Help In Real Time

      A smile on the survivors’ faces

How many of the Yolanda disaster victims pinned under the debris or fragments of home could still have been saved by rescue? No one knows. Had help gotten there on time, we would have known.

Up to now, many survivors cannot categorically say if one of those thousands of body bags transported to mass graves at Barangay Basper and Suhi contained a missed family member. The time for positive identification based on intact physical appearance has been lost.

On many instances, the underlying factor why the Yolanda tragedy became more tragic was not being able to deal with the critical situation in real time.

Stores may not have been looted if panicky residents were not sent into frenzy by the thought that they may have survived the wind’s fury and the water’s surge, but not hunger. It was the moment right after the calamity when the need for relief was critical and it did not come.

Time is of the essence. True then in the immediate aftermath of the supertyphoon, true still in the rehabilitation effort of the areas torn by it, time would have made the difference.

Two and a half months after Yolanda, help in recovery and rebuilding must already be up and running or it may be too late again.

The scourge of Yolanda continues. Its victims still reel under the agony and hardships brought by it. The unending queues on stores in the city’s center, pharmacies, banks, wet markets, make one wonders: Is this yet what it is to live in the 21^st century, to be so downed and made helpless by a calamity?

On a long file at the BPI automated teller machine, someone remarked, “Waray pa gud katatapos it at sakripisyo kan Yolanda.” (Our sacrifice from Yolanda has not ended.)

Sacrifice is one aspect, fear is another.

The threat of foodless days nags. Warmer and unlit homes and nothing to do because there is no electricity fuel uncertainty. Realizing with alarm that this could go on for months and years makes one go bonkers. The scenario of having no food and electricity is panicky.

Hostile weather aggravates the already harsh cold and heat. Still in a state of trauma from the Yolanda rampage, folks instantly become jittery over news of another low-pressure-area with the potential to evolve into a monster, like the ferocious visitor on November 8.

Agony, uncertainty, trauma and nervousness mix up into a volatile state of affairs.

Along the Eastern Visayas Region’s Pacific Coast and Leyte Gulf area, are numerous villages flattened by Yolanda. Many of them are now sprawls of tent and makeshift-shelter communities, propped by aid. There, most folks have been reduced to reliance on lifelines from outside.

They urgently need to rise from the ruin and rubble as much as they needed to survive Yolanda.

The maligned bunkhouses are only tiny island specks in this vast sea of dehumanized refugee humanity. If folks can be too hot on those controversial structures, this one is really much too hot.

Those suffering may no longer take the time, as in the days following Yolanda, to paint on pavements the words, PLEASE HELP US. Their plight has been made known throughout the world. They have undergone how it is to beg and join the long queue under rain and sun for five kilos of rice, canned sardines and noodles.

To survive on donations, to rise on somebody else’s helping hand, to be plucked out of one’s proud being by the posturing of aid as if this was all that mattered in the situation, are no small concessions to given assistance.

Government and the international community have announced billions of dollars for recovery and rebuilding. The earmarking by the administration of P360.9 billion for Recovery Assistance on Yolanda (RAY) has gotten into headline and primetime news.

But folks in the flattened communities are not jumping with joy. Why?

No victim of Yolanda has said help is not needed. But the help that is needed is the real thing, not the news. It is what goes to improve the situation on the ground, not what hogs the headlines.

Until now, nothing of that has come, or shows to be coming.

The people cannot even finish counting in their lifetimes the huge assistance promised. But humbly small or boastfully big, they really don’t mind. They just ask: When and How?

Any definite answer to that would already put a smile on the survivors' faces.

Help Us Give Support (HUGS)

The Homeless And Needy Disaster Survivors (HANDS) Rehab Initiative

The Institute for Local Innovation and Approach in Development Inc. (ILIAD) is launching an initiative to help in the socio-economic recovery and rebuilding of communities devastated by Supertyphoon Yolanda. This is named Aksyon Bulig sa Operasyon Tindog Kabisayaan (ABOT Ka). It covers places in Leyte and Eastern Samar that were worst hit by the calamity.

ABOT Ka engages in the mobilization of support by agencies, organizations, groups and individuals participating or wanting to participate in rehab aid effort for the Yolanda affected areas. Support is directed at particular villages or households with which cooperation has already been initiated or of which critical needs have been identified and assessed.

The initiative specifically will help folks in the category of Homeless and Needy Disaster Survivors (HANDS).  It is intended not only to provide such assistance as food relief and core building materials, but to catalyze and enable efforts by the suffering victims themselves to pick up from the loss, damage and disruption of livelihoods brought about by Yolanda.

