Grateful ‘Yolanda’ evacuees leave Pasay shelter

LUIS Loberiano is one of the last few occupants of the tent city put up for “Yolanda” evacuees in Pasay. After a two-month stay, his family is heading back to Samar province, carrying mostly donated items that included a pedicab.

For two months, a cramped tent sheltered the Loberiano family at the parking lot of an elementary school in Pasay City.

But for these survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” from Guiuan, Samar province, luck was still on their side since they still managed to spend Christmas together, drawing warmth from each other amid the chilly climate, with only blankets for walls.

The Loberianos—composed of 60-year-old Jovita and two of her children—were among the 139 families airlifted from the Visayas on C-130 military planes and who had taken refuge at the tent city put up at Villamor Airbase Elementary School.

On Thursday, they will be among the last three families scheduled to return to the region that has just started to rebuild from the devastation wrought by the Nov. 7, 2013, killer storm.

A total of 27 families composed of 64 individuals from the evacuation site started the long road trip home to Leyte province on Tuesday. They were transported in four buses.

Two 10-wheel trucks carried their possessions, mostly donated items: Each family, for example, received a pedicab and a cell phone from various private donors.

The first batch of tent dwellers to make the journey home was composed of 22 families, who left Pasay on Dec. 20.

The majority of the evacuees chose to stay with relatives in Metro Manila or nearby Luzon provinces, according to Pasay social welfare officer Karen Recarro.

They arrived in Pasay “with only the clothes on their backs,” Recarro recalled, but now they would be returning to their communities with their trauma alleviated, their physical condition improved, and their hopes restored.

City Hall spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said it took two months for some evacuees to leave because “some of them wanted to stay and they got ready to go home only now.”

Staying put was a “mutual decision” between the Pasay government and the evacuees, Malaya added.

Luis Loberiano, Jovita’s eldest who had been living in Metro Manila for the past 10 years, helped his mother and two siblings evacuate from Samar days after the killer storm.

Luis rushed to the province to look for them after failed attempts to contact them on the phone. “I could no longer recognize it. Everything was destroyed,” he recalled, referring to his village.

Thankfully, he found his parents, his seven siblings and their respective families alive in what was left of their neighborhood in Barangay Cambuyo, Guiuan town. With the local hospital and parish also destroyed, and with food running out, Loberiano was insistent that his siblings and Jovita move to Metro Manila.

His mother, then stricken with sinusitis, and two of his siblings agreed to go with him on the C-130 plane.

The 37-year-old Luis first brought them to a relative’s house on Buendia, but it proved too small to accommodate that many guests. They eventually found their way to the tent city.

Luis, who went on to live with his loved ones in their tent, said he still considered themselves “lucky” when the Inquirer saw him preparing for their return trip.

He was particularly thankful for the makeshift clinic put up at the tent city, where he received medicines for his mother.

He said they decided to return to Samar after learning from his relatives there they had already started rebuilding their houses.

Among the items he was packing were “36 boxes of relief goods” which he intended to share with neighbors upon arrival.

The donated pedicab, he said, could also help his father, a fisherman, bring his catch to the local market.

He plans to return to Metro Manila with his mother soon to have her sinus problem treated in a hospital with the help of a “sponsor” he met during their stay at the tent city.

“Help poured in for us here,” said the grateful Loberiano. “They really took care of us.”