigno Aquino III. He said individual tombs would be built instead.
The Inquirer chanced upon Uriarte on a visit to a funeral parlor in
neighboring Laguindingan town.
His trips to 10 funeral parlors in Cagayan de Oro had been for naught,
Uriarte said, recalling the pain and discomfort of looking for familiar faces
from the sea of bloated, stinking bodies that piled up in memorial centers
there.
As a result, city officials arranged for the corpses to be deposited at the
sanitary landfill in Barangay Carmen—not to be buried there but to be doused
with formaldehyde and embalmed.
A barangay official said villagers could not bear the smell of the corpses in
various states of decomposition and worried that the flies they attracted might
spread disease.
Helpless
But not Orlando Medrano, who watched in stoic silence as his 16-year-old
daughter Nica was treated for burial.
Medrano, a glass installer from Isla de Oro, said it was ironic that he had
managed to save four of his female neighbors when he failed to look after his
own child.
"We could do nothing. I had my 3-year-old daughter Xyza strapped to my chest,
but I could not watch my other children," he said.
In Upper Hinaplanon in Iligan, Ibrahim Alawi, a 35-year-old family driver,
found a solution.
Moments before the walls of water reduced his house to rubble, he hastily
tied together long-sleeved shirts, tightened them around his wife and four
children and attached them to his waist as anchor.
"We climbed the roof of the mosque where we held on," he said.
Search continues
Elsewhere, the desperate search for loved ones continued.
From Iligan City, Rogelio Amado, a government watchman, traveled to Cagayan
de Oro in search of the family of his sister Rosa Amado-Varana, 37, who, along
with her family of four, had disappeared on Bayug Island.
"Almost everything was wiped out on Bayug. Only a few houses are still
standing," Amado said, shaking his head.
There was no dearth of stories in this city of 100,000, from a pet that
helped a family find the body of its owner to a house that became the haven of
30 people.
Imra-Ali Sabdullah, president of a homeowners association in Upper
Hinaplanon, recalled how a dog made distressed sounds near a clump of banana
trees.
He said the family had been looking for an elderly man whom he could only
identify by his surname "Lagrimas."
"The dog would not move away from that spot. It was shaking its head and
whimpering, so I told them 'look in that area where the dog is,'" Sabdullah
said.
They found the man an hour later.
At a subdivision in Barangay Santiago, a pink two-story house served as
refuge to more than 30 people whose own homes had been swept away by the swollen
Mandulog River.
The owner, Edmund Rubio, 44, said he just kept opening the door to anyone who
knocked until 30 people were huddled on the roof of his house.
"I didn't have the heart to turn anyone away. In times like that we only have
each other to turn to," he said. With reports from Philip C.
Tubeza and Jaymee T. Gamil in Manila; and JB R. Deveza, Ryan D. Rosauro, Aquiles
Z. Zonio and Bobby Lagsa, Inquirer Mindanao
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2011 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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rights reserved
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