Assistance consists of three major actions, namely:

One,  Fast Assessment and Statistics Tracking for Rehab Aid Coverage (FASTRAC). This is the rapid gathering of data and appraisal, quick construction of target beneficiary database, their summary in report or newsfeed format, and their speedy communication to prospective benefactors and the public at large to seek immediate support or guide assistance. Through FASTRAC, ABOT Ka serves as spotter on ground zero to point aid to the proper target. It also serves to constantly monitor situation and bring to the attention of concerned agencies breaking issues and problems.

Two, Immediate Shelter and Livelihood Assistance (ISLA). This is the delivery of solicited financial and other forms of assistance to match the building of starting shelters by identified beneficiary HANDS. The effort at basic shelter provision is designed to generate, alongside, livelihoods for workforces in the community as well as women.

Three, Community Level Action Support Partnership (CLASP). This is the engagement of cooperation with local government units at the barangay level, or civic organizations at the grassroots, in participatory planning and joint implementation of courses of action to spur off rehabilitation through an integrated socio-economic development approach. CLASP aims to bring to the table new physical framework designs in pursuit of a development that is environmentally safe, ecologically sound, and disaster resilient, besides being socially just, economically feasible and holistically human uplifting.

For the above thrusts, ILIAD is seeking assistance from various sectors and sources. It may be directly implemented by the donors themselves, with ILIAD facilitating cooperation with target beneficiary households/communities. Or it may be executed with the collaboration of ILIAD, which will provide the network of volunteers on the ground for liaison and organizing tasks, and staff for technical support. In a detailed proposal for this purpose, ILIAD will delineate the optimal strategy, and concrete methods and processes wherein the aid will be most effectively delivered, and will generate desired results towards the recovery and rebuilding of communities.

ABOT Ka initially is covering the following areas:

1)      Barangays Ormocay, Camanse and Wilson in the coastal town of Mayorga

2)      The agricultural town of Burauen, Leyte (specific localities still in the process of selection)

3)      Barangays Hinulogan, Maliwaliw, Calipayan, Rizal, San Benito and Caluctogan in the interior agricultural town of Dagami

4)      Barangays San Miguel, Magay and Sta. Cruz in the heavily devastated coastal town of Tanauan

5)      Town of Hernani along  the Pacific Coast in Eastern Samar (specific localities still in the process of selection)

6)      Town of Giporlos along the Pacific Coast in Eastern Samar (specific localities still in the process of selection)

Preliminary reports by ILIAD volunteers on ground zero count the dwellings flattened or totally damaged by the supertyphoon at 50 to 80 percent of households in the said areas. The food situation is critical, for if relief is cut at this stage, hunger will break out. Livelihoods and productive activity are generally at a standstill. And local folks besides being traumatized by the catastrophe on November 8, undergo a stressful day-to-day existence accompanied by confusion, fear and anxiety over an uncertain future.

Shelter for the homeless is either in tents or hastily propped makeshift structures of salvaged lumber and doled-out canvass or tarp. Under these the folks suffer extremes of cold during nights and days of intermittent rain, and heat beating on the canopies during sunny weather. Heavy downpours send them into panic as waters begin to rise rapidly on rivers and come close to their fragile dwellings.

Meanwhile, 80 to 90 percent of the pre-Yolanda business has been ravaged and not yet come back.
Agriculture with the massive damage wrought to the coconut industry is on the verge of stagnation, and may not rise back to where it was before, in the next seven years. Social disintegration and economic collapse are likely to combine in a second generation tragedy after the Nov. 8 disaster.

The Institute for Local Innovation and Approach in Development views with deep concern the intense hardships and dangers that the Yolanda survivors continue to go through. All these urge everyone, the government, civil society, the business sector, and other aid donors to act now and very quickly. The dire situation does not afford losing a day. The rehab must start rolling in no time at all.

For our suffering brothers and sisters, and for the country which needs Eastern Visayas to rise and fulfil its economic and social role in our overall development, Help Us Give Support!

please visit: www.philiad.com.ph
email: iliadphil@yahoo.com or clasp@philiad.com.ph

The ordeal and the danger are far from over

The world hailed the resilience of the survivors of supertyphoon Yolanda. But there may be little appreciation of the fact that until now they are still fighting a battle for survival.

The Yolanda ordeal is far from over. Indeed, the danger of a sequel disaster part-two to the November 8 rampage lurks: a social and economic meltdown.

