Grisly race to identify the Philippines' typhoon dead

Terra Daily via AFP: Clouds of flies rise as forensic pathologist Cecilia Lim opens body bags one-by-one, in a grim but crucial search for the identities of unknown typhoon victims in the Philippines.

"Some of these remains, their faces are gone. We're trying to do it as fast as we can before we lose everything," says Lim, as a truck unloads 80 more dead at her workspace -- the edge of a mass grave outside the storm-shattered city of Tacloban.

A putrid stench rises from the giant pit where around 700 unevenly stacked bodies lie six deep, some of them having lain in the tropical heat for a week-and-a-half. Scores more lie on the side of the road, lined up in bags and awaiting processing by small, overworked teams.

Lim says the aim is to record rudimentary details before they are buried in the hope that at some point, the bodies can be identified and placed in a proper grave. "We are trying to do some initial victim identification and post mortem gathering of evidence before the bodies really decompose," she says.

Many were recovered after being submerged for days in pools of water left by the tsunami-like storm surge that crashed into Tacloban when Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall on November 8...

A Guiuan woman stands outside of her makeshift shack in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Liam Kennedy/RELEASED)