Super Typhoon to hit Philippines

I think you are right. An overiding message I pick up on is that all Filipino politicians are selfish. But I don't think that is necessarily the case.

He is a rich man but he gave to the needy people on the island he owns.
We can complain about politicians but I thought his generosity was noteworthy.
His grandfather was Sergio Osmeña, the 4th President of the Philippines.

Just to clarify - he is obliged to do that in terms of Pinoy culture - that's not an act of generosity - it's his obligation - his utang, as the datu.

And he's complied pretty minimally; two kilos of rice per household is not much. In return, his tenants are obliged to support him.

If, owning the island, he had not done that, he would have been walang hiya - shameless.

It's difficult for us foreigners to understand how these things work - and have always worked. A Filipino landowner and indeed a Filipino politician (usually the same thing!) is obliged to provide for "his people" and "his people" are under an obligation to serve him. One reason for corruption in politics is the fact that politicians are always being asked for small amounts of cash and food by the poor who voted for them - the politician has to get the money somewhere. (This does not apply to Osmena, who is rich enough already...)

Interesting article in the Inquirer:

http://opinion.inquirer.net/65449/blame-gahttp://opinion.inquirer.net/65449/blame-gameme

This is the first time that I have seen a list of what the Philippines military actually did in the days after the typhoon struck. I don't see much to criticise there.

The Yolanda Crisis Mapped

"Thousands of Filipinos continue their search for their missing loved ones in the wake of super typhoon "Yolanda" (international name "Haiyan"), which ravaged parts of the Philippines on Friday, November 8.

ABS-CBN News has been receiving many reports on inquiries on missing persons, need for relief assistance, reports of overpricing, and requests for media coverage since Yolanda's landfall last Friday.

As of 5 p.m. on Thursday, many have been reported missing in Leyte and Eastern Samar, with most missing persons reported in Tacloban City.

Relief and food assistance have also been requested by people residing in areas marked in the map plotted out by student-volunteers of ABS-CBNnews.com, based on messages received through social media and e-mail.

The map features bright spots as well, as people report relatives they found after days of zero contact."


http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/11/14/13/yolanda-crisis-mapped

Apo im not seeing your missus island on the map in the above post perhaps it could be added I cant see how

Northern Cebu

From Normalcy to Chaos

"We realized that we were entering the typhoon’s path when we saw the trees; or, rather, what used to be trees.
Palm, mahogany, mango, and acacia… no matter how thin or strong, none were spared. Mangled leafless skeletons littered the sides of the road. This area, like most of the Philippines, was once a sea of green. It was now shades of brown, as branches and bark were torn apart from the force of the winds… in excess of 200 miles per hour."

"After a total of 3.5 hours of driving, we arrived in the Bogo/San Remegio area and saw the devastation first-hand…
image"

Nuclear Bomb? Nearly.

"As we drove along it was evident that this once green agricultural community had become a wasteland. Electric poles stood at grotesque angles, often hanging over the roadway… almost one push away from falling. Trees were ripped to shreds, their branches strewn across the ground and the trunks ripped apart as if they were an ogre’s toothpicks."



I suspect that there are many barangays in remote areas that have been entirely wiped out… it’s doubtful that a news camera has even seen them.



http://brian-sheehan.tumblr.com/post/67139106347/devastation-in-the-north

Hi Keith, If you zoom into "Daanbantayan" on that map you will see an island to the N.E. of the tip of Cebu Island. That is Malapascua.
If you use the right scale, you will see another island to the north of Malapascua and close to Leyte. This is Carnaza.
There was no way of adding this to the map provided.

Also, http://www.ikimap.com/map/administrative-area-carnaza-philippines

Cheers.

Was at Tesco today and there were Filipinos taking charitable donations for the Red Cross, at the door. And also at the checkouts in exchange for bagging the shopping.

what the US commander has to say: (actually, he says plenty, and it all makes sense):

http://www.dvidshub.net/video/308037/brig-gen-paul-kennedy#.Uofobd5FDIX

A Filipina replies (in fine style) to CNN's Anderson Cooper - point is, she was there in the same place at the same time...)

http://www.pinoyheadline.com/?p=1784

Interesting.

My ex-fiancée's friend lives on Biliran, just off the north coast of Leyte. She says there is no Smart of Globe signal. ATMs not working for 3 months and no offices working. Compensation pending. She has headed down to Ormoc City but says things are pretty bad there too. Not much food, unstable phone signal and she has no money.

Hopefully she can get to Cebu from Ormoc by ferry, assuming her brother in Cebu is OK.

I was out for a walk when she left me a Yahoo message, so we have not been able to have a conversation. Sent her 20,000 by World Remit. I hope all her family are OK.

Does anyone know if there is anywhere in Ormoc where monies sent by World Remit or WU can be collected?

It seems everywhere is closed for business.

