Traumatized Philippines City Begins to Bury Its Dead
By AUSTIN RAMZY and KEITH BRADSHER
Published: November 14, 2013
TACLOBAN, the Philippines — Pausing occasionally to dodge driving rain by hiding under loose scraps of plywood, a group of firefighters lowered unidentified bodies into a mass grave here Thursday, six days after the city was heavily damaged by Typhoon Haiyan.
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For days, the bodies had sat in public. First they lay uncovered on roadsides; then they were placed in body bags. After that, they were collected, and nearly 200 were stored at the biggest site, a government office. In nearby City Hall, the center of local government relief efforts, the stench from the bodies could be powerful when the wind blew off the harbor.
“What we are doing is a little bit late,” said Alfred S. Romualdez, the mayor of Tacloban. He blamed the national government for widespread delays in burials and in the distribution of food, water and basic relief supplies.
“I appreciate the boats coming in, the planes coming in,” he said. “But what we need are foot soldiers, times 10 of what you see now.”
Questions over the total death toll from the disaster appeared to grow more confused on Thursday. The government’s Official Gazette Web sitereported 2,357 casualties as of Thursday evening Manila time. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the main international conduit for funneling emergency relief to the stricken areas, reported 4,460 deaths on its Web site update of the crisis.
President Benigno S. Aquino III has said he believes the initial estimate that 10,000 people may have been killed was exaggerated and that the fatalities might be more in the 2,500 range. On Thursday the police official considered responsible for 10,000 estimate, Chief Supt. Elmer Soria, was “relieved from his post,” the official Philippines News Agency reported.
The official death toll for the city of Tacloban rose to 2,000 on Thursday, but that covers only bodies that have been collected or confirmed by authorized officials. The confirmed bodies are those that are readily visible from roadsides, as relief crews have yet to start digging through towering piles of debris, much of it studded with nails. There are also 3,000 people injured, in the official tally, and 194 officially declared missing.
Mr. Romualdez said the backhoe digging the mass grave had broken down before the hole was big enough for the initial batch of 244 bodies, a symbol of a relief effort dogged by glitches.
“Tomorrow morning, it’s going to get going,” he said.
Food distribution has improved, Mr. Romualdez said. Relief workers have now distributed packages of rations in 101 of the city’s 138 neighborhoods, he said, and will reach the rest on Friday, he said. Each family is supposed to receive six and a half pounds of rice and some canned goods.
But people are still pleading for food, like members of the family near Santo Niño Church, packed into a pickup truck for shelter. “We need food,” they cried to passers-by.
Mr. Romualdez acknowledged that food distribution had been a problem. Large numbers of people have been wandering across the city seeking food or missing family members. Those who are not at home when a relief truck arrives in their neighborhood are unlikely to get food, the mayor said.
A Philippine Red Cross convoy of two ambulances, two water tanker trucks, a busload of police officers and six large trucks carrying medical supplies drove into Tacloban on Thursday morning, having driven from Manila, a 22-hour trip. Jennifer Cicco, the Leyte Island administrator for the Philippine Red Cross, said the convoy had left a needed fuel tanker along the way, at least partly because of worries about the security of bringing such high-value cargo into a still-turbulent area. A Red Cross road-clearing equipment convoy also reached Tacloban on Thursday.
In a sign of the continuing fuel shortages, dozens of people waited hours to receive gasoline that was being retrieved from a gas station’s tanks by people using buckets attached to poles. “It’s free,” said Michael Patan-Ao, who had waited eight hours for fuel for his motorcycle. “You just have to get up early.” Two police officers watched over the scene.
Security concerns have plagued much of the disaster response effort. An effort to bury the bodies on Wednesday was halted over fears of possible violence.
“During transportation we noticed civilians running and crying and telling us there was a shooting,” said Reynaldo Romero, who heads a National Bureau of Investigation team that is overseeing the mass burial. “For the safety of the men, we had to turn back. Later it was confirmed there was no actual shooting.”
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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 14, 2013
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the Leyte Island administrator for the Philippine Red Cross. She is Jennifer Cicco, not Chico.
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