One year after Typhoon Haiyan, more than four million people still remain homeless. Credit: European Commission DG ECHO/Pio Arce/Genesis Photos-World Vision/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Diana Mendoza
MANILA, Nov 10 2014 (IPS)

People covered their bodies with mud to protest against government ineptitude and abandonment; others lighted paper lanterns and candles and released white doves and balloons to remember the dead, offer thanks and pray for more strength to move on; while many trooped to a vast grave site with white crosses to lay flowers for those who died, and to cry one more time.

These were the scenes this past Saturday, Nov. 8, in Tacloban City in central Philippines, known as ground zero of Typhoon Haiyan.

One year after the storm flattened the city with 250-kph winds and seven-metre high storm surges that caused unimaginable damage to the city centre and its outlying areas and killed more than 6,500 people, hundreds remain unaccounted for.

Nov. 8 marked the first anniversary of Haiyan, known among Filipinos as Yolanda, the strongest storm ever to make landfall in recorded history.

Thousands of stories, mostly about loss, hopelessness, loneliness, hunger, disease, and deeper poverty flooded media portals in the Philippines. There were also abundant stories of heroism and demonstrations of extraordinary strength.

Understanding the scope of the disaster

"We have felt a year's worth of the government's vicious abandonment, corruption, deceit, and repression, and have seen a year's worth of news and studies that confirm this situation." -- Efleda Bautista, one of the leaders of People Surge, a group of typhoon survivors
There may be some signs that suggest a semblance of revival in Tacloban City, located about 580 km southeast of Manila, but it has yet to fully come back to life – that process could take six to eight years, possibly more, according to members of the international donor community.

Still, the anniversary was marked by praise for the Philippines’ “fast first-step recovery” from a disaster of this magnitude, compared with the experience of other disaster-hit places such as Aceh in Indonesia after the 2004 Asian tsunami that devastated several countries along the Indian Ocean.

In its assessment of the relief and reconstruction effort, released prior to the anniversary, the Philippines-based multilateral Asian Development Bank (ADB) said that while “reconstruction efforts continue to be a struggle”, a lot has been done.

“The ADB has been in the Philippines for 50 years, and we can say that other countries would not have responded this strongly to such a huge crisis,” ADB Vice President for East Asia and Southeast Asia Stephen Groff told a press conference last week.

Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines Neil Reeder echoed his words, adding, “The ability of the country to bounce back was faster than we’ve ever seen in other humanitarian disasters.”

Experts say that Filipinos’ ‘bayanihan’ – a sense of neighbourhood and communal unity – helped strengthen the daunting rehabilitation process.

“Yolanda was the largest and most powerful typhoon ever to hit land and it impacted a huge area, including some of the poorest regions in the Philippines. It is important that we look at the scale and scope of this disaster one year after Yolanda,” Groff stressed.

He said the typhoon affected 16 million people, or 3.4 million families, and damaged more than one million homes, 33 million coconut trees, 600,000 hectares of agricultural land, 248 transmission towers and over 1,200 public structures such as provincial, municipal and village halls and public markets.

Also damaged were 305 km of farm-to-market roads, 20,000 classrooms and over 400 health facilities such as hospitals and rural health stations.

In total, the storm affected more than 14.5 million people in 171 cities and municipalities in 44 provinces across nine regions. To date, more than four million people still remain homeless.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III has faced criticism from affected residents, who used Saturday’s memorial to blast the government for its ineptitude in the recovery process.

Efleda Bautista, one of the leaders of People Surge, a group of typhoon survivors, told journalists, “We have felt a year’s worth of the government’s vicious abandonment, corruption, deceit, and repression, and have seen a year’s worth of news and studies that confirm this situation.”

Protesters burned a nine-foot effigy of the president on the day of the anniversary.

Early morning on Nov. 8 more than 5,000 people holding balloons, lanterns, and candles walked around Tacloban City in an act of mourning and remembrance.

The Roman Catholic Church declared the anniversary date as a national day of prayer as church bells pealed and sirens wailed at the start of a mass at the grave-site where nearly 3,000 people are buried.

Hundreds of fishermen staged protests to demand that the government provide new homes, jobs, and livelihoods, accusing government officials of diverting aid and reconstruction funds.

Filipino netizens recalled that they cried nonstop while helplessly watching on their television and computer screens how Tacloban City was battered by the storm.