My wife's family are from a village just outside Macarthur. She spoke with them this morning. The aid they have received so far amounts to zero.

They did see a helicopter flying overhead once, and everyone in the surrounding areas went crazy, running after it. Eventually it dropped just 3 bags of food to hundreds of people.

Her family have been able to borrow 25,000 php (with interest obviously) from a local businessman. The only reason they have been able to borrow it is because they have a daughter overseas.

This helps them, but they are also worried that it puts them at risk. There are armed people going about robbing anyone who has anything and they are hoping it doesn't become more widely known that they can do this. Her father is keeping a gun close by!

They have to take a 3 hour journey on a motor bike to get food (and also to get a phone signal). Rice is being sold for 3 times the normal cost. There was a rice store in the area and some of the stock got damaged so is unsellable. This is being sold to people.

Some people are clearly seeing the typhoon as a useful business oportunity.

They live on the coast. They can't go fishing because there are too many dead bodies floating in the sea "like rubbish".

In one nearby village 27 people were killed, and there are also dead bodies in the streets of Macarthur, which are just being left there.

We still can't get any money to them, so they are still having to borrow.

Sorry to hear, Maharg. How far is McArthur from Tacloban? I have just been trying to find out a little more about it. Apparently one of the statues was felled during the typhoon?

It's about 50km south of Tacloban. They think the bodies in the sea are mainly from Tacloban.

Yeah. That's actually in Palo, which is slightly further north and is the spot where General Macarthur landed..

My wife's mom has just told us that her moms two sisters and mother in nothern Cebu are okay. They have no rooves on their houses so are in a temporary "tent" type structure. There are a lot of international aid people about, apparently, but no real sign of Philippine support, so they say.

‘Who’s in charge here?’

"Where is the government?

Five days after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” flattened the central Philippines, thousands of victims were still crying out for food on Wednesday, their dead left rotting by the roadside, prompting CNN’s Anderson Cooper to declare that “there is no real evidence of organized recovery or relief.”

Even as an enormous global aid effort gathered momentum and relief supplies began trickling into the airport in Tacloban, capital of the worst-hit province of Leyte, officials did not have a full grasp of the magnitude of the devastation and could provide no guidance on when basic emergency needs could be met.

While President Aquino suggested in a CNN interview on Wednesday that estimates of 10,000 or more dead may turn out to be high, international relief officials said they were still assuming the worst and were worried that bottlenecks and delays could prevent them from reaching millions of victims for days.

Officials in Manila found themselves on the defensive, asserting that they were doing the best they could despite a storm that Valerie Amos, the top United Nations relief coordinator, who flew to Manila on Tuesday to help take charge of efforts, called the “most deadly and destructive” to hit the Philippines.

Amos pleaded for more than $300 million in emergency aid.

Malacañang admitted on Tuesday that it had asked the United States for help and that many survivors had not received relief.

“We’ve asked the US for aid and the secretary of defense says they are sending an aircraft carrier and a couple of other ships—those are en route,” said Ricky Carandang, a spokesman for the Palace.

“There are lots of remote areas that haven’t received aid,” Carandang said. “The priority is to supply food and water. With communications partially functioning, with ports and roads blocked, we need to get that clear first. We need to get the roads clear before you can get the aid to them.”

Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) slammed into the Samar-Leyte area on Friday with sustained winds of up to 215 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 250 kph, then swept across the central Philippines, flattening entire towns, killing a still undetermined number of people, and knocking down power and communication lines.

The government blames its slow response to the lack of power and communications and questions the death toll estimate of 10,000, only to show the absence of organization in responding to the crisis.

The Aquino response

CNN’s chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, on Wednesday put President Aquino on the spot, impressing on him that his administration’s response to the disaster would probably define his presidency.

“Mr. President you talked about a moral responsibility from the world,” she told Aquino in an exclusive interview.

“Let me ask you about your responsibility as President. Clearly, I don’t know whether you agree, but the way you respond and your government respond to this terrible devastation will probably define your presidency,” Amanpour said.

“Many have talked about how much effort has gone in, how much reform you have done, how much work you’ve done against corruption. But many people might end up judging you on how your government has responded. What do you say to that?” she asked.

The President did not answer the question and instead mentioned other areas in the Visayas, “with the exception” of Leyte and Eastern and Western Samar, where the number of casualties officials had said was “minimal.”

But Cabinet Secretary Jose Rene Almendras, asked in a news briefing on Wednesday about Amanpour’s observation, said: “I don’t think it is an acid test of this administration. This is an acid test of the Filipino people. How well we handle this crisis will matter a lot. Yes, there will be challenges, but we will move on.”

Asked by the Inquirer who was calling the shots, Almendras said, “The one calling the shots is actually the President and the Cabinet members.”

At the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), reporters asked Executive Director Eduardo del Rosario who was in charge of the government’s response to Yolanda.

