Families examine photo slides of loved ones

GRIEF hung heavy over the families of the missing passengers of the ill-fated MV St. Thomas Aquinas as they crowd the lobby of the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes last Tuesday evening.

Amid snippets of conversation among the families, the heavy atmosphere was interrupted with a slide presentation of the remains of the passengers recovered from the waters off Lawis Ledge in Talisay City.

The crowd fell silent as cadavers tagged with alphanumeric codes were shown.

Not a few jostled for a better view of the slideshow on the widescreen projector which showed body parts, clothes, accessories, tattoos, and wallets among others.

“Ay baka siya yon. Tingnan mo? bracelet ba yun or sing-sing? (I think that was him. He was wearing a ring. Wait, was that photo a ring or a bracelet?),” a woman was overheard telling her companion.

At one end of the room, a man looking for his missing wife was heard memorizing an alphanumeric code and asking his companion to memorize it too.

The code was tagged to a woman’s remains that could no longer be identified.

The slideshow featured 50 photos and ran for less than 30 minutes.

Neil Sanchez, head of the Provincial Disaster Council, said most of the relatives have accepted the reality that their loved ones are gone. Sanchez also has a missing relative from the tragedy.

“What I just want to say is that there is a very slim possibility of finding someone alive (within the shipwreck),” Sanchez said.

Sanchez added that it is the Philippine Coast Guard’s task to order a shift of operations ‘from rescue to retrieval’, and not the provincial government’s.

At the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes in downtown Cebu City, relatives of missing passengers crowded the tent outside the building where photos of unaccounted passengers were posted on a wall. Senior Reporter Dale G. Israel