Bodies Still Being Found Weeks After Philippine Storm
Source: NY Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
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, age 3.
The procession stopped at a chapel, where the girls 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 tsunamilike storm surge and winds approaching tornado strength, bodies like Athenas 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.
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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/world/asia/bodies-still-being-found-weeks-after-philippine-storm.html?partner=EXCITE&ei=5043&_r=0
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.