Baris ni Yolanda THE FURY OF YOLANDA “Darkness has engulfed northern Iloilo”, uttered Rev. Fr. Marco Sulayao while we were proceeding to the areas badly hit by super typhoon Yolanda. That was three days after Yolanda pummeled the towns in north Iloilo. The national road was impassable for the past days – trees, electric posts and other debris scattered on the main streets. Relief efforts came few days after since transportation then was a little difficult. I recalled how typhoon Frank in 2008 submerged our house with flood approximately 30 feet deep. I could feel and understand the misery and languish the people undergo with Yolanda. Truly, I felt deeply sad. However, Yolanda is more furious and deadlier than Frank’s. “One, two…”, I murmured. My companion asked me if what I was counting then. “It is easier to count the number of houses that managed to withstand the super typhoon than those which were destroyed”, I quipped. While we were nearing the town of Estancia, we decided to immediately visit the IFI church. It was wrecked, the altar was not spared. We roamed around the town proper. The people tried to paint a smile in their face but sadness evades from their eyes. We took time to talk to the residents, asked them of their message to the national government “Father, we need ‘lansang’ (common nails) so that we can build a makeshift for our families. Some parts of our house can still be maximized,” said one victim. Fr. Marco and I stared at each other for a moment. On the first three days after the super typhoon, they were in dire need of food and clothing. Now, they need shelter. The people of north Iloilo cling on to that hope they have in their heart. They struggle to spend each day, meeting the meeting the needs of their families. The price of construction materials, including common nails, in Estancia quadrupled! We thought the people will air their long list of demands and needs. They never told us that they want President Aquino to help them in building their shelter. It is because, they were never given rehabilitation assistance every time a calamity strikes their community. The government focused their rehabilitation on infrastructure, not on rebuilding every home. In north Iloilo, there were no evacuation centers for roughly 99% of the school buildings in the towns of Estancia, Balasan, San Dionisio, Batad, Lemery and Sara was destroyed. A few teachers we met commented that perhaps, classes could resume by January in 2014. Currently, relief goods from the government are too insufficient. Hence, many are still in need of relief assistance. Their bancas and motorboats and other fishing gears were also destroyed. Their daily subsistence is still a problem. Others said that when a calamity strikes, all become equal – no rich, no poor. But this isn’t true. The relief distribution in some municipalities are still class-biased. The marginalized were further marginalized as relief goods were to slow and given first to those who are favored by those on power. TABANG, a group of church people which was immediately convened after the calamity, has come up with a realization that relief efforts and distribution must prioritize those poor families who cannot immediately recover from the devastation. Further, TABANG discovered that those affected families who still have enough resources to recover feel that to receive donation is quite degrading of their status in the community. They need more than ‘bugas, sardinas, noodles’ (rice, sardines, noodles) or BUSARNOOD for short. Our day was quite tiring and as we slept through the night at Fr. Marco’s house at Paon, Estancia. When I peeped out through the window in the middle of the night, darkness was all over. There was no electricity. It was indeed a silent night coupled with a stinking smell of the corpse and the petroleum from the oil spill of NAPOCOR’S Power barge. Trees without leaves standing in the midst of the night reminds me of a scene in one horror movie I watched. I went back to bed as I forced myself to sleep again. We were greeted with a bad news the following day. Fr. Marco’s neighbor was found in the town of Batad – already in the state of decomposition. He was a fisherman and has been missing since Yolanda made its landfall. “It seems it will always be sad news this time”, said Fr. Marco. His mother replied that a day before we arrived, a stinking corpse drifted at the back of their house which was a few meters from the shore. The policemen just took pictures of it and left. It takes hours for the funeral parlor to get the body. We decided to go back to Iloilo City after an overnight stay. We did not take a bath nor change our clothes for what we brought along with us is a piece of a digital camera. We want to capture the face of north Iloilo, but our stay wasn’t enough to weave together the pieces of despair and misery. Many are still missing, especially the crew of fishing boats that were docked in Estancia. As we travelled back home, everytime I close my eyes, I can see agony – corpse, wrecked houses, hungry people, gloomy faces. The destruction was beyond description. But in my heart, I must do something. TABANG must do something to ease the pain left by supertyphoon Yolanda. But rebuilding shattered lives will take time…hopefully it will start soon.# November 11-12, 2013 — at 5th district of Iloil
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 20:56:59 +0000
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