Wednesday 26 March 2014

Yolanda victims’ bodies still being found; identification process to last 3 years


Vernabeth Amarilla and her family were both relieved and heartbroken when the authorities recovered the body of her grandmother last Sunday.

Although the body was now in an advanced state of decay, they were able to identify her through her clothes.

She was found inside a ruined radio station in Tacloban City by authorities who were cleaning up rubble. A victim of Typhoon Yolanda, her body had lain there since November, while all this time her family searched for her and feared the worst.

Only 8 out of 2,241

What happened to Vernabeth's grandmother is not an isolated case. According to the National Bureau of Investigation, bodies of Yolanda victims are still being discovered almost five months after the super typhoon devastated central Philippines late last year.

"Actually, last week may dumating na 15 bodies [sa amin]," NBI Disaster Victims Identification team leader Dr. Nicacio Botin told reporters on Wednesday.

The Bureau of Fire Protection retrieves the bodies, which are then transferred to the NBI for identification.

The United Nations Development Programme provided sniffing dogs that made retrieval operations more thorough, Botin added.

Last Sunday, 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).

Out of the total number of identified bodies, only eight have been claimed.

Identification process to last three years

The anti-post-mortem phase of the identification will commence after Holy Week. During this stage, the NBI will ask the relatives of those still missing to come forward and provide identification documents, photos, and DNA samples. This stage will take about six weeks, Botin said.

However, he added, the matching of the identifying documents and DNA could take as long as three years.

There are currently eight members of the NBI's Disaster Victims Identification team, on rotational basis. At the height of retrieval activities, the team has about 21 members. This number does not include the volunteers.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/354237/news/regions/yolanda-victims-bodies-still-being-found-identification-process-to-last-3-years

0 comments:

Post a Comment