Food, water, flashlights in demand

RICE, canned food, noodles, bottled water, bread, candles and flashlights.

These are what 47-year old bank employee Stella Capares placed in her shopping basket as she joined shoppers who thronged grocery stores since Tuesday evening.

“We may be unable to go out and buy more food during and after typhoon Yolanda so we might as well get enough supplies for a week,” she told Cebu Daily News at a local grocery store in downtown Cebu City.

Capares said she had to buy enough for her family of five.

Nida Pelego, 55, of barangay Basak San Nicholas, Cebu City lined up at a department store to stock up on some essentials a day before typhoon “Yolanda’s” arrival in the country.

“When I heard the weather reports, I went straight to the mall. It’s better to be prepared, whether the storm arrives or not),” Pelego said in Cebuano.

“If it hits land, I hope it weakens so the damage won’t be great,” Pelego said.

A barangay official who requested anonymity bought 10 rechargeable flashlights in the same grocery store to distribute to volunteers.

Long lines of shoppers were spotted in malls as well as purified water refilling stations in barangay Guadalupe and some parts of Cebu City.

Boboy Lago said their refilling station in Guadalupe received more than a hundred customers last Wednesday, the first time they had this large volume of buyers.

“We stopped receiving orders because we have to process and purify our water,” Lago said.

People also lined up to withdraw money from ATMs in Cebu Business Park.

““They ran out of cash, this is the fourth ATM machine I tried to withdraw from,” a certain Arnel said.

Carmela Go of the Cebu Bankers Club said there would be no service interruption in ATM machines in the province as long as there is still power supply. Correspondents Fe Marie Dumaboc and Jose Santino S. Bunachita