Survivors of Super Typhoon Yolanda will put up an 8-kilometer-long chain of 10,000 red and white balloons in Tacloban City on Valentine’s Day on Friday to remember those who died when the typhoon ravaged Leyte and other provinces in the Visayas in November.
Jeff Manibay, founder and president of One Tacloban, said the colors of the balloons would symbolize love and peace for the souls of the dead, while the number would represent what the survivors believe to be the correct death toll. Friday is the 98th day from Nov. 8 when Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) struck.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council had placed the death toll at 6,201 as of January, but Manibay said the figure was far from the truth.
“It’s unbelievable. We know there were more who died. Residents here can even tell you where the remains are lying,” Manibay said in a phone interview on Monday night.
The 10,000 balloons on sticks will connect Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport to Anibong District in Tacloban’s downtown area.
Manibay, a local TV broadcaster who lost both parents in the monster storm, said the event would be a call on the government to continue retrieval operations in areas still unexplored in Eastern Visayas so that all the bodies that were washed away by the storm surge whipped up by Yolanda could be accounted for.
Discrepancy
Local radio stations and journalists noted a discrepancy in the figures released by the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) on Dec. 12 last year, he said.
OCD personnel who kept track of the retrieval mission came up with an updated number of around 3,000 fatalities, which was smaller than the 5,000 they had disclosed days before, Manibay said.
The agency did not give any explanation about the big drop, he said.
The Eastern Visayas Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council recorded 5,803 deaths based on the reports of the city, municipal and provincial disaster councils. Of this number, 2,606 are from Tacloban, considered to be Ground Zero of Yolanda.
Angelo Bacho, OCD regional assistant operations chief, said the agency was doing a “recounting” of the number of fatalities because this would be the basis for its financial assistance to the families of those who died. A claimant could receive P10,000 per fatality and P5,000 per injured.
Money claims
As of Tuesday, the OCD had so far received 96 claims from survivors in Tacloban City and the towns of Palo, Pastrana, Julita, all in Leyte, and in Basey town, Samar province.
Bacho said he also received inquiries from some companies to verify if a certain person had died. “Apparently, the persons being asked have financial obligations to these companies,” he said.
He said the OCD had found double listing, thus inadvertently increasing the number of fatalities.
“We have noticed that several names on the list (of casualties) appeared twice. For example, a barangay (village) chair submitted a report only identifying the victim as a son of Pablo and here comes the relative of the victim giving the full name. And this error is not corrected so the double listing happens,” Bacho said.
The OCD arrived at the exact number of casualties by going to the barangays and talking personally with the residents to verify if they have lost relatives due to Yolanda, he said.
Verified list
“We can really say that our list is true as this is verified by the members of those who were killed by Yolanda,” Bacho said.
Teams coming from various regional offices of the OCD have been conducting postdisaster needs assessment, which included the number of fatalities, since Jan. 13. So far, they have stricken off at least 100 names in Palo, Bacho said.
From the earlier reported number of 902, the death toll in Palo was only 720, he pointed out. The number came from 18 of the town’s 33 barangays.
In Tacloban, Bacho said his office had also found some double entries, but he could not state the exact figure as a verified list was still being prepared. Of the 138 barangays in the city, 54 villages have recorded a total of 2,606 deaths and about 700 still missing.
Coastal areas
While retrieval operations were still ongoing in parts of Leyte, particularly in Tacloban, the residents insisted that bodies were still to be found in the coastal areas, Manibay said. “There are more of the dead there waiting to be retrieved, especially in the surrounding uninhabited small islands,” he said.
For one, the mangrove forest that stretches 32 km from Tacloban to Babatngon town, also in Leyte, in the San Juanico Strait, still yields many bones of victims, he said.
“A TV crew found five remains in that mangrove forest. They brought it back here. The remains were those of two kids and three adults,” he added.
Manibay said that if only the government would lend the people of Tacloban the resources and facilities, they would be able to organize the retrieval of bodies themselves as they knew where these could be found.
Instead of having romantic dinners on Valentine’s Day, the survivors will share merienda (snacks) on the streets while forming the chain of balloons in the morning, Manibay said.
The balloons will be laid to surround Tacloban City Hall the next day.