MANILA, Philippines - Entire villages in four towns in Davao Oriental have apparently been washed away by typhoon “Pablo,” an official said yesterday.
National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) executive director Benito Ramos said the coastal towns of Cateel, Baganga, Boston and Caraga were severely hit by the typhoon.
“Structures like houses, hospitals, gymnasiums,schools and government offices were destroyed,” Ramos said in a phone interview.
Philippine Red Cross secretary general Gwendolyn Pang said “houses were smashed to the ground, the plants are gone and even century-old trees were uprooted. It’s like they were wiped out. They are now like ghost towns.”
As of yesterday afternoon, the NDRRMC)said the death toll from Pablo has hit 714, with 890 still missing and almost 2,000 sustained injury.
Of the number of fatalities, 457 have been identified and turned over to their families, while 257 remained unclaimed.
Officials believe most of the unclaimed bodies were entire families wiped out by the storm, thus no one was left to attend to them.
Data from the NDRRMC showed Pablo displaced 64,942 families composed of 308,110 individuals. Of the number, 25,812 families or 116,404 persons remained in 134 evacuations centers.
“I have not seen this kind of sisaster in my 15 years of service with Red Cross,” Pang said, adding that residents have sought refuge in any structure available, even mausoleums.
“It seems like they are still in survival mode even after so many days. When we asked them what they need, they asked for basic necessities only like food. They are not yet thinking about their houses,” she added.
Farmers to beggars
The secluded valley that sheltered Jerry Blanco’s banana crop from communist and Muslim rebels offered no refuge from typhoon Pablo, which left him destitute in seconds.
The storm also wiped out entire plantations, one of the country’s export earners, and has reduced farmers to beggars.
“First the strong wind came, then a sheet of rain. Our roof rattled, the house creaked and then the wall was blown away,” Blanco, a 39-year-old plantation worker, told AFP.
“I looked out across the field, and all the (banana stalks) were felled. Our harvest was gone. The first thought in my mind was, we’ve just lost our future,” the father of four said.
Barefoot, shirtless and wearing torn trousers, Blanco stood by the roadside with neighbors who had also suddenly lost everything.
Days after Pablo obliterated New Bataan, residents resorted to begging from passing motorists as relief from the national government took long to reach them due to impassable roads hampered by uprooted trees, and mud and logs washed down from the mountains by rampaging floodwaters.
For fellow plantation worker Ben Alpor, the disaster meant the three youngest of his seven children would have to stop going to school.
“I will not be able to afford it. What little savings we had was in a (children’s) piggy bank, and that has been blown away too,” the 55-year-old told AFP.
“We’ve been reduced to begging for food, when before we had so much to eat,” he added.
Ensconced in a valley in Mindanao that is the center of the country’s banana industry, New Bataan is surrounded by a wall of mountains that had long protected it from storms before Pablo barreled through.
Big corporate farms bought up large tracts, contracting locals as sharecroppers in an industry that has grown to become the world’s third-largest exporter of bananas -– after Ecuador and Costa Rica.
Businessman Richard Acaso, who used to engaged in wholesale buying and selling of bananas, said he might now be forced to sell his home and move elsewhere.
“I used to get 5,000 to 8,000 crates of bananas a week,” he said, equivalent to 75-120 tons. “You would be lucky to buy a (single) crate this time around.”
Up to 200,000 farmers and their families live around the 42,000 hectares of plantations across Mindanao that supply major markets such as China, Japan and Iran, according to the industry association.
New Bataan plantation workers used to earn up to P10,000 a month and were allowed to build wooden homes near their workplaces.
“We had everything that we wanted, a simple life, enough food on the table and friends and family – until the typhoon came and destroyed everything,” Blanco said.
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