Manila: Local authorities said on Monday the mass burial of flood victims in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan will begin today as recovery teams intensify their search for hundreds more reported missing in the aftermath of tropical storm Washi that devastated the southern part of the country over the weekend.
Gulf News sources said the death toll could rise to 900 as 250 people remain missing and are feared to have died in the disaster.
Almost 700 bodies have been recovered of which over 500 were unidentified.
Undersecretary Benito Ramos, head of the National Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC), believes the casualty count could reach 2,000 as many of the dead were buried in mud,
Shallow graves
However, in Iligan City, some 227 bodies were buried in two separate burial sites, city administrator Ladi Lluchtold Gulf News in a phone interview.
"We decided to bury all the identified and unidentified bodies, in shallow graves. Each body was carefully placed in a body bag. In that way, it would be easier for local government units to exhume the bodies for their identifications, when requested by family members," Lluch said. "We're still looking for them. The bodies that were found were piled up one after the other.
"What happened to us was a very traumatic experience. It was the first time in our history that Iligan City was hit by a typhoon of this scale. Iligan City and Cagayan de Oro City used to boast of being the country's only typhoon-free provinces," said Lluch.
In Bukidnon province, 11 bodies that were not identified were also buried.
Mass burial was also scheduled in Misamis provinces, including Cagayan de Oro City. Only 23 of the fatalities were identified. Over 300 unidentified bodies that were found in Misamis were originally placed under the custody of six funeral homes, NDRRMC's Ramos said.
Funeral service operators said they have run out of coffins and chemicals needed to embalm dead bodies.
Intermittent power and water supply also prevented undertakers from working at night, TV news reports said.
Funeral homes and makeshift mortuaries were swamped with people looking for their missing kin.
"I saw a mother describing the ring used by her daughter. How could we look for that child?" an undertaker at the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes said.
Many of the victims in Misamis provinces came from a depressed area in Isla Delta, near the Cagayan River that became swollen at the start of the storm late Friday night.
Rampaging water with fallen logs rushed down and totally washed out the slum community. Some of the survivors managed to climb up a billboard near the river's mouth, TV reports showed.
TV news footage showed relatives looking desperately for their kin despite the stench from rotting bodies in Cagayan de Oro and in Misamis.
