Mayors mull turning sites into memorials
GUIHULNGAN CITY, Negros Oriental—Facing the possibility that not all the remains of missing victims may be recovered, two mayors in Negros Oriental are considering turning areas engulfed by landslides into memorial sites.
Mayor Ernesto Reyes of Guihulngan City and Mayor Lawrence Limkaichong of La Libertad town said they could not yet say when the retrieval operations for more than 50 missing villagers would end.
“The retrieval operations have been going on for five days and have so far come up with only four bodies recovered. The searchers said we cannot retrieve all the victims because of the magnitude of the landslide,” Limkaichong told the Inquirer.
He said various agencies and groups would have to meet to decide how long the diggings would continue in Barangay Solonggon in La Libertad and Barangay Planas in Guihulngan, the villages hit hardest by landslides following the 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Negros and Cebu islands on Feb. 6.
La Libertad Vice Mayor Emmanuel Iway said that it should be explained to the families of the missing that the most that could be done at this point was the recovery of remains because there was no longer any chance of finding survivors.
The death toll from the earthquake and landslides in Negros Oriental rose to 41 on Saturday after retrieval teams recovered the remains of two victims in Barangay Solonggon and Barangay Planas.
