Guiuan townsfolk still hope for flights

WAITING Maribel Pambungan (left), 32, and her child, and Lucina Rosadiño, 52, have been waiting for four days with other survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” at the airport in Guiuan, Eastern Samar, for a C-130 plane that will fly them out of their devastated town to Manila. RICHARD BALONGLONG/INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

GUIUAN, Eastern Samar—Fighting off fatigue, hunger and all the discomfort of staying in a makeshift tent at the airport here, hundreds of survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” have continued to wait and cling to hopes of catching a free plane ride out of this devastated town.

“We can’t do anything but wait. We have nowhere else to go,” said Maribel Pambungan, 32. The woman and her 2-year-old son have been waiting for a flight to Metro Manila for the past four days.

Pambungan is among the scores of people who have refused to leave the queue at the airport grounds in Barangay Cantahay despite the decreasing number of cargo planes and helicopters flying in and out of the coastal town.

Since Yolanda struck on Nov. 8, C-130 planes and other aircraft from the Philippine Air Force (PAF) and those of other countries have been transporting people in and out of town for free.

But as relief operations entered their second week, flights have become fewer day after day, made more evident by the absence of foreign military aircraft, such as those from the United States, Australia, Britain and France, which for the past 10 days had been flying the Guiuan-Manila route.

The only aircraft left are C-130 planes of the PAF and another of the Swedish Air Force, but these are bound for Cebu province.

Of the 13 flights that left from here since Nov. 21, only four were bound for Metro Manila. A total of 385 passengers have been flown out, airport records showed.

What authorities cannot tell the waiting people is that there are no more Manila-bound flights coming.

“We simply cannot bear to dash their hopes of being able to leave this place after waiting for so long and enduring all the hardships for the past couple of days,” said PO2 Edgar San Pablo, who led a police team manning the airport gate.

But the people are unperturbed. They said they could not take the Cebu flights or the bus back to Eastern Samar because they were penniless.

They have slept, eaten and waited in a low and cramped space, with only a woven plastic serving as protection from the often wet and muddy concrete floor.

The weary-looking travelers spring to reform their line, tugging their bags close whenever they hear the roar of a plane engine, or see a tiny speck of arriving aircraft from afar.

Lucina Rosadiño, 52, of Barangay Naparaan in Salcedo town, said she left her family of three and her parents to look for any job in Metro Manila so she could send money to sustain them.

“We are left with nothing and we are getting hungry day after day. We cannot just stare at one another all day or depend on relief goods. We must stand on our own feet,” Rosadiño told the Inquirer.