A collapse of order and collective life from the strain of continued human suffering may happen, once rebuilding stumbles and securing anew a decent shelter with simple comforts and ambiance of home end up in prolonged frustration. The disaster victims have to get settled to lead productive lives.

That is why the construction of the controversial bunkhouses should have been carefully thought of, or better still thoroughly discussed with the folks who were supposed to live in them. Their say on the make and circumstance of the temporary dwellings should have been given primary importance.

Right now, most of the survivors of Yolanda are in a state of suspended animation. The homeless and needy idly await assistance in such hard-hit areas, for example, as Barangays San Miguel, Magay, Calogcog and Sta. Cruz in Tanauan where so many deaths occurred and clusters of tents have replaced the old dwellings, or Bgys. Ormocay, Wilson and Camanse in Mayorga farther down south where homes have been demolished and folks are exposed to the harsh beating of alternating rain and sun. The wait and inaction are becoming torturous as no help seems forthcoming. It is a state fraught with perils.

If paralysis and the slide into harsher conditions of existence are not arrested, the situation can deteriorate to a point where neither peace nor harmony prevails anymore, where communities break down in chaos or flight, and engagement in livelihood of any kind no longer washes.

Something like the spree of looting right after Yolanda’s fury can explode. The restive quiet now could be the proverbial lull before the storm.

A complementary threat is the retrogression of local economies. Two months after Yolanda, 80 to 90 percent of pre-disaster businesses especially in the regional commercial hub of Tacloban have not come back. Business slowdown or ultimate shutdown with establishment owners either facing bankruptcy, finding it impossible to resume, or deciding to leave, can slip towards stagnation.

If not rescued, agriculture also can lapse into stagnation having absorbed great damage particularly in coconut production – Eastern Visayas’ top provider of cash and economic driver.

As business activity has dwindled, workforces presently have nowhere to find jobs or employment. This affects market, for folks cannot buy goods or services with no income, or with minimal cash circulating around. The consequence is that production all the more constricts.

A point may be reached where any production is no longer viable.

Currently, basic commodities continue to be in short supply, while their prices skyrocket. The prices of sugar, egg, meat, fish, cooking oil, soap, kerosene, and anti-mosquito coil, for instance, have gone up twice or thrice their pre-Yolanda level.

The condition of stagnation being coupled with soaring inflation creates the disastrous phenomenon called stagflation. It is a sure-fire formula for a cataclysmic social upheaval.

With the perception or illusion that things are normalizing, the scenario may be hard to believe much less think of. But it was so with dire warnings of a category four typhoon that the people brushed aside, conditioned by old mindsets. They thought it was yet something they can cope, just like in the past.

As experience went, Yolanda happened to be no longer what dire weather disturbances used to be. No one was ready for the impact when the strongest wind on record to hit land made landfall bringing ashore seven-meter high waves. The extreme calamity foisted extreme social consequences.

The usual is not the normal anymore. The world is now in what former US Vice President Al Gore calls the “period of consequences,” the payback time for man’s environmental sins. The normal in weather patterns has changed: much heavier rainfalls, more violent typhoons breeding in warmer oceans, higher chances of landslides and flash floods occurring over regions that did not encounter them before.

Yolanda was something that did not fit into regular reality. The people did not get it that they live already in a much altered environment, in a world haunted by climate change with freakier moods of nature.

What goes with the environment goes with society. Communities absorb graver effects – greater deaths, huger loss of property, and more massive demolition of infrastructure, fouling of weathers brings. They also have to contend with unprecedented disruption of social and economic life.

The fallout from the devastation of Yolanda, as far as the latter is concerned, can endure for years, or can finally spell the sudden demise of a way of living.

Hours or even days before the supertyphoon struck, official weather forecast did not lack in trying to impress the severity of what was coming, which scientific experts described in one layman’s word, “delubyo” (deluge).

Malacanang interrupted programs on radio and television for the president to go on air on the evening of November 7 with the appeal to take the apocalyptic scenario seriously.

But scepticism coupled by misplaced confidence overrode warnings. Residents did not take the repeated prodding to move out of hazard zones. The price was very dear. Deaths climbed to thousands, mixing up with the mind boggling destruction of everything along the disaster’s path.

The steep price of not taking measures to deflect extreme outcomes has taught no longer to leave to chance their possibility. This should be so with the prospect of a second generation tragedy resulting from festering problems bred by Yolanda.