They posted and shared photos of Filipinos who were hailed as heroes because they volunteered to meet and drive survivors to their relatives in Manila and other places as they alighted from military rescue planes.

“Before” and “after” pictures of the area also made the rounds on the Web.

‘Billions’ in international assistance

President Aquino in a visit to nearby affected Samar island before the storm anniversary said, “I would hope we can move even faster and I will push everybody to move even faster, but the sad reality is the scope of work we need to do can really not be done overnight. I want to do it correctly so that benefits are permanent.”

The Philippine government estimates the need for a 170-billion-peso (3.8-billion-dollar) master-plan to rebuild the affected communities, including the construction of a four-metre-high dike along the 27-km coastline to prevent further damage in case of another disaster.

Alfred Romualdez, the mayor of Tacloban City, told journalists two million people are still living in tents and only 1,422 households have been relocated to permanent shelters. As many as 205,500 survivors are still in need of permanent houses.

The recovery process was successful in erecting new electricity posts a few months after the storm, while black swaths of mud have now been replaced by greenery, with crops quickly replanted, and rice fields thriving once more.

Government, private, and international aid workers also restored sanitation and hygiene programmes in the aftermath of the storm.

The ADB announced it was trying to determine whether or not to provide a further 150 million dollars worth of official assistance to Yolanda survivors on top of the 900 million dollars already pledged in grants and concessions at the start of reconstruction efforts.

The United States’ Agency for International Development (USAID) is expected to provide a 10-million-dollar technical assistance plan to develop 18,400 projects across the country. These will cover other hard-hit areas outside of Tacloban City, such as Guian in Eastern Samar, which will also receive 10 million dollars from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for rehabilitation programmes.

The Canadian government also offered 3.75 million Canadian dollars to restore livelihoods and access to water to the affected provinces of Leyte and Iloilo.

The Philippine government assured that the billions donated, offered and pledged by the international community would be safely accounted for, monitored, guarded and reported on with transparency.

Panfilo Lacson, a senator who was designated in charge of the rehabilitation programme, said that already he has confirmed reports that some bunkhouses in Tacloban and Eastern Samar were built with substandard materials and that someone had colluded with contractors for the use of substandard materials to generate kickbacks.

“That’s when I realised we have to monitor the funds,” he said.

He asked Filipinos to share information that they know about irregularities on the management and administration of the billions of pesos from the national coffers and donor organisations for rebuilding communities.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

U.S. Marines are assisting the Philippine government with humanitarian aid and disaster relief in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan. Credit: U.S. Embassy, Jakarta/cc by 2.0

By AJ Correspondents
DOHA, Qatar, Nov 13 2013 (Al Jazeera)

Relief operations in typhoon-devastated parts of the Philippines picked up pace Wednesday, but still only minimal amounts of water, food and medical supplies were making it to increasingly desperate survivors in the hardest-hit places.

“We need help. Nothing is happening. We haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon,” pleaded a weeping Aristone Balute, an 81-year-old woman who failed to get a flight out of the ravaged city of Tacloban for Manila, the capital. Her clothes were soaked from a pouring rain, and tears streamed down her face.

Five days after the deadly disaster, aid is coming, but too slowly for many. Pallets of supplies and teams of doctors are waiting to get into Tacloban — but the challenges of delivering the assistance mean few in the stricken city have received help, sparking looting in some areas.

Security forces exchanged fire on Wednesday with armed men amid widespread looting of shops and warehouses for food, water and other supplies, local television reported.

The confrontation broke out in the village of Abucay, part of Tacloban in Leyte province, said ANC Television. Military officials were unable to immediately confirm the fighting.

Meanwhile, the death toll continues to fluctuate. The Philippine government says the original estimate of 10,000 killed is too high. So far, 1,833 have been confirmed dead and 2,623 injured. The total death toll will likely be closer to 2,000 or 2,500, President Benigno Aquino III told CNN on Tuesday.

But the reduction in casualty figures provided little comfort for those still waiting for basic necessities.

“There is a huge amount that we need to do. We have not been able to get into the remote communities,” U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said in Manila, launching an appeal for 301 million dollars to help the more than 11 million people estimated to have been affected by the storm.

“Even in Tacloban, because of the debris and the difficulties with logistics and so on, we have not been able to get in the level of supply that we would want to,” she said. “We are going to do as much as we can to bring in more.”

