MAYOR: WE LACK EVERYTHING! IT'S A HUMAN CRISIS
[PHOTO COURTESY OF MANILA TIMES -
Soldiers carry the corpse of a boy found in a destroyed house during a
retrieval operation at a village in Iligan City on Monday. AFP PHOTO THE death toll from the raging
muddy floods that washed away entire communities in the cities of Cagayan de Oro
and Iligan in southern Mindanao would not have been so high if officials of
local governments heed warnings]
MANILA, DECEMBER 21, 2011 (STAR) By Helen Flores -
Search and rescue teams yesterday continued to rummage through debris and
flooded areas for survivors as the death toll reached 823 while 600 others
remained missing after the flashfloods Saturday in Northern Mindanao.
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services
Administration (PAGASA) meanwhile reported that storm "Sendong" had left the
Philippine area of responsibility and good weather would prevail in the next
five days.
Casualties could go as high as a thousand in what could be the strongest
storm to hit Mindanao since 1980, according to Science Secretary Mario Montejo.
Philippine Red Cross (PRC) secretary-general Gwendolyn Pang said most of the
fatalities were children and women.
"It's overwhelming. We didn't expect these many dead," said National Disaster
Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) chief Benito Ramos.
Brig. Gen. Roland Amerille, deputy commander of the 1st Infantry Division and
ground commander of the ongoing search and retrieval operations in Iligan City,
reported yesterday that troops have recovered 279 bodies since Sunday.
Maj. Julio Eugenio Osias IV, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, citing
latest updates from the city disaster official report in the flood-stricken
Cagayan de Oro, said 336 bodies have been recovered by combined military and
police search teams.
The other fatalities as reported by the NDRRMC came from Bukidnon with 17
dead, five from Mt. Diwalwal, Compostela Valley, one in Surigao del Sur, four
from Lanao del Sur, 38 in Negros Oriental, one in Cebu and three from Zamboanga
del Norte.
"More dead bodies have been recovered in Cagayan de Oro City yesterday. The
latest recoveries include those of two pregnant women with their unborn babies,"
Osias said.
In nearby Iligan, the number of casualties is expected to mount as rescue and
recovery teams from the Army and police, as well as the Philippine Navy, are
still searching for 200 individuals from the flood-devastated villages,
according to Amerille.
The NDRRMC's unofficial figures listed 632 dead, 16 injured, 280 missing and
432 rescued.
Sendong also displaced 24,680 families in 13 provinces of Western, Central
Visayas, Western Mindanao, Northern Mindanao, Compostela, Caraga and Autonomous
Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARRM).
Glaiza Escullar, PAGASA weather forecaster, said no tropical cyclone is
expected to enter the country in the next five days.
However, she said most parts of the country will experience partly cloudy
skies with isolated rains and thunderstorms in the afternoon or evening.
Cagayan de Oro, one of the hardest-hit areas, will also experience good
weather in the next days.
Montejo said the waterways were not able to handle the heavy rains brought by
the storm.
PAGASA said Sendong dumped a total of 181 millimeters of rain in Cagayan de
Oro in 24 hours, surpassing the average 99.9 mm rainfall in the city for the
month of December.
Rescued
The Navy rescued eight individuals among the hundreds who were swept away by
the rampaging flood, who survived after hanging on to the debris.
Search and rescue operations are still underway for 230 more who were
declared missing and believed to have been swept out to sea, according to Lt.
Senior Grade Arnold Simbajon, acting commanding officer of the Philippine Navy
operating the patrol gunboat that spearheaded the search.
Simbajon said the rescued survivors had been drifting for two days when
spotted separately hanging on to debris in Lugait Point, seven nautical miles or
about 60 kilometers off Iligan.
He said four others in the same predicament were already dead.
Simbajon said the survivors appeared to have come from different places and
didn't know each other.
He said the survivors claimed they had lost their respective families in the
rampaging flood.
The victims were immediately provided food and turned over to the Coast Guard
and the local government in Iligan for immediate attention.
Simbajon said the search and recovery continued even as they have widened the
area to as far as Initaw Point in Misamis Oriental covering about 10 nautical
miles.
