Jes Aznar for The New York Times
Weeks After Typhoon, Unearthing Bodies
By KEITH BRADSHER
Workers are still finding remains under debris in the Philippines. Above, a girl found under rubble is buried.
Bodies Still Being Found Weeks After Philippine Storm
Jes Aznar for The New York Times
Athena Mae Pelingon, 3, was buried by relatives at a local cemetery. Her body was found under a pile of debris only recently.
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: November 23, 2013
TACLOBAN, the Philippines — A solemn procession walked down the main
coastal road here Saturday morning through a light but steady rain,
carrying a piece of plywood with a black object securely fastened on top
with yellow packaging tape: a body bag holding the remains of Athena
Mae Pelingon, aged 3.
Multimedia
The procession stopped at a chapel, where the girl’s body was blessed by
a priest, then moved on to an already crowded public cemetery.
Athena was lowered into a narrow grave at the edge, next to a concrete
block wall. Her mother tossed an inexpensive local chocolate bar, a
flower and a sachet of powdered milk into the grave as memories of a
daughter gone almost before she knew her, and the funeral was over.
Two weeks after Typhoon Haiyan flattened much of this city with a
tsunami-like storm surge and winds approaching tornado strength, bodies
like Athena’s are showing up regularly as work crews begin to dismantle
and remove the head-high piles of debris that line every large road,
clog alleys and fill shattered houses and empty lots. Just in the course
of an hour of work by a team clearing an alley down the block from the
chapel on Saturday morning, three more bodies were uncovered.
Mayor Alfred S. Romualdez of Tacloban said in an interview at City Hall
on Saturday that according to the latest estimate he had seen, it would
take three months to clear the city of debris that Typhoon Haiyan
produced in just a few hours. More trucks and heavy equipment are still
needed, partly because the nearest landfill available is a round trip of
16 miles along crowded roads.
Work crews give priority to dismantling debris piles emitting the distinctive odor of rotting bodies.
International organizations and nonprofit groups are trying to create
jobs for destitute residents here by paying them to help with the
cleanup. The United Nations Development Program is creating 40,000
15-day jobs for people to restore neighborhoods to their previous
appearance, said Stanislav Saling, a spokesman for the group.
Along with the death is new life. The Philippines has one of Asia’s
highest birthrates, and the typhoon prompted an extra spate of
deliveries, some of them premature, according to foreign doctors
performing relief work here.
William A. Ryan, a spokesman for the United Nations Population Fund,
said that 900 women were giving birth each day in the extensive disaster
zone stretching across the central Philippines, of whom 130 a day were
at risk of complications.
Cesarean sections are not yet available, he said, adding, “That’s a sizable need, we’re not there yet.”
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