Tacloban, a city of about 220,000 people on Leyte island, bore the full force of the winds and storm surges on Friday. Most of the city is in ruins, a tangled mess of destroyed houses, cars and trees. Malls and shops have been stripped of food and water by hungry residents.

The loss of life appears to be concentrated in Tacloban and surrounding areas, including a portion of Samar island that is separated from Leyte island by a strait. It is possible that other devastated areas are so isolated they have not yet been reached.

From Cebu, to the southwest, the Philippine air force has been sending three C-130 planes back and forth to Tacloban from dawn to dusk and has delivered 400,000 pounds of relief supplies, Lt. Col. Marciano Jesus Guevara said. A lack of electricity in Tacloban means planes cannot land there at night.

Guevara said that the C-130s have transported nearly 3,000 civilians out of the disaster zone, and that the biggest problem in Tacloban is a lack of clean drinking water.

“Water is life,” he said. “If you have water with no food, you’ll survive.”

A team from the relief organisation Doctors Without Borders, complete with medical supplies, arrived on Cebu island Saturday looking for a flight to Tacloban, but had not left by Tuesday. A spokesman for the group said it was “difficult to tell” when the team would be able to leave.

“We are in contact with the authorities, but the (Tacloban) airport is only for the Philippines’ military use,” Lee Pik Kwan said in a telephone interview.

Doctors in Tacloban said they were desperate for medicine. At a small makeshift clinic with shattered windows beside the city’s ruined airport tower, army and air force medics said they had treated about 1,000 people for cuts, bruises, lacerations and deep wounds.

Thousands of typhoon victims were trying to get out of Tacloban. They camped at the airport and ran onto the tarmac when planes came in, surging past a broken iron fence and a few soldiers and police trying to control them. Most did not make it aboard the military flights out of the city.

The bodies of those killed by the typhoon are causing humanitarian and logistical problems for relief crews as well.

“It really breaks your heart when you see them,” said Maj. Gen. Romeo Poquiz, commander of the Second Air Division. “We’re limited with manpower, the expertise, as well as the trucks that have to transport them to different areas for identification … Do we do a mass burial, because we can’t identify them anymore? If we do a mass burial, where do you place them?”

Most Tacloban residents spent a rainy night wherever they could — in the ruins of destroyed houses or in the open along roadsides and shredded trees. A lucky few slept under tents brought in by the government or relief groups.

Damaged roads and other infrastructure are complicating relief efforts. Government officials, as well as police and army personnel, are in many cases among the victims themselves, which hampers coordination. The typhoon destroyed military buildings that housed 1,000 soldiers in Leyte province.

The storm also prompted a jailbreak in Tacloban. Army Brig. Gen. Virgilio Espineli, the deputy regional military commander, said he was not sure how many of the 600 inmates fled.

The USS George Washington aircraft carrier is headed toward the region with massive amounts of water and food, but the Pentagon said the ship would not arrive until Thursday. Other ships will arrive in the coming days as well. The United States said it is providing 20 million dollars in immediate aid.

Aid totaling tens of millions of dollars has been pledged by many other countries, including Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom, which is sending a Royal Navy vessel.

The Philippines, an archipelago nation of more than 7,000 islands, is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons, but Haiyan was an especially large catastrophe. Its winds were among the strongest ever recorded.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

The coastal town of Ormoc city in western Leyte, Philippines after typhoon Haiyan struck. Credit: Arlynn Aquino EU/ECHO/CC by 2.0

By Richard Javad Heydarian
MANILA, Nov 12 2013 (IPS)

Despite the government’s early warnings and evacuation of up to 800,000 people from vulnerable areas, the category 5 – the highest level – Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda to Filipinos) has left some communities and coastal zones in the central Philippine islands of Visayas in complete ruins.

Widely characterised as history’s strongest-ever typhoon, Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines on Nov. 8, slightly weakening before claiming the lives of thousands of people and inflicting severe economic damage on the country.

By some estimates, as many as 10,000 people may have lost their lives, with Tacloban City, the capital of Leyte province, bearing the brunt of the super typhoon. Another 600,000 people have been displaced, according to the U.N.

In the initial hours of the typhoon’s landfall, intermittent reports provided a glimpse of the potential impact of the storm, but many communities remained inaccessible to authorities and aid agencies for days.

