This nightmare definitely isn’t over yet.
“According to the National Bureau of Investigation, bodies of Typhoon Yolanda victims are still being discovered almost five months after the storm devastated central Philippines late last year,” reports GMA News correspondent Rouchelle Dinglasan on GMA News Online.
NBI Disaster Victims Identification team leader Dr. Nicacio Botin said they continue to retrieve bodies. In fact, they found 15 just last week.
Along with the NBI, the Bureau of Fire Protection and the United Nations Development Programme are also involved in the retrieval operations.
The report revealed that “last Sunday, Mar 22, the NBI finished its postmortem investigation of 2,241 bodies that were temporarily buried in Holy Cross Memorial Cemetery (189), or permanently buried in Brgy. Suhi (1,200) and Brgy. Basper (852).” Sadly, out of the total number of identified bodies, only eight have been claimed.
Botin said after the initial processing phase of six weeks, “the matching of the identifying documents and DNA could take as long as three years.”
Photo: Philippe Lopez/AFP
