Survivors find a different, safer world in Cebu

EMMA Elnido, 46, recalls the horror of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” after fleeing Tacloban City and seeking shelter in the village of Tinago in Cebu City. JUNJIE MENDOZA/CEBU DAILY NEWS

CEBU CITY—Emma Elnido, 46, was still nursing a swollen face but managed a faint smile after escaping from Palo town, Leyte province, which Supertyphoon “Yolanda” turned into a ghost town.

The sports complex in Barangay Tinago in Cebu City, where she and members of her family are now staying, is a mansion compared to their former house in the coastal area of Baras, which now lies in ruins.

“This is totally different from what I left behind,” she said.

Elnido, a teacher, said she was waiting for her husband Elmer, daughter Ezra and two nieces to also arrive in Cebu so they could all proceed to Manila to stay with relatives.

“We don’t want to go back to our hometown. Maybe later but not now,” she said crying.

Elnido and 12 other family members and relatives are among the first batch of

90 evacuees who were taken in at the Tinago gymnasium on Wednesday after arriving on Tuesday at  Mactan Air Base on board an Air Force C-130 plane.

At least 1,000 evacuees from Leyte and Samar provinces have started arriving at the air base since early this week, but some had flown to other parts of the country.

Joel Garganera, incoming village chief of Tinago, said only 300 persons could be accommodated at the sports complex. Other evacuees would have to be sent to Cogon Ramos, another sports complex in the city.

“I am happy because we are secure here,”  Elnido said.

She said it would not be easy to get over the trauma that she and her family went through when Yolanda struck. “The children refused to be away from their parents,” she said. “Our trauma is tremendous. The entire block of Barangay Baras was wiped out,” she added.

Elnido said that like other families in her neighborhood, her family thought they had prepared enough for the monster storm.

She and her husband shopped for food and stored some of these in their car.

They also sent three of their children and Elnido’s 70-year-old mother to Tacloban City, where they thought it  would be safer.

Elnido said what they failed to anticipate was the storm surge, which reached up to 20 feet in Tacloban City. She and her husband were in the bedroom of their bungalow when the storm surge struck between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. on Friday.

Seawater was chest deep when they opened their bedroom door. She tried to hang on to window grills but the strong water current swept her out of the house and crumpled their house.

“Everything happened so fast that all you could do is pray and hang on to anything that you could touch,” she said.

A crying Elnido said she thought she would die when a hard object, probably a tree branch, hit her in the face while she swam. Water current pulled her three houses away from her house until she was able to hold on to the steel post of a neighbor’s water tank.

“I did not know where my husband was. I said to myself that maybe he was already gone,” Elnido said.

She said  she lost consciousness, and when she recovered a few minutes later, only knee-deep water was left in their area. It was only then that  she realized that the right side of her face was bleeding while her eye was swollen.

“But I did not mind the pain. I was too happy to see that my husband also survived,” she said.

SURVIVORS of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” arrive at the new Tinago Sports Complex in Cebu City. JUNJIE MENDOZA/CEBU DAILY NEWS

Elnido said she received 11 stitches in the face when she was brought to the emergency room, the only remaining portion of  Palo Hospital that was spared by the storm surge.

Elnido said life became difficult after the storm. They had to pick up hotdogs floating in the flood. They also took food from a floating refrigerator that came their way.

Their neighbors, she said, took a dead cow.

Later on Friday, Elnido said she and Elmer went to Tacloban City  to check on her mother and children and were happy to see that they were safe.

But the lack of food and fear for their security made them decide to fly to Cebu.

Tacloban City and Barangay Baras in Palo, Leyte, which they left on Friday, are still without power. Food is starting to become scarce and looting has started.

There were  reports that even New People’s Army  members had started stealing food from stores in the public market in Tacloban City,  Elnido said.

“I’m ashamed of the thieving in Tacloban City because we hail from there, but it’s really true,” she said.

Elnido also bewailed the absence of help from the government. When they left Tacloban City on Tuesday afternoon, they still had not received any relief  from the government, she said.

“The national government should do something. They should not leave it (relief efforts) to the local government units  because they are also victims,” she added.

Elnido said they queued up with several other hundreds of people forming four lines at the Tacloban airport for a free ride on board the military’s C-130 planes to Cebu.

They started lining up at 9 a.m. and finally boarded the plane at 4 p.m.

“We stayed on the line even if it was raining. You could not leave the line because somebody else will take your place,” she said.

Elnido said they would stay at the Tinago gym until the rest of her family arrive in Cebu so they could proceed to Manila and start anew.