‘I couldn’t believe it was my son’

04 December 2006

By Joanna Los Baños and Ephraim Aguilar
Inquirer Southern Luzon

LEGAZPI CITY—AS FLOODWAters unleashed by Supertyphoon “Reming” swept her village, Sally Buensalida, 26, embraced her 2-year-old son before sending him off to her mother’s house, thinking he would be safe there. It was to be their last embrace.

Interviewed at a funeral parlor here, Sally said the place where she was staying was collapsing and she thought that her son would be safer with her mother.

After Reming passed, Sally went to check on the boy.

“I was shocked to see my mother’s house gone,” she said between sobs. She was told her son’s body had been seen floating in Albay Gulf.

“I couldn’t believe it was my son because his eyes were wide open … Later, I realized it was really him,” said Sally, whose husband was in Manila at the time.

Two of her sisters and a niece were also killed, crushed under a fallen coconut tree. Her mother was still missing.

All of Sally’s relatives were among the dozens of people killed in the avalanche of mud and rocks that swamped Barangay Padang, 8 kilometers from the city proper and one of the areas hardest hit by Reming.

Sally’s son lay on the floor of Bejer Basco Funeral Parlor because there were no available coffins for children.

Parlor owner Merly Bejer said this was the first time in her 10 years in the business that the parlor had embalmed so many bodies in a day.

“Although we would profit from it, we are not happy because of what happened,” she said.

Another woman survivor said she was carried 8 km away from her house by the flood, but suffered only bruises.

Because of the mud and the fallen electric posts, a portion of the road between Barangay Bigaa Padang had become a dead-end for motorists and people had to walk.

Along the way, rescue teams plodded on, carrying stretchers with bodies covered with blankets.

McDave Nuez, 18, of Barangay Busay in Daraga, showed no emotion as he wrote the name “Janine” on a piece of paper.

The paper would serve as a label on her sister’s body that lay amid hundreds of other bodies bloated and coated with dried mud at the garage of Nuestra Señora de Salvacion Funeral Home.

McDave, the eldest in the family, had just arrived from Manila, where he had been working. He rushed home after getting a text message that his whole family—seven siblings and his two parents—were trapped inside their house when it was struck by mud flows from Mayon volcano.

He was able to identify one of his five sisters but he had not found the bodies of his parents, four sisters and two brothers.

“I still cannot believe that they are gone,” he said.