Police, Coast Guard, still looking for 5 missing

Laurel, Batangas –Basyang's fury left a trail of woes. The police said that they have yet to find the five missing persons in the village of Bugaan East, this town, whose houses were swept by floods at the height of typhoon Basyang on July 14.

         Senior Insp. Apolinario Lunar, Laurel police chief, identified the missing persons as Prescilla Yuldi, 38; Jessie Regencia, 21; Julie Regencia, 28; Aldrich Regencia, 2; and Natalio Gravantes, 38.

         The said missing persons were living in houses located near the Taal Lake. Now, their houses are gone, and they are still nowhere to be found

         In a phone interview with SLI on July 17, Lunar said they have already tried scouring the lake shores, including the nearby town of San Nicolas to search for bodies of the victims for the last four days but they haven’t found them.

          “According to the doctors of the municipality, a dead body of a drowned victim usually floats on the fourth day and if that’s true, then we expect them to float today,” he said.

            Their retrieval operations that day, however, yielded negative results.

          He said that the rescue team has already tried removing the tree branches scattered in the lake side of Bugaan East – an area where the relatives last saw the victims – but they did not found any floating body.

          Lunar said that the victims will remain missing on their record and they could only be declared dead upon the discretion of the town’s municipal disaster coordinating council. (Marlon Alexander Luistro)