In Southern Philippines, hundreds of thousands remain in need months after Typhoon Bopha

In Southern Philippines, hundreds of thousands remain in need months after Typhoon Bopha

Two months after Typhoon Bopha, people in the southern Philippines continue to struggle. The United Nations said it was 2012's "deadliest" storm, with more than 1,000 killed, hundreds of thousands displaced and massive destruction to houses, infrastructure and farms. FSRN’s Madonna Virola travelled to the badly battered province of Compostela Valley and brings us this update.

Travelling on a public bus from Davao City, I pass through Montevista town. Communities that once stood on nearby river beds are now gone. Typhoon Bopha wiped them out.

Hundreds of houses are destroyed, the remaining roofs are twisted. Countless coconut and banana trees are uprooted or chopped off. Oil palms are felled along road sides.

At Monkayo municipality, there’s a disaster operations tent which is staffed by employees and volunteers.

High school teacher Mylene Cuesta is here, seeking assistance.

She lost sight in her left eye from the typhoon.

“When the typhoon hit our community at dawn time, it brought harsh winds so we scampered for safe shelter as we feared a landslide. Thousands of houses were wiped out. I was holding my one-year-old old baby who kept crying. I even breastfed him. Before I lost consciousness on the ground, galvanized iron sheets hit my eyes which caused heavy bleeding. My husband and neighbours carried me, crossed huge rivers, crawled on bridges and ran for miles.  It was 12 midnight when we reached a hospital.”

Many government employees were doubly struck, suffering their own losses yet also  being responsible to meet the needs of others.

 

Local information officer Joan Pintal’s house was damaged, but she proceeded with her work providing service delivery.

 

”This is first time for people of Monkayo.  It’s scary. All electricity was out, no water, it was run over by a big tree.//

Another Survivor from Union village is 70-year-old Sulpicio Balawag.

”We lost our farm, our livelihood. I was carried away by the rush of waters. Logs hit me. I drowned. I was rescued by companions. The following day, they brought me to the hospital in the next town where I stayed for 6 days. “

Nearby, the government’s gymnasium was turned into an evacuation center.

The center is filled with more than 300 survivors from typhoon Bopha, also called Pablo. Rooms have been improvised out of cloth and wood.

It's early afternoon, and  some are cooking food while children are playing.

A group of service providers from International Organization for Migration IS talking with SOME OF THE women.

Christy Marfil is their senior operations assistant.

Christy Clip 1 (Female, English)//”For now, we have camp management, where our staff monitor the needs of the people here at the evacuation center. We have this shingles making where people who live in the evacuation center, we ask them if they want to make nipa shingles, we provide the materials, we’ll pay for their labor. They’regiven skills training.”//

Several other groups in and out of the country have extended their services from rescue and retrieval operations, to distributing relief goods and cash. Other efforts are focusing on shelter and housing.

Lawyer Abdussabor Sawadjaan Jr, is operations manager for an international foundation with Aa office in Davao City.

Abdussabor Clip 1 (Male, English) ”We have now ‘Rebuild Mindanao’. It’s a campaign wherein Habitat for Humanity Philippines will help construct decent and resilient homes for the victims of typhoon Pablo. We’ll be distributing shelter repair kits for those partially damaged houses- those are roofings, corrugated sheets, nails and hammer so that they can repair their own homes in the hope that they will return to the normalcy of their life.

Over 840,000 people are still displaced, including 700,000 whose livelihoods were destroyed by

the typhoon.

 

Survivors also need mental health services. Dr. Gail Ilagan is director of the Center of Psychological Extension and Research Services or COPERS AT Ateneo de Davao University.

 

”Sometimes it’s about psychological first aid of the community if ready for it; sometimes Critical Incident Stress Debriefing if we’re focusing on how the disaster affected a particular demographics like service providers - they have a different psychological reaction to the tasks that the face like picking up dead bodies; for some It was about brief counselling because they have lost members of their community; but more importantly, we’ve been biased at supporting the psychological recovery of children. Or it’s about working with the adults in order to help them provide the kind of environment that would stabilize the children.”//

Using the help of volunteer graduate students,  Dr. Ilagan’s Center accompanied service providers following the typhoon to offer mental health support in some of the hardest hit areas like New Bataan in Compostela Valley, Baganga in Davao Oriental, and Caraga region.

 

”For communities to become stronger, not only that they recover, with very little help, but also for them to rearrange, such that they become prepared for the next one, because the world is changing, you’ve got this global climate change happening, it’s not going to go away in the next decade or next generation, you’ll have more extreme events happening in the most unpredictable of places. We have to capacitate them at the grassroots level.”

As recovery and reconstruction continue, many are showing signs of resilience.  For high school teacher Mylene Cuesta, she says she’s anxious to get back to her students.

”I will continue encouraging them to dream for a better life. Never to quit schooling. When I look at the mirror, my already ugly and scarred eyes could be discouraging. But what’s important is I still have one eye left to persevere in life.”

Following an appeal from the Philippine government and the United Nations for more aid, Australia pledged an additional $3 million.

 

The funds are for emergency shelters, including improvements of existing shelter facilities in the worst-hit areas.

 

Funding will also go to emergency cash-for-work programs to help clear debris and provide critically needed income to workers across the affected areas.