7,500 dead or missing one month after ‘Yolanda’
Typhoon Yolanda survivors pass by hundreds of victims lying in body bags on the roadside until forensic experts can register and bury them in a mass grave outside of Tacloban, Philippines on Tuesday Nov. 19, 2013. AP FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan), the strongest storm ever to make landfall, has left more than 7,500 dead or missing nearly a month after it struck, according to field and official reports.
Senior Superintendent Pablito Cordeta of Task Force Cadaver said on Wednesday that there were 2,215 bodies recovered in Tacloban City alone.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council’s latest official death toll was at 5,719, with 2,116 of which from Tacloban City.
Local chief executives and health officers must first submit an official record of death before it gets added to the NDRRMC count. This has attributed to the slow count of fatalities.
The field report is ahead of 99 fatalities from the official death toll. The official count only increased by 39 on Wednesday.
Missing persons remained at 1,779, the NDRRMC said.
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, a police official estimated that there could be 10,000 deaths.
In San Juanico Bridge, about 80 decomposing bodies were reported scattered at the mangrove area but this has yet to be verified.
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 scattered bodies.
Army’s 8th Infantry Division Captain Amado Gutierrez said that based on reports he received from the National Bureau of Investigation, 10 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 under the bridge.
Cordeta, meanwhile, said the reports have yet to be verified.
The NDRRMC said that 4 million persons were displaced because of the typhoon, the strongest ever to make landfall.
Damage to properties were at P34 billion — P17 billion for infrastructures and P17 billion for agriculture.
Power outage is still being experienced in some provinces and municipalities in Mimaropa, Bicol, Western, Eastern and Central Visayas.
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