WHAT WENT BEFORE: Supertyphoon ‘Yolanda’

A typhoon survivor stands on rubbish in Tacloban, central Philippines on Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013. AP FILE PHOTO

At least 16 million people in 44 provinces were affected when Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) struck the Visayas on Nov. 8, 2013.

Yolanda, the world’s strongest typhoon to hit land, packed sustained winds of 315 kilometers per hour. It left 6,300 dead, mostly by drowning, 28,689 injured and 1,062 missing.

More than 1 million families, or about 5.13 million people, were evacuated at the height of the typhoon, which damaged 1.14 million houses. Total cost of damage was placed at P95.5 billion.

The government’s P160-billion reconstruction master plan approved in November 2014 calls for 205,000 new homes for roughly 1 million people to be built in areas away from coastal danger zones.

But only 10 percent, or 20,893 houses, had been built as of March 2016, according to the Community of Yolanda Survivors and Partners, a newly formed alliance of 163 community organizations and nine nongovernment organizations.

According to an investigative report by the Inquirer in 2014, bunkhouses that served as temporary shelters for victims were reported to be overpriced and substandard.

A 24-room bunkhouse cost roughly below P200,000 and not P959,360-the price tag put on it in a Department of Public Works and Highway plan.

Each room measured 8.64 square meters—roughly the size of two Ping-Pong tables—for one family.

The United Nations, in a statement, also said that thousands of survivors remained in shanties without power or water supply. —COMPILED BY INQUIRER RESEARCH SOURCES: INQUIRER ARCHIVES, NDRRMC FINAL REPORT

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