DISASTER AROUND ME

Typhoon Yolanda
Yolanda is unnaturally powerful, the strongest typhoon ever to reach the country,
causing unprecedented devastation and disruption to the land, property and life. It
undoubtedly represented the ugliest truth of the warm world in which we are living today.
Global warming has caused sea level rise leading to the 20-foot storm surge that certainly
caught off guard the victims.

The days gone are when we lived in a warm-free world. Not only by higher wind
strength and heavy flooding, but most importantly by increasing sea levels, the climate change
it has caused makes tropical storms more destructive, which in turn means more destruction
and serious loss of lives and property.

Poor and developed countries like the Philippines will be profoundly impacted and
ravaged by the devastating effects of our warm planet, with frequent tropical storms once or
twice a month. Any year, the Philippines has an average of 21 typhoons but Super Typhoon
Yolanda was its 24th and it was expected that two more typhoons will strike the country before
the year ends.

Last November 8, 2013, when the Mega Typhoon Yolanda struck the central part of the
Philippines, it exposed the ugliest features of unprepared government to handle and minimize
devastation caused by such a warmed world storm. The utter inability of the government and
its institutions to properly grasp the consequences of such disasters for citizens and the
environment has also been exposed.

Therefore, the President had declared to the country on the eve of the super typhoon
that the signal number 4 [5 in foreign categories [1].] typhoon would be the intensity of the
coming storm, but he could not mention what it would be like if it struck the ground. It could
not be found out how the people on the monster typhoon 's immediate route would plan.

Indeed, with the flood surge and the sad rising of the sea level, where will people go and
hide up to more than 20 feet? But the worst thing the typhoon has revealed is that the country
under the leadership of President Benigno "Nonoy" Aquino could not commit on almost
anything in the middle of a monstrous catastrophe, so the government response could be
better characterized as criminally sluggish and inadequate weeks after the devastating typhoon.
Many of those who have escaped the Yolanda typhoon will scarcely survive starvation, anguish
and misery.
 In the islands of Samar, Leyte, Northern Cebu, Negros, Panay and Busuanga, the
estimated number of people affected by typhoon Yolanda is more than 9 million. In Samar and
Leyte seventy percent (70 percent) of those affected. Less than 10 percent of the people
displaced and lost their homes are located in the relocation centres, which number fewer than
2,000. This means that the relocation camps do not remain about 90 per cent. In order to
remain alive, many have gone to other islands and other areas of the world to forget about the
chaos and destruction. As in the case of the 230,000-strong city of Tacloban, over 100,000
residents have fled the city to evacuate Yolanda's aftermath.

The number of people killed has reached nearly seven thousand and continues to grow
every day. Contradicting the small number of deaths the President would like to reflect, it could
exceed more than ten thousand. When the President declared the signal number 4[5] intensity
of the typhoon on the eve of the super typhoon, he also called for zero casualties and, thus,
enhanced contingency efforts. But for the first few days after Yolanda's ferocious violence hit,
causing unprecedented damage to both the people and the ground, the police general
announced that more than ten thousand deaths could be registered. He was stripped of his
post automatically when he dared to challenge the figure of the President.

As of last census, the number of missing people has reached more than two thousand,
and more than twenty thousand have been hospitalized.

Nearly 9 million houses are completely and partly demolished mostly in the provinces of
Samar and Leyte but also in the northern part of the province of Cebu, Daang Bantayan Island
(95 percent demolished), Negros Islands and Panay Islands.

In agriculture, the typhoon Yolanda caused severe damage , especially to rice (it was the
harvest season when the disaster occurred), maize and coconut trees. The amount of the loss
of agriculture is expected to exceed approximately 2 billion pesos and to exceed an further 24.5
billion pesos, including complete damage and degradation of agricultural facilities such as
drainage, highways…

The coastal areas with mangroves have not been spared after the Super Typhoon struck
the islands in the central part of the world. Ninety to ninety five per cent of the islands' marine
infrastructure were lost completely. More than fifty thousand motorized boats (on the island of
Panay alone) used for their livelihoods by the fishermen were absolutely impaired.

The disaster's biggest influence is also on the job side, which is expected to mostly affect
5.1 million jobs from agriculture that will become unemployed. After Mega Typhoon Yolanda,
the 620,000 open jobs for this year will possibly be wiped out. The economic downturn is
expected to be about 25 percent in the regions affected, namely regions 6 , 7 and 8, and as this
ratio to the national economy is projected to be 8 percent, 1 percent of the country's gross
domestic product would be affected. Economists expect that in the last quarter of this year, 5.5
per cent of gross domestic product will be reached. This means that this year the projected
increase in the country's gross domestic product will be 7 percent.

This jobless growth in this year's economy will come mainly from the increased
remittance of the Overseas Filipino Workers ( OFWs) who will work harder to return more
money mostly to their affected families and relatives in the country's affected regions. The
billions of funding from both domestic and foreign donors for the victims of Yolanda and the
rehabilitation of destroyed infrastructure would also add to the country's so-called economic
development.

People will like to wake up and do away with the worst scenario they ever endured
since events start to unfold. Just to witness harsh truths that the deaths and destructions in
their midst are actual, and the more they have attempted to avoid such disaster, the more they
become immobilized and the sense of helplessness can usually be experienced in the worst hit
areas. No one, including city elected officials, might support others when they too are victims
and their families have not been saved from death and devastation. The photo will be in
suspended motion for the first few days or even weeks, and then people walked like basically
zombies, so they were in a stunned state and did not know where to start and where to go.
Such a condition has endured for two weeks (and as of this article, food and medical assistance
have not entered many communities) where persons have become mentally and physically
depleted due to lack of food and psychological first assistance. For those who survived the
devastation of the super typhoon, after more than two weeks, the question of how to live is a
real struggle.

The central government and its institutions have now been immobilized because they
have a system that functions only across the divisions of local government. In an emergency
situation where local government leaders are half qualified or even mentally impacted and
traumatized, they (national government) tend to not know how to function. The delay or
inability of these authorities has caused this kind of dynamic to respond quickly to emergency
situations where swift response will mean saving more lives.

Meanwhile, those who lived without daily food after weeks have little resilience left to
bury their dead even further in looking for food to last another day.

The worst that survivors have experienced is understanding that assistance from both
foreign and domestic donors and unity is literally overflowing, but weeks after the catastrophe
they have not met. With 95% of the power lost, the world's main means of contact for survivors
is the media (both foreign and domestic). The primary explanation given for not meeting the
expected recipients is the lack of a mechanism where the assistance would instantly reach the
survivors instead of providing a method to fulfill its function. The survivors have to wait for the
government scheme to be installed so they can engage in the desperately needed assistance
program (food and medicine). It's the other way around.

In order to remain alive for another day, the survivors have to practically beg for food.
Meanwhile, in government detention and closely guarded by the Philippine armed forces
(Philippine Army and Philippine National Police), stocks of food stores can be seen.

People have to practically rob products , mainly food products, in the early days after
the tragedy, to send to their surviving families.

Another explanation for the Government's slow response is that there is no ready-made
list of village-level communities. The registry of electors is what they (government officials)
have, which means that it actually contains the number of people aged 18 and over. In
comparison, this form of reference (voter list) is very vulnerable to "politicking" since assistance
packages can only be provided to anyone who voted for elected officials in the previous
election. The process / system can also serve as strategic assets for these conventional
politicians in the forthcoming elections whose opportunistic mindset can be seen even in this
worst kind of tragedy in its ugliest form.