The provincial government announced that at least 17 unrecognized dead bodies recovered from the Maco landslide incident will undergo a temporary burial process on Wednesday.

According to Leah Añora of the Maco’s management of the dead and the missing cluster, the action was decided as per the recommendation of the municipal health officer as they cited the foul odor that comes from the corpses.

“As of now, we know that the smell of our cadavers is unpleasant because it has already been seven days since the operations started, so what we are doing, our [authorities], they have the parameters in conducting...identifying the victims,” Añora said.

However, she clarified that the unidentified bodies will be put in cadaver bags and will not be embalmed in consideration of their religious orientations.

“We don’t know that, because they are still unidentified. So they would not be embalmed, but they would be treated,” Añora said.

She added that the burial process will follow certain protocols and guidelines and is subject to the inspection and approval of the provincial sanitary inspectors.

“For each of the unidentified bodies at their burial, we will put markings, so that marking has the case number indicated,” the official said.

Meantime, disaster officials started implementing search and retrieval operations on Wednesday, which they believe will expedite the rescue efforts in the hard-hit area of Barangay Masara.

On Tuesday, Maco Mayor Arthur Carlos Voltaire Rimando signed Executive Order 15 for the switch on operations from the search, rescue and retrieval, or SRR, operations conducted in the past days.

“Still, we are hopeful and positive, that we can still rescue someone,” said Rimando on Tuesday, adding that a ground movement was felt in the landslide-hit area, causing the SRR efforts to be halted.

To recall, the rain-induced landslide hit on 6 February at 7:40 p.m. at the gold mining village in Zone 1, Barangay Masara, Maco, burying some houses and vehicles carrying passengers.