Officials hope to find more Pablo survivors

A week after typhoon Pablo wrought havoc in wide areas of Mindanao, national and local disaster officials are not giving up hope to find more survivors in still-isolated mining villages around the gold-rich Mt. Diwata (Mt. Diwalwal) in Monkayo, Compostela Valley and as well as those in  Davao Oriental.

As this developed, separate search and rescue operations are being conducted in the waters of the Sulu Sea and adjoining areas for the 315 fishermen from General Santos City who were reportedly caught in the eye of storm after embarking on a tuna fishing expedition last Nov. 20. Since then, they have made no contacts with their waiting families back home.

“We are not giving up hope that there are survivors still  out there waiting to be rescued, especially in the high-land villages that are still isolated,” National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) Administrator and Office of Civil Defense Executive Officer Benito Ramos said.

Ramos added that the 315 tuna fishermen are still classified as missing persons.

As such, he said, a separate massive search and rescue operation is being undertaken to locate the missing fishermen, whom the NDRRMC has included in its long of lists of missing persons due to the onslaught of typhoon Pablo in the country.

“They (fishermen) could just have sought shelter in several islands and other safer areas at the height of the storm,” Ramos said.

Over in Compostela Valley, Ramos said an organized search and rescue as well as retrieval operations are being carried out in the hope of finding survivors as well as to retrieve of those who have perished in the flashflood and landslides.

Saying that search and rescue teams have yet to cover all the areas devastated by Pablo especially highland and upstream villages around Mt. Diwata, Ramos said they are still expecting to rescue survivors out there.

Continuous retrieval operations are also being conducted by combined Army and police troops along with civilian rescue groups in New Bataan, the worst-hit town in Compostela Valley, he said.

The same efforts are also being done in the badly-devastated villages in the towns of Baganga, Cateel and Boston in Davao Oriental, Ramos added.

“For as long as we believe that there are still survivors out there and there are bodies to be recovered, our search and rescue as well retrieval operations will continue. I am still hopeful that we will find survivors,” Ramos said.

As of Monday, the death toll left by Pablo as reported by the NDRRMC has risen to 647 while 780 others still missing and with 1,482 persons injured.

A total of 29,390 families or 133,892 individuals totally displaced by Pablo with no homes to return to are still  staying in 172 evacuation centers.

The national government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Department of Health along with the non-government organizations have already provided a total of P53 million-worth of assistance in the form of food and non-food items to the evacuees.

Damage to government and private infrastructure as well as agriculture and fisheries left by Pablo has increased to P7.1 billion, the NDRRMC reported.