Relief teams, goods arrive at, depart from NAIA, Villamor Air Base

AP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The Ninoy Aquino International Airport and nearby Villamor Air Force Base were bustling with activity on Wednesday as the two facilities continued to serve as transit points for relief aid and humanitarian missions, both local and foreign.

Among those that arrived were two batches of relief and humanitarian assistance personnel sent by the Japanese government late Tuesday night.

A 15-member humanitarian reconnaissance team from the Canadian armed forces also arrived early Wednesday, followed by two C-17 aircraft sent by the Qatar air force’s relief and rescue operations unit.

Later in the afternoon, a 20-member delegation from Malaysia and other medical and humanitarian teams from Belgium and Estonia arrived to await deployment in the disaster-stricken areas.

Airlines have also been sending chartered flights to Tacloban, where the airport could not yet accommodate bigger passenger aircraft. Many Leyte natives instead booked flights to Cebu, from where they expected to get to Leyte by ferry.

“There’s no communication with my parents and siblings so rather than get worried here, I decided to go there myself,” Silvio Pontalba, one of the passengers waiting for his flight to Cebu, said.

Pontalba, who comes from Isabel, a town west of Ormoc City, said he managed to contact a cousin in Cebu and they agreed to meet there so they could buy rice and other supplies before taking a ferry to Leyte. He said he learned from social media that many of his townmates were starving as the town of Isabel was isolated from Ormoc, western Leyte’s commercial hub.

Airlines have limited their Tacloban trips to small planes. Cebu Pacific, for instance, said it would only use turbo-prop aircraft and would give priority to passengers earlier affected by flight cancellations and for humanitarian purposes.

The airline said it would retain its four daily flights to Tacloban as well as its three Cebu-Tacloban-Cebu flights.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines has exempted flights, both local and overseas carrying relief goods, from paying airport and air navigation fees at the NAIA and Mactan-Cebu International Airport.

At Villamor Airbase, however, Philippine Air Force personnel turned away people who had been hoping to hitch a free ride on C130 military planes heading to the disaster-stricken area.

“We apologize that we can’t take them in. We hope they understand that our priority are the relief goods, medicine, medical and humanitarian personnel,” Lt. Col. Miguel Ernesto Okol, the PAF spokesman, told reporters.

Some of the people at the base were carrying money and relief goods for their family and relatives in Tacloban or Cebu cities.

“If I can’t go there personally, I want to make sure that they get these,” Agnes Venancio, who came all the way from Novaliches, Quezon City, said, pointing at a carton of canned goods.

Venancio, a househelp and vendor, was worried about her widowed father and cousins in Tacloban. She said they asked for food and water the last time they talked over the phone.

Venancio and other Tacloban natives were referred instead to the nearby National Resource Operations Center warehouse of the social welfare department, where relief goods from the government and private donors were being packed.

The PAF was also unable to accommodate mediamen who wanted to head to Cebu or Tacloban to cover the relief efforts.

On Tuesday night, some passengers from Tacloban were among those flown from a C130 flight that arrived from Cebu.

One of them was Jaymar Lacandazo, who brought with him his wife and son. He said he and his family had queued for a flight to Manila as early as Monday.

Lacandazo said they were still traumatized by their ordeal and only escaped by holding on to the scaffolding of their house’s ceiling and later evacuating to a neighbor’s roof.

“People there did not really know what a storm surge is. I’m used to typhoons but on that day, the flood rose to more than a man’s height and in less than a minute, began sweeping everything away,” he recounted.

Lacandazo said his clan lost about 40 members, including four aunts and about a dozen cousins. He said he decided to go to Manila to contact relatives based in Manila and abroad so he could get more help.

RELATED STORIES:

More airports open; Tacloban gives priority to planes carrying relief goods

Rice looted in Philippines amid aid shortage

Mad rush out of Tacloban