Orphans, scrap wood coffins in mudslide-hit areas

MAIPON, Albay — Cristina Buen sits patiently as a neighbor hammers together a coffin made of scrap wood for her younger sister Crissa Mae. The smell of death hangs heavy in the air.

Crissa’s small body, wrapped in a dirty blanket, lies on the ground in what is left of this village, obliterated by a river of mud and ash unleashed by typhoon rains.

Nearby, a bigger coffin under a makeshift tent contains the remains of her mother, Erlinda, who was killed as she tried to reach her children.

"I don’t know what to do with my brothers and sisters. We are orphans now," she said. Their father passed away years ago.

"Our neighbors are kind enough to build us coffins."

In the village of Maipon, typical of those that dot the slopes of Mayon volcano, there is no laughter of children playing, just silence as the walking wounded come to terms with their loss.

"It was dark and the mud was rising fast. Mama tried to save us, but all of a sudden she was gone," Cristina told AFP, cradling Crissa Mae’s surviving seven-year-old twin, Carissa Joy.

Two younger siblings wander around, mud drying from their clothes, their bare feet sore.

Other children who survived the carnage stare into space or look blankly into cameras capturing the first images of devastation in Maipon, one of the many farming villages around Mayon volcano erased from the face of the earth last Thursday night.

"We don’t have any money. An official already visited us and we are waiting for them to come back to help us carry our mother and sister into a nearby town for a proper burial," Cristina said.

Nearby, a man is nearly done with the coffin he fashioned out of wooden planks salvaged from a broken cabinet.

A few meters away, a grandmotherly woman watches over the makeshift coffin of Elsa Oximina. Three yellow candles burn while daughter Roslyn herds together surviving family members.

"I am checking if all the children are here," Roslyn said, her voice thick with emotion.

"We need help here. The children don’t have food and we need assistance in burying our dead."

The Red Cross said yesterday that it had confirmed a total 406 dead from the mudslides so far. But it said another 398 people were missing, and fears the eventual toll could be as high as 1,000.

Maipon, a farming village of some 3,000 people, used to be a lively place. It was spared destruction by a fierce typhoon last October, and was preparing for a modest Christmas when tragedy struck.

Only the shells of a few houses remain standing in a vast sea of grey.

A river that flows directly from the slopes of Mayon was engulfed by ash and mud, which spilled onto different directions and created new paths, swallowing up everything in its path.

Dead animals, fallen trees and debris float in deep canals. The stench of death hangs thick.

The first batch of rescuers from an auxiliary air force unit, aided by a canine search team flown in by the military from Manila, arrived Friday.

A sweep of the outskirts yielded 16 bodies but dozens or even hundreds are believed buried here.

No one is really making a proper count. There are no forensic experts to help identify the dead, who are taken away in body bags and dumped in a funeral parlor in the center of Guinobatan town, three kilometers away.

As of last count, 166 bodies have been recovered here and other villages in the area. Fifty-seven were in an advanced stage of decomposition and had to be buried in a mass grave, their identities never to be known.

"This has been by far the biggest tragedy to hit us in recent history," said Gene Villareal, the vice mayor of Guinobatan with a population of 55,000.

"Our infrastructure is overwhelmed and we are straining our resources in search and recovery efforts," he said.

He said the death toll would almost certainly rise, with news from isolated far-flung villages only now beginning to trickle in.

"How can you tell for sure how many are dead when an entire village is buried under mud and none of them can report what happened?" asked Carlos Baylon, the vice mayor of nearby Daraga town. – AFP