"Hopefully, we can still find more survivors because there were still 230
missing," he said.
Iligan Mayor Lawrence Cruz welcomed the news and expressed hope of finding
more survivors.
Cruz said some 50 cadavers, most of them unclaimed, will be buried in a mass
grave. He said the remains will be individually buried, wrapped in plastic bags
as they ran out of coffins, in temporary graves in public cemetery and will be
exhumed for proper burial in the coming days.
Policeman among casualties
Among the fatalities in the floods was a policeman involved in the relief and
rescue operations in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro, according to Philippine National
Police (PNP) chief Director General Nicanor Bartolome.
Bartolome said SPO1 Charlon Edrote of Cagayan de Oro died while Inspector
Charlito Penaliar of the PNP-Regional Public Safety Battalion in Northern
Mindanao and PO2 Sandy Labadan of the Iligan City Police remain missing after
they were swept away by strong waves during rescue operations.
The PNP chief said SPO2 Roque Ballestoy, who was reported to be swept away by
flashfloods, was later found taking part in retrieval operations in Cagayan de
Oro.
Bartolome sent a 300-man augmentation force from PNP Northern Mindanao and
Caraga Police Regional Office and Special Action Force and Maritime Group.
He added that the augmentation force has 10 days' supply so they can stay in
the area before they report back to their respective regions.
"The death of a policeman should not dampen the spirit of our policemen,
because risk and danger is part of our duties and we are prepared for these
eventualities," he said, reminding policemen to be careful while helping others.
"The PNP will be providing financial assistance and reward. We will be
working for the posthumous promotion for Edrote. We hope that those who are
missing will be recovered safe," Bartolome added.
Red Cross expects higher casualties
PRC chairman Richard Gordon said they expect a bigger number of casualties,
as many villages remain isolated and unreached by PRC disaster response.
"Wounded persons need anti-tetanus drugs, so we are bringing supplies of food
and medicine for over 4,000 people as well as non-food items like blankets,
mosquito nets and immediate supplies," Gordon said in a live interview with the
BBC.
He said Mindanao is usually not a typhoon-prone area that is why most
residents were caught unprepared.
"Those hardest hit were Cagayan de Oro, Iligan and Bukidnon, areas that
normally are not really hit by typhoons, they have spray of rain regularly in
the morning and goes out in the evening or vice versa but this is the first time
in a long, long time that they were hit very badly by a major storm," said
Gordon.
NBI tapped to identify victims
Meanwhile, a 15-man forensic team from the National Bureau of Investigation
(NBI) was sent yesterday afternoon by the bureau to help identify, through
autopsy, more than 200 bodies recovered.
NBI Deputy Director for Technical Services lawyer Reynaldo Esmeralda said Dr.
Wilfredo Tierra, of the NBI Medico Legal Division, heads the 15-man team
composed of doctors, med-techs, nurses, chemists, photographers and fingerprint
technicians. – With reports from Jaime Laude, Cecille Suerte
Felipe, Rudy Santos, Edith Regalado, Sandy Araneta, AP
'We lack everything' By Jaime Laude (The
Philippine Star) Updated December 20, 2011 12:00 AM
[PHOTO - Evacuees make a rush for relief goods being
given by government representatives in front of a church in Iligan City, Lanao
del Norte, on Monday. AFP PHOTO The government will
need gargantuan funds to help rebuild the lives of people affected by Typhoon
Sendong, as well as communities washed out by flash floods generated by the
tropical storm.]
MANILA, Philippines - With no clean water, electricity, food and shelter,
residents of flood-hit areas in Mindanao are grappling with a humanitarian
crisis.
"We lack everything," Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Vicente Emano told The STAR
yesterday. "We don't have electricity and drinking water. We are now appealing
for bottled drinking water, food and medicine and relief goods."
President Aquino will visit today the worst-hit areas – the cities of Cagayan
de Oro, Iligan and Dumaguete, where the combined death toll is feared to exceed
a thousand.
