Disasters Emergency PHILIPPINES TYPHOON APPEAL

Disasters Emergency  PHILIPPINES TYPHOON APPEAL

Typhoon Haiyan tore a path of destruction over 100 miles wide through the central Philippines after making landfall early in the morning on the 8th of November local time. It brought torrential rain, winds of over 170mph and a storm surge of up to 25 feet that devastated coastal areas.

 

Over 14 million people where affected, including five million who have seen their homes damaged or destroyed. Over 6000 people lost their lives. 

 

Donations from the UK public for the appeal raised £95 million and to date have helped over 900,000 people. DEC fundraising for this appeal is now closed; money raised for the appeal will be spent over the two year period ending in November 2016 and will help people affected by Haiyan recover and rebuild their lives. To support our member agencies ongoing work, please visit them via their

VISITING THE PHILIPPINES  25/11/2014

Clive Jones, DEC Chair, recently visited the Philippines nearly a year after Typhoon Haiyan to see member agencies at work.

It looked a bit a grim. Overnight rains had swelled the river that swings around the village of Salvacion, just north of Cebu, Philippines  and our driver was not about to risk his precious 4 x 4 to get us through to the CARE housing scheme on the other side.

 

I was taking off my socks and shoes when help arrived in the form of the local garbage truck. I climbed aboard and we surged through the floodwater.

 

Welcome to the Philippines in the typhoon season and to the Barangay Salvacion where the villagers survive on farming mixed with recycling the area’s rubbish.

 

Back in November 2013 every home in Salvacion had been levelled by Typhoon Haiyan as it ripped through eight provinces killing over six thousand people, which many still think a woeful underestimate, and damaging or destroying more than one million homes.

 

The road to recovery

 

But Salvacion is back on its feet and everyone of its 63 households had been rebuilt thanks to the DEC member agency CARE. The recycling business is back in full flow and coconut trees (33 million were downed by the typhoon across the Philippines) and other crops are being planted again.

 

CARE with local partners has provided money, tools, skilled craftsmen, expertise and timber from its share of the £97 million raised by the DEC to get Salvacion back on its feet. Sustainable housing with extra buttresses and supports have been built by the villagers with the CARE team of roving carpenters.

 

Lives here have begun again. The local people are among the 318,650 in nearly 70,000 homes reached by CARE in the Philippines.

 

By the time I am ready to depart refreshed by local coconut milk and garlanded with flowers by the villagers the river has subsided and the 4 x 4 gets me through. Now it is on Magaswe in Upland Ormoc. We smash, bang and lurch for nearly two hours across what we would struggle to describe as a treacherous, muddy track let alone a road to get to our next barangay.

 

High in the mountains, Magaswe is remote. Tiny local horses akin to Shetland ponies are still used alongside motorbikes to get to and from local towns. The villagers are labourers in the local sugar cane fields. Life is tough and challenging. This was another village where every home was destroyed or badly storm damaged. Again the CARE team have worked miracles alongside the local carpenter and the committed self help of the barangay members.

 

The village is back up and running, the cane fields have been planted and the village school is in full swing. Most of last year’s crop was lost and despite the emergency food aid provided by the 13 DEC agencies in the Philippines there is still a food deficit. It will be seven or eight years before the coconut tress are bearing fruit again and the seeds for the new cash crops, including yam, banana and vegetable are in short supply. So CARE is providing a supplementary feeding programme for the primary school kids at Magaswe.

 

And it’s working. 

 

Better marks are being achieved by every child in the school.

 

Return to Tacloban

 

We climb back into the 4 x 4 fortified by rice cakes still warm from the stove of one family who wanted to say thanks to the DEC, CARE and its local partners and lurch back through the mud towards Tacloban.

 

The city has patched itself up and roared back into urban life again. There are still many buildings to restore, but a lot have been repaired, new homes have been built and commerce is in full swing.

 

The need for emergency aid is long passed. Oxfam with its enthusiastic team of local staff are concentrating on livelihoods and sustainability.

 

ONE YEAR ON FROM TYPHOON HAIYAN  10/11/2014

Carpenter Larry Tondo builds a coconut lumber sales kiosk as part of an Oxfam project to clear damaged coconut trees and provide income for coconut farmers.  (c) Eleanor Farmer/Oxfam 2014

 

Although DEC member agencies initially provided hundreds of thousands of people with emergency food, water and household items, giving cash grants formed a key part of the emergency response. Most local markets reopened very quickly and people appreciated the freedom to choose how they used the money. It also gave a much-needed boost to the local economy. Some agencies set up their own temporary markets using voucher schemes, or ran cash for work programmes such as removing debris and street cleaning.

 

Shelter and livelihoods are now the major needs in the Philippines. At first agencies provided tarpaulins, which are more flexible and cost-effective than tents. They quickly started providing shelter kits, which are an innovative approach that started to become more widespreat during the Haiti earthquake response. The kits include nails, timber, corrugated iron and tools.

 

Again, cash grants were common, as it was often quicker for recipients to buy materials locally than for NGOs to source and distribute the materials. Many people in rural areas hit by Haiyan relied on fishing and rice or coconut farming. Since coconut trees will take up to seven years to grow back there was an urgent need to find new, long-term income sources.

 

Agencies devised integrated programmes in which beneficiaries cleared damaged coconut groves, used the lumber for house building and any unusable trunks for fuel, and then planted seeds alongside the new coconut trees. This gave people money, lumber and the skills to raise new vegetable crops for sale. Temporary boat building production lines were created to re-start the fishing industry. There was a less pressing need for new livelihoods in towns and cities. Markets have returned and large parts of Tacloban city are functioning normally.

 

Although there were no large scale outbreaks of disease, member agencies worked on some water and sanitation projects, for example building latrines in damaged hospitals.