Chinese NGO Team Finds 120 Bodies under San Juanico Bridge Today; Gov’t Announces 1M Homes Destroyed

It sounds beyond bizarre. The Philippine Daily Inquirer, ABS-CBN News, and other are reporting that today, almost a month after Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit, relief workers discovered 120 bodies underneath the San Juanico Bridge that connects Leyte and Samar.

But they won’t add to the death toll, presumably, because they are not identified and bodies don’t make the death toll unless they are identified and a coroner’s death certificate issued. (Click here to learn more about that.)

According to City Administrator Atty. Tecson Lim, they received this report from a Chinese humanitarian team who did an aerial survey. Task Force Retrieval has verified the report and has deployed a team to retrieve the bodies. According to Lim, they recover no less than 35 bodies every day, most of which were buried under debris or are floating on bodies of water in Tacloban.

Other figures released today include the number of injured (26,233), the number of families/individual affected (2.3 million/11.2 million), over 1 million homes destroyed and the total damage is estimated at more tham 34 billion pesos.

Read more at ABS CBN News