Looking for dearly departed at Manila North Cemetery goes hi-tech

If you think losing a family member is devastating, it’s doubly heartbreaking for those who cannot even find the burial site of their loved ones in the largest cemetery in Metro Manila.

But now, finding the grave of your loved ones in the Manila North Cemetery has been made easier through the website.

By accessing the website www.manilanorthcemetery.tk, relatives can look for the grave site of their dearly departed in the sprawling 54-hectare cemetery.

The records will reveal the person’s name, date of death and the section where he or she was laid to rest.

However, it’s not as easy as it seems as there are about 100 graves in one section.

Anthony Escueta, Administrative Aide of the Manila North Cemetery, told INQUIRER.net on Sunday that the website was up and running until it crashed on October 31, to the detriment of the people commemorating All Saints’ Day.

Escueta explained that due to the website crash, they have to resort to manually searching their files to help those who are looking for their loved ones who have been buried in the cemetery.

“First, we will get the name of the person buried here. From there, we will manually search the record of the person in our files to find the section where he was buried. Then we will give a map to the relatives indicating the burial site of their dearly departed,” he said.

Another common problem that they encountered was that some people tend to forget that there is a five-year rule regarding the free burial in the “apartment-type” tombs in the Manila North Cemetery.

If the remains were not transferred to a permanent location after the five-year period, it will then be buried in a mass grave, Escueta said.

Less than a million people are buried in the Manila North Cemetery, which include former Philippine presidents, national artists, celebrities, and war heroes.

The number of cemetery visitors peaked at 4 p.m. on Sunday with authorities setting the crowd estimate at 1.9 million.