6 skeletal remains found in Tacloban

TACLOBAN CITY—A “trisikad” driver was scavenging for firewood and electrical wires at the back of a public high school in Barangay 87 on Friday when he saw something odd protruding from a pile of mud and grass.

Using a piece of wood, he dug deeper and was surprised by what he saw: a skull.

He reported his find to the barangay officials who sent in village guards on Saturday morning to dig deeper behind San Jose National High School in Barangay 87, San Jose district.

After an hour of digging, six skeletal remains—those of four adults and two children—were found by the team, said village watchman Danilo Diaz.

He said they believed that the skeletal remains were among at least 600 persons who remained missing two years after the onslaught of Supertyphoon “Yolanda.”

San Jose district, the biggest coastal district in Tacloban, was the worst hit in the city during the supertyphoon.

Although there was no official death toll in the district alone, authorities believed that the 2,000 of the 2,300 reported dead in Tacloban, came from San Jose district.

Several skeletal remains had been found in San Jose district, believed to be victims to the supertyphoon, more than a year after Yolanda.

Diaz, who was part of the team that retrieved the skeletal remains, said these could have been washed out to their village by the storm surge generated by Yolanda.

“They could have come from the nearby villages of 89 and 90,” he said, referring to the coastal villages of San Jose district where there was a high death toll due to Yolanda.

“There were bodies coming from our nearby barangays that were washed out to our barangay due to the storm surge but were covered by heaps of debris,” he added.

According to Diaz, more than 30 people from Barangay 87 were killed during the supertyphoon.

The remains were placed inside individual cadaver bags earlier provided to the village by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), which is in charge of collecting those who perished due to Yolanda.

SFO2 Dionisio Lagunzad of BFP-Tacloban, said the remains were brought to Holy Cross Memorial Park in Barangay Basper.

“As standard operating procedure, we deposited the bodies inside a tent for the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) to conduct forensic examination,” he said.

Unidentified fatalities of the supertyphoon are buried in a mass grave in Barangay Basper.

Diaz said they believed that there were still remains in Barangay Basper. He said they believed that remains in Barangay 87 and other parts of San Jose district had yet to be retrieved because these were buried in debris of mud and tree branches.

“We don’t scour the area or dig just to find bodies or remains. They are just discovered accidentally or, in the case of that man who discovered the six skeletal remains, he said there was an unseen force that led him to the area where these remains were found,” Diaz said.