[PHOTO FROM CAGAYAN DE ORO WEBSITE: HON. VICENTE YAP EMANO CITY
MAYOR]
Emano said thousands of evacuees who are staying in three evacuation centers
all lost their houses to the flashfloods spawned early Saturday by tropical
storm "Sendong."
He asked the national government to send embalmers, coffins and lime as
unattended bodies recovered in the ongoing search and retrieval operations
continue to pile up in the city's funeral parlors.
"After running out of coffins, all the funeral parlors in the city have
declined to accept more bodies, resulting in the piling up of the dead, like
sacks of rice, in front of their offices," Emano said.
[CLICK IMAGE TO GO TO 'DONATE NOW PAGE AT PHILIPPINE RED CROSS WEB
SITE]
Iligan City is also suffering similar problems, according to Brig. Gen.
Roland Amerillo, deputy commander of the 1st Infantry Division and designated
ground commander of the ongoing search and retrieval operations.
As this developed, mayors from Pampanga, a coffin-manufacturing province,
answered Emano's request as well as that of Iligan Mayor Lawrence Cruz, by
donating more than 400 coffins to the two flood-stricken cities.
Col. Arnulfo Burgos, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman, said
that the coffins will be transported today aboard a Philippine Air Force plane
and the BRP Dagupan City of the Philippine Navy.
"As soon as the coffins coming from Pampanga are gathered at Villamor Air
Base and at Navy headquarters along Roxas Boulevard today, these will be flown
today while the rest will be loaded onto a Navy ship for Cagayan de Oro City,"
Burgos said.
P-Noy to visit flood-stricken areas
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said President Aquino was supposed to
fly to these areas last Sunday but was dissuaded by the Presidential Security
Group due to bad weather conditions in the area.
"He wanted to visit as early as Sunday but the weather conditions, upon the
advice of the PSG and the DND (Department of National Defense), they recommended
that the visit be made tomorrow," he said.
Lacierda said Aquino was in constant touch with Secretaries Jesse Robredo of
the Interior and Local Government, Voltaire Gazmin of DND and Dinky Soliman of
the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), among others.
He was also constantly communicating with executive director Benito Ramos of
the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), who
already left for Iligan and Cagayan de Oro over the weekend to check the extent
of damage.
"So the President was very much aware of what was going on and he made sure
that all relief efforts and all necessary efforts insofar as search and rescue
are given to the people affected," Lacierda said.
Local government officials will brief the President, who will be inspecting
the damage as well as relief efforts on the ground.
"He will take some time to discuss also with the local government officials
their concerns," he said.
Binay wants victims relocated
Vice President Jejomar Binay has ordered local officials in Cagayan de Oro to
relocate residents living along rivers and coastal areas.
"In housing, these areas are considered danger zones because they are prone
to disasters. We must find a safe place for the residents to stay," he said.
Binay distributed 2,880 bags of relief goods to Kagay-anons staying at the
evacuation centers in Macasandig, City Central Elementary School and West City
Elementary School.
He pledged to give 10,000 packs of relief goods in Cagayan de Oro and 5,000
in Iligan City and also ordered the Office of the Vice President to hold relief
operations in Iligan.
The Vice President also went to funeral homes and extended cash assistance
and his condolences to families who lost their loved ones due to the massive
flooding.
His son, Makati City Mayor Jejomar Erwin Binay, through the City Council,
sent a total of P4 million in aid and relief to flood victims in Cagayan de Oro,
Dumaguete and Iligan.
Albay Gov. Joey Salceda, on the other hand, is sending a six-man team to
Iligan and Cagayan de Oro to provide technical assistance and donate P500,000
cash.
"More than the modest amount, the Albay Sendong Aid Mission brings with them
the spirit of solidarity and sense of kinship between our people so critical in
overcoming this period of distress," Salceda said.
Bayanihan spirit is alive
As this developed, Philippine Airlines (PAL) Foundation executive director
Carmen Sarmiento said PAL flights to Cagayan de Oro and Dipolog will carry free
of charge disaster relief donations coming from reputable non-government
organizations, private companies and religious groups.
The Lucio Tan Group kicked off its relief operations by sending bottled water
from Asia Brewery to Cagayan de Oro via PAL. Its philanthropic arm, the Tan Yan
Kee Foundation, is likewise ready to fly relief goods to disaster areas.
