Corpses to be buried Jan. 2—city official But not on the lot city bought for P7.5M, as yet

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines -  â€” The more than a thousand cadavers in body bags, which have been left rotting in a field for nearly two months since Yolanda, will finally be buried tomorrow (Jan. 2), according to City Administrator Tecson John Lim yesterday.

Lim said the burial date was per instruction and coordination with the Department of Health, the World Health Organization and the National Bureau of Investigation, but the bodies will be buried still a Brgy. Suhi, adjacent to where these have been stockpiled until now.

This ran counter to an earlier statement from Councilor Vangie Esperas, health committee chair, that the burial will be at the 6,000-square-meter lot at Brgy. Basper that the city government had bought recently for P7.5 million for the purpose.

Councilor Jerry Uy also said the other day that the city government had acquired the lot at Basper, near Suhi, to serve as a mass grave for about 1,400 unburied and unidentified fatalities of Yolanda in the city.

On why the burial will still be at Suhi, Lim told The Freeman this will only be temporary until such "time the processing of the bodies, such as identification, will be completed with the authority from the NBI to bury these at Basper."

He added: "Those that will be buried here, shall be exhumed later by the NBI for processing," and for the final burial at the city-acquired lot in Basper.

Mayor Alfred Romualdez, in an earlier statement, said the city government has been waiting for the go-signal from the NBI and other agencies so the burial can start. "We will bury them (corpses) in shallow graves so we can later unearth these for processing later," he said.

The controversy over the unburied thousand of cadavers, piled outside Suhi's Barangay Health Center and near residential houses, broke out when the residents, unable to withstand the situation, complained to the media and the city government of the unbearable stench around them.

The residents, wearing face masks, have told The Freeman earlier that the unburied corpses had become a "factory of flies" and engulfed the area with foul odor that direly affected their appetite to eat and caused them trouble in their sleep. They were also worried that their water source may have been contaminated from the effluence of the decomposed bodies into the ground.

The NBI however has yet to finish the processing and identification of these cadavers, with the help of the victims' relatives, and Romualdez said the agency is undermanned to do the job as quickly as possible that it needs more help from other people or entities.

Although the DOH explained that the corpses pose no direct threats to people's health, it admitted that the continued exposure of these poses sanitation problems and anxiety to the residents in the area.

A health official even commented that the problem could have been avoided if the cadavers were kept in a cold storage facility where the processing and identification can be done without disturbance.

Meanwhile, rains have been pouring in the city over the past two days without letup, causing the overflow of creeks in the Sagkahan district and giving more apprehensions to the residents there.

It is business unusual in Tacloban City

Days after the onslaught of typhoon Yolanda, the downtown area of Tacloban City was deserted. All the shops were either damaged by the storm surge or looted. Shocked and frustrated by what had happened to their businesses, shop owners were forced to leave the city and take refuge either in Cebu or Manila.

Days before the New Year, it's business unusual in downtown Tacloban.

Most of the shop owners, who left the city almost two months ago, have not yet resumed their business operations. The city streets are instead crowded with sidewalk vendors, mostly coming from Marawi in Mindanao, selling various wares, fruits, foodstuffs, clothing, construction tools, electronic products like mobile phones and tablets, firecrackers and pyrotechnic products for the New Year celebration.

These vendors have practically occupied the whole stretch of the sidewalk, the deserted business premises, and portions of the streets causing traffic jam in Zamora, Gomez and Salazar Streets and Rizal Avenue.

They have turned the main business district of the city similar to Divisoria and Baclaran markets. Vehicles have to inch their way avoiding the stalls while passing thru the streets, while shoppers have to walk at the middle of the road, disregarding moving vehicles.

Piles of uncollected garbage, from cartons and wrappers of their products, lay beside the vendors' make-shift stalls and karatelas. Some shop owners are complaining that they could not start the cleaning and clearing of their business premises because the whole sidewalk is occupied.

Personnel of the electric cooperative, tasked to restore electricity, are having a hard time parking their repair trucks in the busy streets.

You could also see long lines of people queuing in bakeries, pharmacies and hardware stores, just to buy the things they need as well as in banks and cash courier outlets to get their remittances sent from outside.

Likewise, one has to line up when buying gasoline or diesel in gas stations. Transportation vehicles plying from Tacloban City to other towns are cramped with commuters. And because there are few motorcycles-for-hire (MCHs), which is the usual mode of transportation in the downtown area, bicycle - driven tricycles (locally called trisikad), are also loaded with lumbers, construction materials and commuters.

Tacloban economy is now being pumped-prime by the Buddhist Tzu Chi Compassing Relief Foundation, a Taiwan-based religious organization that has a worldwide membership. It has been providing cash assistance to each of the more than 30,000 Yolanda-victim families in Tacloban, ranging from P8,000 to P15,000, depending upon the size of the family-beneficiary.

The United Nations Development Programe (UNDP) is also providing cash-for-work program, paying people to work in the cleaning up of Tacloban City. — Councilor Jerry S. Uy

Proud to be Waray, back home in Tacloban

I'm in Tacloban City at last after watching the devastation in this city only from the news on TV. I wanted to take photos, but I had no courage to take just any photo as I'm scared of misrepresenting the suffering of the people. No words or pictures can truly describe what my kababayans went through as I listen to survival accounts of close friends:

How Yolanda ripped their houses' roofs, how the storm surge knocked down their doors, how the howling winds broke their windows, how they tried to escape from death, how they live the days after with the smell of death surrounding them, how they starved as all their foods were washed out, how they tried to find food and joined the looting, how they tried to treat their wounds and cuts, and how to live again.

They said it's getting slightly better now with some signs of normalcy. Some have even started rebuilding their houses with whatever materials they have and the heaps of debris on many streets had vanished.

I have met many friends at Ocho during dinner, while some shops and stores are already opened, many sari-sari stores are back, and a t-shirt printing shop was a beehive of activity as his t-shirts are selling like hot cakes.

I'm not surprised with his sales as, like myself, I fell in love with one of the designs in his stall at Brgy. San Jose, one of the most badly hit districts of the city. The t-shirt print reads: I'm proud to be Waray #Waray balay, #Waray tubig, #Waray kuryente, #Waray kwarta, Pero Waray Kamatay ni Yolanda!  — Greg Gardiola (a chemical engineer of an international firm based in Singapore)  (FREEMAN)