Typhoon Yolanda aftermath: survival, rebuilding lives

Super Typhoon Haiyan left Tacloban City and nearby areas in Leyte and Eastern Samar fighting for survival. The impact of the typhoon devastated the land, crops, infrastructure, houses and lives of the people. But city and towns have to be rebuilt from zero.

As of December 2, death toll climbed to 5,670 so far, with 26, 233 injured and 1,761 people are still missing, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Management Council (NDRRMC).

More than 2.3 million families or more than 11 million persons were reportedly affected in 44 provinces, with an estimated P34.4 billion cost of damage from the super typhoon.

Despite the massive damage, the airport seems to be the most functional part in Tacloban City. It serves as the hub for receiving relief aid and as command post for the military, health workers, and social workers distributing relief into the affected areas.

The airport or what was left of its structure serves as a refuge for most typhoon survivors, who had to endure walking kilometers for several days, as it will get them a higher chance to scramble for water and food dropped off alongside luggages and relief aid dispatched from the planes.

Every day, people troop to the airport in an attempt to get a number and take their chance to ride in one of four C130 planes of the Philippine Air Force and US Navy. There are at least six to ten flights that bring survivors to Manila and Cebu province, the northern tip of which was also along the path of Yolanda.

Young and old, mostly sick and frail, lined-up rain or shine, outside the barricaded area of the command post of the local military in an attempt to get a number and a ride on one of the C130s. Those who can board the plane after a day of waiting or two can consider themselves lucky as the odds of riding the plane within the same day is very slim.

Some have begged the army personnel to let even just their elderly and their kids as the crowd grows thicker from sunrise until sunset, each day worse than the last. Several elderly women told the author that they made several attempts to let the army guards to let them pass the gate and be able to line up as they have not eaten for days. One old lady, who used to work for the government, said she is running low on insulin medication and that having not eaten for days, she fears she might not have the strength to wait for another day to get a ride in one of the C130s to fly out of Tacloban.

Some who are lucky to get a chance out, like Helly Yap, was able to fly out to friends and family in Manila after spending six days of darkness and nightmares in what she now considers a ghost town.

“Tacloban City is totally ruined. It’s now a ghost city,” Yap narrated.

Yap, a local entrepreneur working in the natural healing industry, had to leave her husband behind, a surgeon who is attending to patients that are constantly flocking in to what was left of the Divine World University (DWU) Hospital in Tacloban, the capitol of Leyte.

She says there is an urgent need for more medicine and plans to coordinate the delivery for medicine to her hometown, including the need for generator sets to help doctors operate at night. Some US volunteer doctors had to hold flashlights to perform operations in the night this week, amid occasional rain showers.

 

Relief aid

Donations and relief aid has been pouring in to the Philippines but distribution has been said to be slow.

The Philippine government has assigned Manila, Cebu, and Tacloban as the three distribution hubs for receiving international aid but repacking and distribution of the relief to those in the affected areas are slowed down due to the lack of distribution vehicles. This is a huge challenge because there is no fuel depot in the province, and the military had to rely on replenishments from the C130 crafts, according to the local command post at the airport.

Communication lines are slowly being restored in some of the affected areas but about 80 percent of the province still has no electricity after electric posts were toppled down during the onslaught of the storm.

Stepping outside the confines of the airport, the air is thick with the smell of death and heavy with the eerie sense of loss.

During the day, some of the survivors living along the road that leads to the capitol are seen covering their noses to drive away the stench of decaying human body all over the place. Authorities have resorted to mass burial recently but most of the place still reek of the foul smell, indicating that more bodies could have been covered underneath the debris. The rains also made delayed mass burial plans as the bodies needed to be dried before the burial.

Others did not bother to cover their noses, having been used to the smell as they scour the place for whatever can be salvaged for food and scraps of wood to make sleeping at night more comfortable for the family. Most of the homes are reduced to shells, even stone walls collapsed during the peak of the storm surge. Those whose walls or columns are still standing are considering themselves luckier as they had something to lean on to when sleeping at night.

After the streets were cleared, most people walk toward the airport to do one of two things: first, to attempt to get food and water to bring home to their kin, or to line up and stay near the barricaded fence of the airport to join the next flight out of Leyte.

Some people decided to stay behind as they cannot leave family members, especially their kid and elderly who had very little energy to walk far from their home.

Maria Rose Tumulak, a mother of five, is tearful as she recounts what happened during the onslaught of Haiyan. When the water started to rise above her head in less than an hour, she immediately swam for a floating laundry tub and placed her five young kids in there during the height of the storm surge. This made it possible for her five kids to survive the storm surge.

She said she is lucky because she was able to get reunited with her 72-year-old mother after the storm surge. This, however, did not stop her to plea for medicine for her mother who cannot stand or walk right now due to swollen feet, possibly from wading too long in dirty flood waters.

Most of the people in the area had signs of swollen feet, especially since the alley to their house has a longstanding pool of water from the nearby sewage that overflowed during the storm surge. The debris from the typhoon at the short canal also resulted in the sewage water entering most of the homes, leaving everyone vulnerable and exposed to disease from walking in the dirty water.

In between crying, she repeatedly plead for help, especially for clean water and medicine for her kids aged under six, who have been battling fever for the past five days. Getting soaked wet during the typhoon left her kids vulnerable to colds. She is afraid one of her kids might not be lucky as one of the kids of her neighbor died out of fever a day ago.

“Survival after the typhoon seems a bigger challenge to us,” says Tumulak.

Her small house, located near a waterway, was fully submerged underwater during Yolanda. Before, it was two meters higher than the water from the waterway but debris from the typhoon made the water mixed with sewage rise up to their floor level. Most of her neighbors, including the elderly, had to pass by a pool of dirty water to walk home from the main road.

Her mother, Lorenza Ananoq who came from one of the badly hit barangays was transported and carried by local neighbors to her daughter’s home so she could look after her.

“It seems to me, survival after the typhoons is more difficult. I just hope aid will reach us sooner. We just really need those relief to survive,” noted Maria Rose.

To date, there is still a lot of need for water, food, and medicine for survivors, including the provision of temporary shelters of tents. It still occasionally rains in parts of Leyte and at night, this is most difficult as children and the elderly survivors had to endure the cold night and the chilly wind with no roof to shelter them from the elements. It is also during this time that the stench of decaying flesh grows stronger made worse when the bodies are rained over.

For Noni Ocdol, who has been looking for days for his relatives, said the disaster in central Visayas is “overwhelming” to the residents.

“Tacloban is very different but I do not want to leave. I am still hoping my family is just out there,” says Ocdol.

 

Text and photos by Anna Valmero, PNEJ member