Death toll tops 1,000

ILIGAN CITY, Philippines  — The official death toll from last week’s massive flash flooding topped 1,000 on Wednesday, while authorities said they have lost count of the missing in one of the worst calamities to hit the region.

A total of 1,002 people have been confirmed dead, including 650 in Cagayan de Oro and 283 in this city, said Benito Ramos, head of the Civil Defense Office. The rest were in several other southern and central provinces.

A tropical storm swept through the area Friday night, unleashing flash floods that caught most of the victims in their sleep.

“There were many lessons learned by the people who did not listen to national and local governments, but this is not the time to put the blame on them,” Ramos told The Associated Press, adding that warnings by weather forecasters of an approaching storm went unheeded.

He said the government continues to focus on retrieving bodies, most of which are being recovered from the sea off Cagayan de Oro.

“We’ve lost count of the missing,” he said.

President Benigno Aquino III declared a state of national calamity during a visit to the region Tuesday and promised the government “will do its best to prevent a repeat of this tragedy.”

With funeral parlors overwhelmed in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro, authorities and grieving relatives have begun burying the dead.

Authorities in Iligan buried at least 16 unidentified bodies after a grim process of obtaining fingerprints, dental records and DNA samples from decomposing remains to be used for future identification.

“It takes at least an hour per body,” said Dr. Reynaldo Romero, head of a disaster victim identification team from the National Bureau of Investigation. “As long as there are bodies, we will continue to process them.”

About 45,000 people are still crowded in evacuation centers as aid workers rush in relief supplies. Lack of running water is a major concern.

“We have enough food and water here but we don’t have clothes,” said Analiza Osado, one of many survivors living in Iligan’s biggest gymnasium. “Everything is gone.”

Survivors also face a growing threat of disease including cholera and typhoid, officials warned.

Some 44,000 people who fled as huge torrents swept away shantytowns in the nation’s south are packed in evacuation camps without proper sanitation, and officials fear the sites are potential breeding grounds for epidemics.

The crisis has so far centred on how to deal with hundreds of decaying corpses and their overpowering stench, but officials said Wednesday that attention should now focus on protecting the living.

Assistant Health Secretary Eric Tayag warned the crowded conditions could lead to outbreaks of leptospirosis, diarrhoea, cholera, hepatitis A, typhoid fever, and dysentery, with children and pregnant women the most vulnerable.

“We may be paying so much attention to the corpses we will ignore the evacuation centres,” he said in a television interview.

“If there is any epidemic or threat to health, it will come from the evacuation centres.”

The hardest-hit areas were the port cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan where crowded slums built on sandbars near the mouths of major rivers were washed away in the dead of night. (AP)