Philippine Flood Relief Shifts to Aid Survivors

MANILA — Stella Cabilogan’s house was hit hard by the flash floods over the weekend that killed about 600 people, but she has decided against moving with her two children into a nearby evacuation center.

“The situation in the evacuation center is very difficult,” she said by telephone on Monday from the southern city of Cagayan do Oro. “There is no water or sanitation there. It’s very easy to get sick.”

Ms. Cabilogan, 33, moved her family to her brother’s house on the other side of town, which was less affected. But tens of thousands of people affected by the floods that devastated the southern Philippines had no such option, and by Monday, officials had turned their focus toward the welfare of the living.

“Water has not been restored to many areas, and people are not well sheltered,” Gwendolyn T. Pang, the secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, said by telephone on Monday. “The risk now is to the health of the survivors.”

According to the Philippine Red Cross, 652 people were killed, and hundreds more were still missing, after flash floods triggered by Tropical Storm Washi ripped through the southern Philippine cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in the dead of night. About 45,000 people are in evacuation centers.

The Philippine government’s national disaster council put the total number of dead at 684 and estimated that fewer than 100 were missing. The discrepancy in figures, according to local officials, was based on the fact that the Red Cross’s missing list includes people whose relatives have been unable to contact them and have requested that they be traced.

Funeral parlors overflowed in the two hardest-hit cities, giving some areas an overwhelming stench of death and triggering health concerns among residents. Officials in Iligan announced plans on Monday for a mass burial, but the health authorities in Manila strongly opposed the proposals, saying that the dead, particularly those in mortuaries, did not pose a health risk to the living.

“There is no rush to bury the dead,” Dr. Eric Tayag, a spokesman with the Department of Health in Manila, told a local television station on Monday afternoon. “They will not spread diseases. We should focus on those who survived.”

Dr. Tayag argued that there was a greater chance of harming the mental health of survivors if the dead were buried in anonymous mass graves.

“It will affect people psychologically if they are not allowed to identify and bury the dead,” he said.

He said that the imminent health threat was in the crowded evacuation centers, which could become breeding grounds for cholera, typhoid, respiratory infections and other communicable illnesses.

Health officials were organizing vaccinations at the centers in an attempt to stem the infections.

Ms. Pang of the Philippine Red Cross said her staff and volunteers on the ground were seeing the psychological effect of the flooding.

“People in the area are still panicked and worried, so we are assisting with psycho-social coping,” she said. “Some people are now afraid of the rain. Every time it rains, they ask to be rescued.”