As the number of retrieved dead bodies now reached 2,000 (News Report, ABS-CBN BANDILA), 8,000 more remains missing either buried under collapsed buildings and wrecked infrastructures, floating in the water or just laying everywhere under the sun un-attended. Surviving families that include people in government offices are in chaos and do not know on how to cope between keeping their dead family members and finding food to eat, water to drink or shelter to take refuge to. Hence, as of this writing, thousands of families are under severe hunger and continually facing death by contamination and sickness.
In many areas that had experienced total damage of private homes, water system, roads and other public utility facilities, situations after the typhoon are un-imaginable. Hunger, thirst, sorrows and pains are sufferings rolled into one. Thus, after three days of having no food to eat, water to drink and medicines to take, typhoon survivors eventually turned looters like unruly mob crashing doors and gates of partially damaged establishments and stores.
Fortunately, very recently those temporary lines of communications and road networks are put up to connect them from outside help. Hence, the rest of the country and the world began to have a glimpse of the devastation and have extended emergency help to reachable surviving populations. However, the degree of damage left by Typhoon Yolanda is so huge that even the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council expressed impossibility to urgently address the needs of the victims and survivors. Thus, yesterday (11 November 2013) President Benigno Aquino, Jr. declares the country under State of National Calamity.
Fifty (50) more barangays/villages in Samar and Leyte alone have not been reached yet by emergency relief until today. It is in these provinces that the eye of Typhoon Yolanda passed through last 8 November 2013 with a recorded intensity of 320 km/hr, the strongest typhoon in history. In some other populated smaller islands in Central Visayas, reports of deaths and survivors have not yet taken account.
In Mindanao, Typhoon Yolanda also hit the provinces of Agusan, Surigao, Misamis Oriental and Camiguin island. Number of death tool were fortunately few, however, millions of crops, livelihoods and properties were wiped out making these already poor population under the mercy of emergency assistance. Yet, nothing compares to the severity of damage in Central Visayas.
The Tri-People’s Organization Against Disasters (TRIPOD) Foundation, Inc. calls on for Solidarity and Humanitarian Assistance for the Survivors of Typhoon Yolanda to partner communities, volunteers, network organizations, funding partners, and friends – here in the Philippines and abroad. Collected donations will be used to purchase the most needed assistance for food, bottled water, clothing and medicines for the survivors and for the ongoing campaigns for human rights and climate justice!!!
12 November 2013
TRIPOD Foundation, Cotabato City, tripodcc yahoo.com.ph.