Stay mass burial idea, NBI, Coloma say

MANILA, Philippines–Oppositions have been raised to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Committee’s suggestion that a mass burial be held for fatalities
of tropical storm “Sendong” in northern Mindanao.

On Monday, the National Bureau of Investigation has already sent a 15-man forensics team on a weeklong assignment to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan to help identify bodies through photographs, fingerprints, dental records and DNA tests on tissue samples.

An NBI Disaster Victim Identification team based in Cagayan de Oro has already identified 203 out of 249 bodies recovered in Cagayan de Oro alone, as of Dec. 18, 6 p.m., leaving 46 of the bodies unidentified.

Also on Monday, the Philippine Red Cross has placed “Sendong’s” total death toll at 652. Esmeralda said there was more than 400 missing.

“We have to identify first the bodies. We might as well do it now because if we bury them without being identified, we might have to exhume them again,” said NBI deputy director for technical services Reynaldo Esmeralda.

Meanwhile, Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr., at the sidelines of the Kapihan sa Diamond Hotel media forum, said the Palace wished the mass burial to be avoided as much as possible.

“We want to give dignity of burial to those killed in the calamity,” he said.

Esmeralda urged families of those with missing relatives, or those who suspect their loved ones are among the dead, to approach the NBI to give them DNA samples and other records so they can “fast-track” the identification process of the bodies. “We can have results of DNA tests [on the bodies] within a week if they have claimants and if we have existing DNA in our database to compare them to,” Esmeralda said.

Esmeralda said the bodies are getting harder to identify on sight because they are already decomposing.

Monday’s forensics team, composed of doctors, med-techs, nurses, chemists, photographers and fingerprint technicians, will be split into two upon reaching Mindanao: seven for Cagayan and eight for Iligan.

The team will be on shift in Mindanao for a week, before being replaced by another team so they can rest.

Esmeralda expressed hopes that the NBI team, who he said were “experienced” in similar disasters, can identify the bodies soon. He has issued a directive to the NBI’s Cebu branch to fly a five-man forensic team as augmentation.

Coloma, meanwhile, said the Palace was also mulling “preventive” solutions to disasters and not just reactive responses. “Our procedure right now is that [the weather bureau] should issue a warning three days in advance but the President is now mulling extending that and prepositioning emergency and rescue teams to prevent delays,” he said, in Filipino.