Manila: Rescuers found 214 more bloated bodies, raising to 1,453 the death toll from tropical storm Washi that spawned floods and washed away shanties in coastal towns in the central and southern Philippines on December 16, officials said.
Some of the bodies were not identifiable when found floating in the seas of the Visayan region, which is around 70 to 80km away from Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City in the south, the most hard-hit provinces, Benito Ramos, head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said. He is still at Cagayan de Oro.
The number of missing, pegged two days ago at 1,070, has not been updated because many survivors who reported missing relatives were not able to identify their kin from heaps of unidentified corpses, Ramos explained. He added that 70 per cent of those who were officially listed dead remained unidentified. At the same time, the number of people affected by the storm rose by 245 to 719,485 (from 695,195) on Monday, Ramos said, adding that the number of people staying at 56 evacuation centres also increased by 1,508 to 61,938 (from 60,430) on Monday.
After January 1, bunkhouses will be built at the proposed resettlement areas to house the 61,938 people who have been staying at schools and gymnasiums that were converted into evacuation centres, Ramos said.
But transition homes made of container vans will be immediately set up for the evacuees. Tents will rise near the bunkhouses to accommodate everyone while the resettlement area is still incomplete, Ramos added.
Retrieval of bodies will continue even if many of them are adrift in the upper Visayan region, Ramos said, adding that survivors have assisted by digging in places where they had last spotted friends and relatives.
