Tacloban, Two Months After Typhoon Yolanda

I was on Vacation in Calbayog City, Samar the week of January 25, and on January 30^th I went to Tacloban City, hardest hit by Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan), if only to take a firsthand look at the development some two months after Yolanda made its fateful landfall that would later claim an estimated 6,000 to 10,00 lives (depending on your source of information). People are struggling to paint normalcy in what chaotic situation they have. A handful of business outfits have reopened to the public, including Robinson’s Place, which was among those heavily looted in the aftermath of the storm.

As I strolled around the city, I could imagine how horrendously powerful the storm was with buildings, or their parts, turning into masses of mangled metals, steel roofs blown off, massive water tanks tossed tens of meters away, and glass walls and windows shattered. I could sense the harrowing process that people go through in dealing with their new and sudden reality. For most, notwithstanding the news on incidents of looting, materialism has taken a backseat to plain survival. No one seemed interested in filing insurance claims even when they are covered. It seemed, commercial spirit has been overtaken by the primordial human virtues of compassion and benevolence.

I stared at the four Vessels (passenger ships) that have strayed into the city’s coastal communities, mostly of shanties, as Yolanda pummeled it with 315 kph of wind. Two months have opened the idea, to the mind of the locals, of making tenements out of these vessels, and some could already be seen making subdivisions in them for living quarters.

Of course, I made sure I did not miss to visit the place where the controversial bunkhouses sat. I am not an engineer, architect, or contractor, but I surely would not buy any of those at the price the government had put on them. I heard its construction has temporarily stopped following an investigation commenced by the office tasked to rebuild from Yolanda, headed by former Senator, now Czar, Panfilo Lacson.

As I wound up my short tour of the city, I could not help but feel sad for the people of Tacloban, and the rest of the places that have suffered from the typhoon, not because they have to deal with the consequence of the typhoon –they are no stranger to it, though Yolanda is nothing like any that came before it—but mainly because they have to contend with bureaucrats who did not seem to miss any opportunity to make a killing, even in the face of devastation brought by the worst typhoon that the country has seen, if not the world. In the face of overwhelming generosity that the country is receiving from the international community, it is appalling that our very own government—at least the agencies responsible—has failed to rise to the occasion to match the gallantry that foreign governments have shown us.

I hope that with the creation of the office—and with Lacson at its helm—tasked especially to oversee the rehabilitation and reconstruction of localities destroyed by Typhoon Yolanda, the people left wounded and scarred by the disaster will have a fair chance at rebuilding their lives. In the end, people vigilance will go a long way in helping the government ensure its efforts go to their intended beneficiaries.