Amid Devastation, Ormoc Buries Its Dead : Philippines: Mass graves are prepared for victims of Tuesday’s tropical storm, since there aren’t enough coffins. The toll could go to 3,400.

The three dump trucks were painted bright orange, blue and yellow, but their grisly cargo was anything but jolly: dozens of bloated, blackened and battered bodies piled high.

In the nearby public cemetery, victims of Tuesday’s flash floods were heaped naked in the mud, awaiting burial in mass graves. Numbed survivors, holding their noses from the stench of death, searched for loved ones. Others wept as they dug shallow graves for bodies shrouded only in banana leaves or mats.

“There are no coffins. There’s nothing,” said Poloi Cashiano, 30, whose wife and eldest son drowned. His three other children are missing, presumably washed out to a churning brown sea where sharks have been sighted feeding on corpses.

Floodwaters had mostly receded, but this stricken port on Leyte Island remained in a state of shock Thursday from the suddenness of the calamity and the extent of the carnage. About 1,200 bodies have been buried, officials said, but estimates of the death toll from Tropical Storm Thelma ranged from 2,300 to 3,400.

“In terms of human casualties, this is the worst disaster we’ve had in many years,” said Renato De Villa, the Philippine defense secretary and head of the government’s disaster relief efforts.

Ormoc was the worst hit. Survivors said a night of torrential rain suddenly turned deadly at midmorning Tuesday when a roaring wall of water, mud and debris rushed down the Anilao River, which courses through town. Bridges were swept away, cars and trucks tumbled like toys and hundreds of shanties along the riverbank were instantly flooded or washed away in the 10-foot surge. High tide worsened the deluge.

“There was no warning,” said Jose Larrazabal, a 25-year-old office worker. “There was just a little rumbling sound. Then water began to go up. Within five minutes it was up to my neck.”

He survived by climbing a coconut tree. Other families were drowned in their homes, crushed under debris or swept into Ormoc Bay. Drivers died in their cars, or were caught when the bridges collapsed.

Several decomposing bodies still bobbed near the rubble-strewn seafront, and five washed ashore in front of the Don Felipe Hotel, the city’s largest. Emilio Osmena, governor of neighboring Cebu province, said that from his helicopter, he saw sharks feeding on bodies.

“There are a lot of bodies still floating,” said Ormoc’s dazed-looking mayor, Victoria L. Locsin. “We’ve asked for a navy boat to fish them out.”

Leyte Gov. Leopoldo Pepilla blamed the flood on illegal logging that has stripped water-holding forest cover from the hills and low mountains that rise sharply in the distance. As in most of the Philippines, the mountains are deeply scarred with steeply eroded gullies and ravines from the ravages of uncontrolled logging, often by corrupt military and local warlords.

“This calamity is practically 100% because of illegal logging,” Gov. Pepilla said. “Before, Leyte was a beautiful place. Now it’s been denuded of its forests. In effect, it’s a man-made disaster abetted by nature.”

Residents were told to identify and claim the dead by noon Thursday or they would be buried in mass graves to avoid epidemics. Several groups of men carried coffins built from doors, clapboard and lumber taken from buildings turned to rubble.

“The people are very confused,” said Father Ben Ebcas, shortly after he blessed 130 bodies in a mass grave. “They are hungry. They haven’t slept. They are walking on the streets as if there are no cars coming. They’re in shock.”