Zamboanga crisis veterans Roxas, Gazmin no match for ‘Yolanda’

Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin. INQUIRER FILE PHOTOS

MANILA, Philippines—They may have dodged bullets for three weeks in Zamboanga City but they didn’t reckon with the power of Supertyphoon “Yolanda.”

Sent to the Visayas to supervise relief operations as Yolanda pummeled the area, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas remained incommunicado to relief officials in Manila despite efforts to contact them.

The Inquirer also tried to call both Cabinet secretaries on their cell phones but only got prerecorded messages saying the “subscriber cannot be reached.”

Before their Visayas trip, both Roxas and Gazmin had been at the forefront of government efforts to restore the peace in Zamboanga following raids by Moro separatist rebels.

During the Zamboanga crisis, the two secretaries were regularly in contact with the media.

Bad communication lines

But efforts by officials of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) and the Inquirer to contact them in Leyte were unsuccessful, at least as of Friday afternoon.

Apparently, even President Aquino seemed to have trouble reaching them.

Mr. Aquino himself called up Undersecretary Eduardo del Rosario, executive director of the NDRRMC, to inquire about the hampered communication lines in the areas hit by Yolanda.

“I told him that we are still getting data because we don’t have communication in Samar and Leyte, and we hope to [restore it] as early as possible,” Del Rosario said at a press conference.

“Definitely, as the President of the Philippines, he is very much concerned and he would like to know what is happening on the ground,” Del Rosario added.

Still trying

Director Edgar Allan Tabell of the Department of the Interior and Local Government said at a meeting of the NDRRMC on Friday afternoon that Roxas’ office was still “trying to establish communication” with him.

“I’d like to think that he’s still there [in Leyte]. The communication lines in Tacloban are down,” Tabell said.

Asked when was the last time Gazmin was heard from, Del Rosario declined to give a categorical answer. “I cannot answer that because what I’d say might not be the latest because he (Gazmin) may have spoken to someone else.”

Fallen trees

Del Rosario said he had spoken to someone in Leyte who had a satellite phone and had instructed the person to go where the two secretaries were staying.

“Hopefully, we could establish contact with them at the soonest possible time,” Del Rosario said.

But reaching Gazmin and Roxas could be challenging, especially because fallen trees and debris may have littered the roads going to where they were staying.

Persistence pays off

In the end, persistence paid off.

Friday at around 8 p.m., Gazmin’s chief of staff, Peter Galvez, told the Inquirer he was finally able to contact his boss by satellite phone.

“The signal was clearer. Earlier, the signal was garbled, we couldn’t understand each other,” Galvez said.

Galvez said that, according to Gazmin, Leyte “was very devastated.”

Military units and detachments in Samar and Leyte provinces also could not be reached, the NDRRMC was told. But the Armed Forces Central Command in Cebu was reachable.

On standby

The military said Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Bautista had ordered the Central and Southern Luzon Commands to make available all their air and naval assets for rescue and damage assessment.

Bautista also directed other area commanders to support humanitarian and disaster relief operations. Helicopters and C-130 aircraft were also on standby, the AFP said.

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