Yolanda survivors remember dead in nameless graves

TACLOBAN CITY, Oct. 29 -- In a lonely place where thousands of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) victims were buried in 2013, family members come to offer flowers and light candles unsure of the exact spot of their loved ones’ final resting place.   

Ren Domingo, 48, a college professor picked four crosses in the middle part of the common grave at Holy Cross Memorial Cemetery in Basper village here because he got the impression that these are the grave site of his family members.

"My two daughters who died when Yolanda struck appeared to me in my dreams in a form of butterflies flying around in this spot,” said Domingo, who also lost his wife and mother-in-law.

For him, it’s hard to put closure to the tragic event since there’s no single test done to find out where his family members were exactly buried.

After the disaster, Domingo left for Cebu to move on from the pain and tragic memories of the monster typhoon that swept their coastal community in San Jose district in this city.

“When I saw the place where my kids and wife perished, it brings back memories and I can’t help but to weep,” he said in an interview over the weekend.

In the past four observances of the All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, Jocefine Fallier, 40, has been regularly visiting the mass grave here to remember five family members killed by Yolanda’s storm surges in 2013.

Fallier came on Saturday to offer flowers for her sister, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and niece who all died when storm surges hit their community in San Jose.

She is unsure if all her family members are buried there except for her sister, Jackelyn. The rest are still missing.

Fallier's loved ones are just few of the 2,273 bodies buried at the mass grave in this city late in 2013, considered as Yolanda’s ground zero. The site is dotted with white wooden crosses and some tombstones. Some people picked a cross and wrote the names of their family members on it.

The city government is currently constructing a large cross at the mass grave as a common place for survivors to remember their loved ones. The target is to complete the structure in time for the fifth commemoration of the typhoon's wrath on Nov. 8.

With piles of bodies lining the streets and funeral parlors destroyed, the local government resorted to burying the dead together at the Holy Cross cemetery in Basper village. It is the largest Yolanda mass grave in the region, which was established after the Nov. 8, 2013 catastrophe.

In the past five years, residents of a nearby community had extraordinary experiences. One of them is Jomar Aure, 29. Their house is just a stone throw away from the common grave.

Aure recalled about hearing a crying woman who seemed to be asking for help every midnight, especially during the first seven months in 2014.

“The sound was loud that even those families living near farther can even hear that horrifying voice," he said.

They stopped hearing horrific sounds after a priest blessed the grave during the first commemoration of Yolanda.

However, Aure recalled that early this year, community members also heard frightening voices at night. (SQM/PNA)