NEW BATAAN, Compostela Valley (MindaNews / 02 November) —Sila man tung wala nailhan”(They were the ones who were not identified), a man on a motorbike told his companion shortly before noon Saturday, as they passed four concrete structures at the public cemetery in Purok 4, Barangay Cabinuangan, rows and columns painted in phthalein blue with the initials “PNB,” followed by numbers.
The concrete burial vaults have108 individual niches and 12 compartments that could accommodate 30 bodies each. They contain the remains of at least 300 residents who were killed when supertyphoon Pabloslammed across this town on December 4, 2012, and are now known only by the numbers assigned to them, preceded by the code “PNB-12” for “Pablo New Bataan 2012.”
DNA samplings had been taken from these “numbers” and they are supposed to be matched with DNA results taken from their relatives who survived.
Ideally, if the DNA results find a match, the victim ceases to be a number and regains his/her identity. Ideally.
But nearly two years after Pablo and nearly three years after Sendong, relatives are still waiting for the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to release the results of the DNA matching.
Thirty-year old Dennis Pasigna of Purok 4 in Barangay Andap is among those waiting.
The farmer-turned-municipal utility worker initially thought he had lost his entire family, having seen his wife, Mildred, then 20, and his youngest son, Earl John, 2, swept away by the debris flow – a combination of water, mud, rocks, boulders, houses and trees – and how the force of the flow separated him from his eldest son Reniel.
Father and son Reniel, now 6, were reunited in a hospital in Tagum City four days later.
Aside from his wife and youngest son, Dennis’ mother, Antonia; his father, Santiago; and younger brother Johnny are still “missing.”
They may actually have been among the bodies buried in the vaults, unclaimed by relatives because they were beyond recognition. -From mindanews.com
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