Thousands face Christmas in shelters in Sendong-affected provinces

CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines- Thousands of people in the southern Philippines are facing Christmas in emergency shelters after floods that left more than 1,000 people dead and another 1,000 unaccounted for.

As government workers recovered more bodies of those killed when tropical storm “Sendong” (International name: Washi) hit last weekend, one local mayor bleakly told those left homeless or bereaved by the floods that there would be no Christmas this year.

Tens of thousands of people are jammed in crowded evacuation centres, short of water and sanitation facilities.

“There is no Christmas,” Vicente Emano, mayor of the hard-hit city of Cagayan de Oro curtly said Saturday when asked if he would be delivering his traditional holiday message.

Sendong spawned heavy rains, overflowing rivers and flash floods that wiped out whole villages, many built on riverbanks and sandbars in the coastal port cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan the worst hit last Saturday.

The government civil defence agency put the toll of dead at 1,100 with 1,079 reported missing although it remained unclear if some of the missing were among the hundreds of unidentified corpses already recovered.

The storm and floods have displaced around 330,000 people with more than 69,000 others huddled in emergency shelters.

Just hours after the latest death toll was announced, village chairman Cairunding Embader said his staff had found 16 more dead bodies on the outskirts of Iligan City.

Emano said city employees and search team members would be working through the Christmas holidays, recovering bodies and caring for those who evacuated their homes.

To deal with the hundreds of dead, with the stench of decomposing bodies in parts of the city being overwhelming, Emano said two large communal graves had been dug and unclaimed bodies would soon be buried in them.

While Christmas is normally one of the most festive times of the year in the Philippines, a largely-Roman Catholic country, few in the affected areas felt like celebrating.

“Because of this flood, I don’t know if our Christmases will ever be merry,” said Junie Legaspi, 32, a vendor who lost his house and livestock animals in the flood.

Huddled in an evacuation centre, wearing an ill-fitting woman’s blouse donated to him, Legaspi fought back tears as he said his eight children would forever associate Christmas with the floods.

“This is the worst Christmas gift one can receive.”