INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines – The death toll from Supertyphoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan) has risen to 5,719, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said Wednesday.
The official count only increased to 39. On Tuesday, the official death toll was at 5,680.
Missing persons remained at 1,779, the NDRRMC said.
Local chief executives and health officers must first submit an official record of deaths before it is added to the NDRRMC count. This has attributed to the slow count of fatalities.
About 80 decomposing bodies were discovered at the mangrove area near the San Juanico Bridge.
Quoting a report from Police Officer 3 Reynaldo Bertes of the Philippine National Police Regional Public Safety Battalion, Navy spokesman Lieutenant Commander Gregory Fabic said the bodies were spotted near Cabalawan village.
Bertes said in his report that he was informed by a certain Mr. Macauba, a village official of the 80 bodies.
Army’s 8th Infantry Division Captain Amado Gutierrez said that reports from the National Bureau of Investigation showed that 10 of the 80 bodies were retrieved near San Juanico Bridge.
“The rest have yet to be retrieved because of the mangroves,” he said, but could not immediately give an estimate of bodies floating under the bridge.
The NDRRMC said that 4 million persons were displaced because of the typhoon, the strongest ever to make landfall in the Philippines.
Damage to property was placed at P34 billion – P17 billion for infrastructures and P17 billion for agriculture.
Many parts in some provinces and municipalities in Mimaropa, Bicol, Western, Eastern and Central Visayas regions are still without power.
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