Long road ahead for typhoon-hit businesses

TANAUAN, Leyte—A monster typhoon that laid waste to central Philippines wiped out livelihoods as well as homes, leaving small traders and shop owners facing a long and perilous road back to solvency.

In Capiz province, dubbed the country’s “seafood capital,” the supply of crabs and prawns has been adversely affected.

In the immediate aftermath of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: “Haiyan”)—one of the most powerful storms ever to make landfall—planning had to be sacrificed for the immediate task of survival in a world without food and water.

For trader Aleda Afable, the choice was to butcher the only remaining cow from a herd swept away by the typhoon-triggered storm surges, or keep the animal that represented the last shred of her investment.

In the end, the dire situation made the decision for her.

“This place probably won’t be rebuilt in months, or even a year,” she said, looking over what little is left of the coastal town of Tanauan, Leyte province.

“With relief supplies trickling in slowly, I was forced to butcher the cow,” Afable sobbed, as two men cleaned the hide and tail—all that was left after sharing the meat with her neighbors who had eaten next to nothing for days.

Great equalizer

“This disaster is a great equalizer. There are no more rich and poor, and those who have anything left must be able to share them,” said the mother of two.

The United Nations said early assessments indicated that 5.1 million workers, in 36 provinces, had been affected by the loss of livelihoods.

Afable’s family had been relatively well-off and their three-story home was one of the few still standing in Tanauan after Yolanda powered through on Nov. 8.

The quiet town was once a bustling community featuring ancestral homes and churches.

Shops that lined the main avenue were reduced to splinters, with debris only beginning to be cleared up eight days after the destruction.

At the main junction leading to the town proper a sign in broken English pleads: “Help us, no food’s typhoon victim.”

On Saturday, emergency crews fished the bloated remains of a woman from the river that bisects the town, while in the square in front of a partially destroyed Catholic church, several bodies in black body bags remained to be collected.

A pawnshop promising low-interest loans still had its sign intact, while families who had lost their homes had taken over a commercial building after the tenants evacuated.

Outside a hardware store that has been damaged but is still standing, 15-year-old Aivee Joy Rosette waited with her cousins for her mother who had gone out to search for something to eat.

“My mother said we’ll try to reopen the shop, but I told her I want to leave this place. I’m still afraid and there is no one left anyway,” she said.

Eastern Samar

On the neighboring island of Samar, which was spared the worst of the storm surge but battered by the typhoon’s 315-kilometer-per-hour winds, there are signs of emerging economic activity.

In Guiuan town, a handful of intrepid traders had laid out makeshift stalls on the fringes of the main market square in front of the church.

Some sold freshly caught fish, while other offered eggs, a chicken and some bananas.

And on the road leading to an old military airstrip outside Guiuan, where the US military was flying in relief supplies, people had set up similar small stores laying out wares that appeared to have been salvaged from the wreckage, including muddied Coke bottles, sachets of soap powder and cooking oil.

The congressman for Eastern Samar province, Ben Evardone, said 80 percent of its coconut trees—the base of the region’s economy—had been destroyed and it would take a minimum of three to five years for saplings to bear fruit.

Tacloban hotel

In Tacloban City, which bore the brunt of the 5-meter (16-foot) storm surge, the 50-room Asia Star Hotel, owned by Kenneth Uy, has been opened for business.

“Many businessmen have left. But I’ll stay. I am from here and this is my city. If we don’t help ourselves, who will?” Uy said.

Having already partially restored power and water in his hotel, Uy had found customers willing to pay the inflated room rate of $100 a night.

As well as members of the PNP Special Action Force flown in to help secure law and order in city, international aid agency staff and media crews made up the guests.

“I hope when they come back next time, it is not for work, but for pleasure,” Uy said.

Seafood industry

In Pontevedra, Capiz, Gertrude Paclibar of the town’s disaster response office said, “Right now, we’re still coping because there’s an abundant catch after the fish cages were destroyed.”

However, she said, they would start feeling the effect on the industry in December, when the supply ends and no chance of speedily rehabilitating destroyed prawn, crab and fish cages.

A week past the typhoon, the boulevard where crab and prawn stores used to be was lined with ruins of the thatched seafood stalls. The town’s public market was busy although with vendors fixing their damaged stalls instead.

A group of seafood dealers were huddled outside the market.

“I lost half of my bangus (milkfish) that escaped into the water,” which meant a million pesos of his investment, said a fish cage owner, Nonoy Binlero.

“That’s why I ended sleeping in SM—sulod sang merkado (inside the market),” said fish vendor Joe Badoles, who now found himself with nothing to sell.

The group of men laughed. “Sorry, we’re just trying to laugh it off. When Yolanda comes back, I’ll surely slap her. Look at what she did,” said Badoles, turning serious.

People not buying

There was a surge of seafood catch two days after the Nov. 8 typhoon broke open the fish cages. The price of crab and prawns dropped 50 percent to P150 per kilo while that for bangus fell to P60 from the usual P160 per kilo.

“But no one would buy them because people were afraid the crab and prawns fed on the dead bodies,” said SPO4 Ernie Bornales, the deputy police chief here.

He said crabs and prawns clung to every dead body the police had recovered from Panay River.

They recovered six remains that drifted down Pontevedra waters from the adjacent town of Panay, the police officer said.

Another fish dealer said the traders could not ship the crabs and prawns because the airport was then still closed. They ate the stock themselves rather than leave them to rot.

Tricycle driver Marvin Teonor said he was not scared of eating seafood, but he had no money to buy them since the typhoon destroyed his hut.

Allaying fish scare

Esteban Francisco Contreras, Pontevedra disaster response officer, allayed fish scares by saying the products being shipped out were harvested from what was left in the cages.

“Besides, there are no more dead bodies being recovered, while the dead in Estancia, Iloilo, were too far to be drifted down here,” he said.

Seafood products from Pontevedra are exported to Manila and Taiwan. The trade has started to resume late last week just as the Roxas airport and a local ice plant managed to operate on generators.

But the town incurred P106 million in losses from milkfish, crabs and prawns alone, according to a post-disaster assessment of the municipality.

The entire agricultural sector of Capiz lost P697 million, according to the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council.—Reports from AFP; and Maricar Cinco, Inquirer Southern Luzon

 

Originally posted: 12:31 pm | Sunday, November 17th, 2013

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