Identification of "Frank" victims to continue

CEBU - Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said the National Disaster Coordinating Council will continue to provide assistance to families of the victims of typhoon “Frank”, especially in identifying the recovered bodies of passengers that perished in the sinking of the M/V Princess of the Stars last year.

Teodoro, also the chairman of NDCC, said the council will continue identifying the recovered bodies even after the members of the International Police will leave early next month.

The Interpol yesterday formally turned over to the national government the equipment used in identifying the bodies of the Stars passengers.

In a speech, Teodoro said the fury of typhoon “Frank” and the sinking of the Stars should remind everyone “to take necessary steps to ensure that it does not happen again, to witness a significant step in closure so that people that were devastated by the loss of their love ones can move on and move forward, and we are witnesses to successful exercise involving intra-national and international cooperation.”

Teodoro said that middle of this year, a multi-country and multi agency exercise called “Voluntary Demonstration of Response” will be held to simulate a catastrophic event.

Here, techniques, procedures and protocols on how several countries can work together on disasters will be explored.

“Different nations of different stations in life could work together and provide necessary response to this kind of occurrences,” Teodoro said.

Meanwhile, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble could not help but shed tears during his speech, saying that his experience in the Philippines was so far the most different among the responses he has participated in the past.

“When I went in to the Cebu City action center, I did not know what to expect. But what I saw changed my life,” Noble said, adding that they could not help but be close to the family members of the victims whose bodies they were helping identify. 

Kathryne Bomberger, director general of the International Commission of Missing Persons, said that of the 523 recovered bodies, 371 bodies have been positively matched by DNA, 61 of which have yet to be claimed by family members. Over 150 bodies remain unidentified and authorities are appealing to family members to continue giving blood samples.

Bomberger said they would also go to the provinces of Iloilo and Antique to get blood samples.

She said this has been the first time they have experienced that all members of society- families, victims, the church, and the government- came together to help.

“We thank the families for the patience and we understand the suffering they are going through. We are all trying our best to help them,” Bomberger said. —AJ de la Torre/JMO(THE FREEMAN)