Government steps up aid efforts in areas hit by ‘Paeng

TUGUEGARAO CITY, Cagayan — The government augmented yesterday its search and rescue efforts in the areas of Northern Luzon that were devastated by typhoon "Paeng" as it sent two additional Philippine Air Force (PAF) helicopters to the badly-hit province of Nueva Vizcaya.

The Nueva Vizcaya provincial board declared the whole province under a state of calamity Tuesday and allowed Gov. Luisa Cuaresma to access P20 million from its five-percent calamity fund to finance rehabilitation efforts in areas hardest hit by the typhoon.

Paeng left 19 people dead, mostly due to drowning and landslides, injured 58 others and damaged over 5,000 houses in the north before blowing out of the country, disaster officials said.

Fifteen other people remained missing after the typhoon departed Luzon Tuesday, where it triggered floods and landslides and knocked out power in hundreds of farming villages, the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) said.

The typhoon affected some 283,000 people in Northern Luzon and damaged P443,439,004.30 million worth of crops, livestock, roads, bridges and school buildings, the NDCC said.

Damage to roads and bridges was estimated by the NDCC at P98,635,000, while the damage to crops, livestock and fisheries was estimated at P334,804,004.30

A total of 64,480 families or 282,963 people, were directly affected by the typhoon, which battered 769 barangays in 68 municipalities and six cities as Paeng cut a swath of destruction through 10 provinces in Cagayan Valley, the Ilocos region, the Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR) and Central Luzon.

Of the people affected by the typhoon, 6,790 were left homeless after Paeng destroyed their residences, 2,288 houses in all, Office of Civil Defense (OCD) administrator Glenn Rabonza said.

Rabonza added that the death toll and total damage to infrastructure and agriculture are expected to rise once all reports from the field are collated by the NDCC. He added that clearing operations along blocked roads and highways are being undertaken by various agencies and that repair work on damaged roads and bridges was underway after the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) deployed engineers.

According to Regional Disaster and Coordinating Council (RDCC) chairman and Cagayan Valley police director Chief Superintendent Jefferson Soriano, two helicopters were deployed to support two other PAF helicopters sent earlier for the search and rescue operations there, particularly in mountainous Kasibu town and the remote village of Runruno in Quezon town, where at least five people died and 20 others are missing after they were swept away by rampaging rivers.

Kasibu and Quezon are two of the region’s major rice, corn, vegetable and fruit-producing towns.

The continued isolation of these towns from the rest of the country due to landslides and heavy mudflows is expected to trigger an increase in the price of agricultural produce.

"We have been exerting all efforts to somehow alleviate the situation of our constituents in the areas heavily devastated by the typhoon," Cuaresma said. "Right now we are concentrating in providing relief goods to affected communities as well as intensifying rescue efforts for those who went missing during the typhoon, in the hope that they are still alive, or at least we would be able to recover their remains."

Cuaresma and other local officials and search and rescue teams from the national government conducted aerial inspections to determine the extent of damage caused by the typhoon in the province.

They also brought cavans of rice and other prime commodities as part of the government’s rescue and relief efforts in these isolated towns. — With Jaime Laude, AP