This meant thousands of people were left with no basic necessities in the hours following the damage, with a cloud of uncertainty hanging over many affected areas in need of immediate assistance.

Almost a day into the storm’s landfall, the U.N. office in Manila rang alarm bells by telling Bloomberg news that certain areas were “still cut off from relief operations”, with “unknown numbers of survivors [lacking] basic necessities” due to the massive destruction of basic infrastructure.

“In the coming days, be assured: help will reach you faster and faster,” Philippine President Benigno Aquino declared after visiting the devastated areas, trying to reassure thousands of desperate citizens in need of relief and basic security. “The delivery of food, water and medicines to the most heavily affected areas is at the head of our priorities.”

Hours after the storm, local media portrayed a general picture of desperation and panic as many citizens sought basic commodities wherever they could find them. It took some time before the government was able to send troops and personnel to organise the distribution of relief and establish a modicum of stability in badly affected areas.

The Philippines army dispatched four C-130 planes to the affected areas, which were only able to arrive during daylight hours. An army battalion, comprising up to 250 troops, was sent to Tacloban, the most badly affected area.

“We’re sending medicine, relief goods, emergency response teams and tents, generators, communications equipment and fuel,” army spokesman Colonel Miguel Okol told reporters, underscoring the importance of the armed forces to relief operations as well as establishing post-crisis order. “But our priority right now is sending out security – Philippines National Police – to deal with the [reports of] violence.”

So far, reports suggest the extent of the damage overwhelmed local authorities, with the national government, in the immediate aftermath of the storm’s impact, struggling to establish communication with affected areas.

The sheer force of Haiyan simply devastated airports, roads, electricity grids, and telephone lines, making it almost impossible for optimal coordination between authorities and leaving some affected areas in momentary isolation – just when they needed help the most.

Up to 9.5 million people were affected, 20,000 houses were ruined, four airports were shut down, with the total estimated costs of typhoon Haiyan possibly reaching up to 14 billion dollars. The U.N. World Food Programme announced that as many as 2.5 million people were in need of emergency assistance.

In response, the government announced that it was releasing an initial amount of 533 million dollars in discretionary funds to cover immediate relief operations as well as reconstruction efforts.

In Tacloban, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) requested around 100 hectares for establishing a resettlement site for some 45,000 families. So far, it has acquired about 300 hectares from the local government.

The National Food Authority, meanwhile, announced that it has up to three million sacks of rice ready for redistribution in affected areas, but officials have raised concern with repacking of food items and their delivery to affected areas.

Experts such as Zhang Qiang, a specialist on disaster mitigation at Beijing Normal University, have tried to underscore the inevitability of Haiyan’s devastating impact on affected areas by arguing, “Sometimes, no matter how much and how fully you prepare, the disaster is just too big.”

Despite impressive rates of economic growth in recent years, with the Philippine economy projected earlier this year to grow by as high as seven percent in 2013, there has been relatively small investment in basic infrastructure. Thousands of roads and bridges are in desperate need of maintenance and improvement, while many rural areas are still to enjoy reliable electricity connection and reliable access to urban centres.

The Aquino administration has tirelessly sought to push ahead with a dozen major Private-Public Partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects to boost the economy and improve the country’s resilience to natural disasters, yet most aren’t expected to be finished before 2015.

A combination of regulatory uncertainty, corruption, and mismanagement has left many areas, especially outside the industrialised centres in the northern island of Luzon, lacking in basic, quality infrastructure.

In recent years, experts and pundits have consistently pushed the Philippine government to improve its basic infrastructure, especially given the country’s vulnerability to natural calamities. Many have criticised the government for not implementing more decisive measures ahead of the storm.

Knowing very well that many shantytowns and coastal communities have always been vulnerable to natural disasters, there were a number of options that the government could have pursued, critics argue, from the mandatory evacuation of citizens in high-risk areas to the establishment of concrete bunkers that can withstand super- storms.

But for many, the greater issue is climate change, and how developing countries such as the Philippines have been paying the price of centuries of relentless industrial expansion by the developed world, exacerbated by the ongoing deadlock in climate negotiations, whereby major Western countries as well as big emerging economies have refused to subject their emission levels to mandatory reduction.

More regrettably, beyond the setbacks in mitigating global warming, many poorer countries have also lamented the rich world’s lack of investment in adaptation funds, which could help more vulnerable countries to cope with the impact of climactic fluctuations.