Will relief efforts ever get out of urban areas?
Now, 14 days after supertyphoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, no relief goods have made it to the many small villages (barangay in Tagalog) on the east coast of Samar.
Although the typhoon cut a swath of destruction across central Philippines, none of the areas took the full wrath of the storm like the east coasts of Samar and Leyte. Surely two weeks after this storm hit, some of the relief aircraft could start delivering food to these areas and determining what they need to prevent death from starvation and dehydration.
Two sisters in Angeles City on Luzon were unable to contact their family in Barangay Malobago Dolores, Eastern Samar. This barangay is located on the coast about 80 kilometres north of Tacloban. After about a week, one of the sisters decided she had to travel to the area to check on the family. She spent about $700 (Bt22,270) to buy bus tickets to get her child and 11 of the youngest nieces and nephews out of the disaster area. The night before her departure they sewed the money into different pieces of clothing to prevent losing it if the bus was held up by bandits.
Under normal conditions it is a 30-hour trip from Manila to their village just south of Dolores, Easter Samar. However, after the typhoon the roads on this portion of Samar are now severely damaged, so bus companies are only using old, dilapidated buses for this route. The fare, however, has not changed and is still 1,700 peso (Bt1,200) per person. When Danica arrived at the Manila bus terminal all the buses were booked for days. But, after negotiating with the conductor, she was finally able to get a seat that morning for 2,500 pesos.
Almost three days after Danica left Angeles City she finally arrived at the family home in Eastern Samar.
The good news was that all the immediate family was alive, but conditions there are not good. Most of the houses in the barangay had survived the typhoon. However, there is little or no food available for sale at any price.
There are reports that armed NPA rebels have come into the town and gone door to door looking for food. About a week ago an 18-year-old girl had gone to the beach about 200 yards from the barangay to collect some shells for food. Later, her relatives found her corpse on the beach – she had been raped and mutilated. The people blame her killing on the NPA, but nobody will ever know. These small villages have no police or security forces. Now nobody goes out of the barangay to forage for food.
I asked if they had seen any sign of relief personnel. They said one day a helicopter flew very low over the village, but that was it. No relief agency has visited to see what is needed. No government representative has checked to see if there are injured or dead.
It is only a matter of time until the young and the old start dying in the coastal villages of Samar and Leyte. On the bright side, the first eight family members have arrived in Angeles safely and we hope the other five will be here soon.
John Cummings
Manila