“Not me,” Del Rosario said. “It’s the Executive Secretary (Paquito Ochoa), ably assisted by Secretary (to the Cabinet Jose Rene) Almendras.”

Del Rosario last presided over a meeting of the national disaster council on Friday, hours before Yolanda slammed into the Samar-Leyte area.

President Aquino presided over the next meeting, on Saturday, and walked out of the meeting on Sunday after showing dissatisfaction with Del Rosario’s report.

Ochoa has since been presiding over meetings of the council.

Unretrieved corpses

Former Election Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, who grew up in Ormoc City, spoke on Wednesday about the magnitude of the devastation that he saw during a visit to his hometown and neighboring Tanauan, Palo, Tolosa, Dulag and Abuyog on Sunday.

“It’s not something you would want to happen to your worst enemy,” he told the Inquirer, recalling the sight of corpses stuffed into sacks and piled up on the streets.

“We went around in the evening in an air-conditioned car. We were wearing 3M masks, meaning the heavy duty one, but believe me, the stench was so bad,” Larrazabal said.

Amanpour cited CNN stories showing “the slowness, the bottleneck of trying to get vital aid to the people.”

Aquino said “the sheer number of people who were affected in these three provinces is quite daunting.”

“What hampers the effort is that the typhoon wrought havoc on the power lines and also the communication facilities, giving us immense difficulty in identifying needs and thereby dispatching the necessary relief supplies and vital equipment,” he added.

But with the world reaching out in the biggest relief effort yet for the Philippines, the government apparently remained unable to find an efficient way to ensure that food, medicines and shelter actually reached the survivors sooner, not later.

‘Master plan’

The President met with key Cabinet officials on Tuesday night on a “master plan” to deal with the disaster, Almendras said.

It was not clear, however, if the plan was drawn up only that night, meaning four days after Yolanda laid waste to the central Philippines.

Asked if the plan was working, Almendras said: “This is the first time we are going to try it at this magnitude. So far, things are moving. So far, goods are moving.”

Almendras acknowledged logistical difficulties, but blamed these on the breakdown of local response where local officials should be the first responders.

That “goods are not reaching some people” was “really a local issue that we are trying to address now,” he said, noting village officials knew who should receive relief and where.

But when reminded that local officials themselves were victims of the typhoon and that the President had already declared a state of national calamity, Almendras said government personnel were now being sent to disaster areas from other locations.

“If the local governments do not have the resources to handle that logistic process, the national government will step in,” Almendras said, reiterating that the government had powers to do so, which Palace officials had been talking about since the weekend.

Almendras admitted that the government was facing “not a small amount of work” and had distributed relief only at “a small level today.”

But he said officials had a “dream”—to reach all survivors—and they would fulfill that “challenging task” in the coming days.

He said the master plan involved accelerating the repacking of relief, expanding supply centers in such places as Cebu and Davao, speeding up the movement of relief and bringing in government workers from other regions to the typhoon-ravaged areas.

Almendras said the government was considering using many of its 1.6 million workers to help repack relief goods.

The government will deploy more law enforcement and security forces to restore peace and order in Leyte and Samar, he said.

Can’t say when

Asked how soon the survivors would actually receive relief, Almendras said: “I would like to give you a date and a time if possible, but that is not within the national government’s control how effectively we can hit the ground.”

“There are places that are very remote, which we need to know also so that we can reach them,” he added.

The systems breakdown in Eastern Visayas has prompted questions about local governments’ capability to handle disaster preparation and response and whether the national government should take over the job to ensure maximum safety.

Muntinlupa Rep. Rodolfo Biazon, head of the House national defense committee, on Wednesday said most local governments had so far been unable to cope with the responsibility of organizing mass evacuations and providing temporary shelters for typhoon survivors.

He said that at present, the national government’s role was only to provide information about the strength of coming storms, with local governments handling the preparations and response.

The setup worked well in the past, Biazon said, but local government capabilities now looked inadequate because of the increasing strength of typhoons.

The local governments in Samar and Leyte alerted residents to the size and power of Yolanda, but were unable to force the people to move to safer grounds.

“I believe the national government has the authority and resources to force evacuations and prepare for safe, temporary shelters before a supertyphoon,” Biazon said.

He said he had asked Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. to find out whether there really was a complete breakdown in local preparations so that the House could decide whether it should give the job to the national government.

Time for unity

Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello said he shared President Aquino’s frustration with his underlings who were quite slow in responding to the crisis.

But Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said this was not the time for tossing blame.

“All of us have to unite to deliver relief to the victims of Yolanda. It is not the time to pinpoint whether the fault lies with Malacañang or with local officials,” Colmenares said.

He, however, acknowledged news reports that five days after Yolanda flattened the central Philippines, most survivors still had to receive any help from the government.

Yolanda has shown that private companies and individuals and civic organizations are more effective in delivering aid in times of calamities, Colmenares said"

Source:-
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/526877/whos-in-charge-here