Tent cities rise in Northern Mindanao

INQUIRER PHOTO

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—With safe areas for resettlement still being sought, tens of thousands of flood survivors face life in tent cities for months.

More than 60,000 people displaced by Tropical Storm “Sendong” (international name: Washi) are sheltering in government buildings here and in Iligan City, most of them in schools that will reopen after the holidays, according to Benito Ramos, executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

“We can’t construct permanent shelters for them immediately. It will take some time. They have to move into tents when schools reopen on January 3,” Ramos told Agence France-Presse Monday.

President Benigno Aquino III has authorized the release of an additional P1 billion for core and emergency shelter assistance for Sendong victims in Mindanao and the Visayas.

At a news conference in Manila, Press Undersecretary Abigail Valte said the amount was on top of the P1.295 billion released last week that Malacañang had scraped from the 2011 calamity fund.

“The construction for temporary shelters has already started,” she said.

At the same time, Valte reiterated Malacañang’s instruction for displaced victims of landslides and floods in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan not to return to the areas declared dangerous for habitation.

“The President gave very explicit and very emphatic instructions to the [Philippine National Police] and to the [local government units] not to allow residents to return to these areas. We have already seen what happened before. We also appeal to the residents there to heed the call of the President. Let us not put ourselves in danger,” she said.

And while there are no specific instructions from the President, Valte said residents in areas that would be affected by the new low-pressure area should take the necessary precautions.

1 tent per family

Cagayan de Oro Vice Mayor Caesar Ian Acenas also said the schools serving as evacuation centers would be cleared to give way to the children for the opening of classes on January 3.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development has begun setting up tents on school and government grounds. At the City Central School, a tent is shared by at least three families.

Cagayan de Oro Representative Rufus Rodriguez (2nd district) said he would collect more tents for the evacuees. He said a family should be entitled to one tent.

In an interview with ABS-CBN television, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said Army engineering units were rushing to build temporary bunkhouses and latrines in Cagayan de Oro.

She said the same would be done in Iligan once the local government found a suitable relocation area.

“The target is to have transition shelters and bunkhouses in the first two weeks of January so families can feel some personal space that they can’t get in evacuation centers,” Soliman said.

But she conceded that the temporary buildings would be unlikely to be able to accommodate all the displaced, so others would have to stay in tents.

Mountainous Iligan

Ramos said finding a permanent resettlement site in Iligan would not be easy because the area was “mainly mountainous.”

He said the national government had no definite timetable for building permanent shelters but that he expected them to be ready in six months.

Meanwhile, the death toll continued to climb. As of Monday, 1,249 bodies have been recovered, with countless more still missing, Ramos said.

So far, 677 bodies of victims from Cagayan de Oro and about 470 bodies of victims from Iligan have been recovered.

Local officials have reported more than 1,000 people missing, a figure that Ramos, who also supervises the corpse retrieval operations by military units, considers possibly overstated.

Many of the dead remain unidentified and unclaimed at overflowing local mortuaries.

The focus of the search has shifted to the sea, where bloated bodies are scattered in debris-strewn Iligan Bay as well as Macajalar Bay near Cagayan de Oro.

“The search is tapering off. The problem is there could still be bodies buried under the uncollected debris in the cities,” Ramos said.

Far-flung areas

Hundreds of Army soldiers have moved out to devastated villagess on the outskirts of Cagayan de Oro to bring relief goods and help in major cleanup operations.

Major Eugenio Osias IV, spokesperson of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division (ID) based in Cagayan de Oro, said military vehicles had been deployed to far-flung areas that could not be reached by ordinary aid workers because of major debris obstruction.

“Our troops have shifted to cleanup and relief operations in the outskirts of the city which have not been reached by NGOs (nongovernment organizations),” Osias said.

One such place is Pagatpatan village, where mud is knee-deep, he said.

On Monday, some 850 families in Pagatpatan were treated by a medical and dental team led by Colonel Catherine Gosingan of the 4th ID’s Task Group Diamond Response.

The 4th ID, headed by Major General Victor Felix, conducted the medical mission along with the distribution of relief goods because more and more residents were getting sick since Sendong unleashed one of the most destructive flash floods to hit the country.

The division had focused its personnel and resources almost entirely on retrieval and relief operations for Sendong victims. Reports from AFP; Cathy C. Yamsuan and Dona Z. Pazzibugan in Manila; and Bobby Lagsa, Inquirer Mindanao

Originally posted at 12:00 pm | Monday, December 26, 2011