PAL will carry the relief goods as cargo on any of the five daily flights to
Cagayan de Oro and five weekly flights to Dipolog using the Airbus A320 and A319
aircraft.
Priority will be given to lightweight and non-bulky essential items such as
medicine and food.
Maynilad Water Services Inc. said it has sent donations consisting of 2,000
bottles of water and 300 five-gallon containers of potable water to the flood
victims in Cagayan de Oro.
Maynilad and Smart Communications Inc. made the donations through the
assistance of the Cagayan de Oro Water District, DSWD, DPWH, and the Philippine
Air Force.
Ricky Vargas, Maynilad president and CEO, said that in the next few days,
Maynilad and Smart will ship 2,000 pieces of 1.5 gallon containers of potable
water to the affected families.
The Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) has gathered nearly P1
million from BJMP personnel to be donated to those affected by the typhoon,
according to bureau Director Rosendo Dial.
"Each BJMP personnel will be giving P100 for the calamity victims in response
to Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo's call for a massive
pooling of donations for the victims," said Dial.
He said even the BJMP Multi-Purpose Cooperative (MPC), the BJMP Mutual
Benefit Association, Inc. (MBAI), and the Philippine National Police Academy
Alumni Association, Inc. (PNPAAAI) have committed support for the cause.
"All donations will be sent to Cagayan de Oro daily to augment whatever
assistance they need," said Community Relations Office chief Xavier Solda.
The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) also mustered P1
million in voluntary contributions from its employees and their 19 attached
agencies, as well as savings of the department and its line agencies, for
donation to the victims.
Transportation Secretary Manuel Roxas II has directed the Philippine Coast
Guard (PCG), the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), Maritime Industry Authority
(Marina) and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) to
assist in the immediate delivery of relief goods, medical supplies and other
critical cargoes to affected areas.
Everyone's concern
At the Senate, Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr. appealed to his fellow senators and
colleagues in the film industry to extend their own assistance to distressed
countrymen in the affected areas.
Revilla, chairman of the Senate committee on public works, said he will
personally visit Cagayan de Oro City to distribute relief goods and to inspect
the infrastructure damaged by the typhoon.
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, who visited Cagayan de Oro last Sunday along with
Vice President Binay, also appealed for donations, noting the shortage of wooden
coffins and embalmers to attend to all the bodies, which have accumulated in
funeral parlors and other open areas in the province.
"If a big city like Cagayan has a shortage of coffins, what more in other
areas such as Iligan? We appeal also if other provinces can help in augmenting
the supply of coffins," Pimentel, a native of Cagayan, said.
Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president Cebu
Archbishop Jose Palma appealed to all Filipino faithful to donate to the
victims.
Archbishop Palma said this is the season when Filipinos demonstrate that they
are one with their brothers and sisters who experienced the tragedy.
He also urged his fellow bishops to hold a second collection and send the
money to the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro and the Diocese of Iligan.
Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle issued a circular yesterday instructing
all its parish priests, rectors of shrines and chaplains under the archdiocese
to have a second collection to help the dioceses of the two cities.
CBCP-National Secretariat for Social Action, Justice and Peace (Nassa)
chairman Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo said that they intend to call
on the International Caritas to raise funds for the flood victims. They would
also tap the Alay Kapwa fund.
Iligan Bishop Elenito Galido said the flood victims who are housed in
evacuation centers are in need of blankets, slippers, underwear, medicine,
mosquito nets, water, canned goods and rice.
To those who wish to help, they could send their donations to BDO bank
account no. 312-008-7526 under the name Roman Catholic Bishops of Iligan. – With Jose Rodel Clapano, Delon Porcalla, Rainier Allan Ronda,
Rhodina Villanueva, Evelyn Macairan, Christina Mendez, Rudy Santos, Mike
Frialde, Celso Amo, Cet Dematera, John Unson
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY BEFORE
'SENDONG'
CAGAYAN DE ORO FIESTA
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2011 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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rights reserved
PHILIPPINE
HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE
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