After disaster, tallying death toll difficult
Amid the chaos of a natural disaster, tallying an accurate death toll is often difficult and sometimes not a priority.
The aftermath of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: “Haiyan”) in the Philippines has been no different, where initial estimates of the dead were put by some at 10,000.
On Tuesday, President Aquino disputed that figure, saying it was likely to be closer to 2,000 or 2,500. In the meantime, an official tally shows the number at 2,275.
In one sense, outside of newsrooms it matters little. Any number of dead is a tragedy, whether it be 2,000, 3,000 or 10,000.
In terms of planning emergency relief operations, the number of people needing assistance and damage to infrastructure is often more important.
Over time, a final toll is tallied, or in the case of larger disasters, an estimate agreed upon.
The President’s estimate was “based on unconfirmed reports on the ground,” said Eduardo del Rosario, executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC).
Del Rosario, a retired Army general, said the latest official toll showed 2,275 confirmed dead, 3,365 injured and 80 missing. “What we issue is based on the actual accounting of dead bodies,” he said.
After barring journalists from covering the council’s daily assessment meetings since Sunday, Del Rosario allowed them to ask for updates from representatives of different agencies during a meeting on Wednesday.
With affected areas still reeling from the massive devastation and many remote communities not yet reached, the number of verified fatalities so far neared the estimate given by the President.
Confusion in count
The following factors have been attributed to the confusion in the count:
— Downed communication lines making it impossible to get up-to-date information.
— Affected local government officials, themselves victims, unable to work to full capacity.
— Villagers burying their dead immediately or bodies being sucked out to sea and not being counted.
Similar factors were cited in the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami, where in some instances separate government departments in Indonesia were giving out significantly different figures, each unconcerned about the confusion this created.
CNN interview
“Ten thousand (dead), I think, is too much,” Aquino told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. He noted that “there was emotional trauma involved with that particular estimate quoting both a police official and a local government official.”
“They were too close to the incident. They didn’t have any basis for it,” he said.
On Sunday, two days after the typhoon hit the Philippines, a regional police official told reporters that the death toll was estimated at 10,000, based on reports from local village chiefs collected by the governor.
The same day, the mayor of Tacloban, one of the worst-hit areas, estimated that 10,000 could have died in his city alone.
Malacañang could not give a time frame on how soon the government could collect bodies left decomposing by the road in a number of Leyte towns.
“The bodies are being worked on,” Cabinet Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said. “There was a report that the reason why the bodies [were] not being handled [was] because there was a lack of cadaver bags.”
Almendras said around 4,000 bags had been brought to the disaster site, just to make sure that “there is an oversupply.”
“I am not saying that the casualties are 4,000, OK?” he clarified.
NBI forensic team
The National Bureau of Investigation would be in charge of identifying the bodies because the Philippine National Police was “so busy in retrieval and clearing operations,” Almendras said.
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said a Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) team flew to devastated Tacloban City on Tuesday to find a location where they would be able to examine the bodies given the sensitive nature of their work.
De Lima said the team would identify the bodies to alert relatives who would want to give their loved ones a decent burial. “We have to account for each and everybody, living or dead, they need to be accounted for,” she added.
A second team, possibly from the agency’s medico-legal division, will be deployed to reinforce the first one, she told reporters after attending the 77th founding anniversary of the NBI at its Manila headquarters.
She said she had talked to Public Attorney’s Office chief Persida Acosta about sending her office’s forensic team to the calamity-affected provinces and that three forensic pathologists, including Dr. Raquel Fortun, had volunteered their services.
In her Twitter account, Fortun has advised authorities to “start with [the] systemic recovery of the dead.”
“Do basic exam then temporary burials. No sense aiming for positive ID now,” she said.—Reports from Christian V. Esguerra, Dona Z. Pazzibugan and Christine O. Avendaño; and AP
NBI sends medico-legal, forensics teams to identify ‘Yolanda’ victims
Aquino says ‘Yolanda’ death toll closer to 2,500, not 10,000
