Basey residents start rebuilding lives

BASEY, Samar – The people of this town are starting to pick up the pieces more than a week after Super Typhoon Yolanda ravaged the area.

Despite efforts to clear debris and begin rebuilding, Basey remains a desolate wasteland nine days after one of the biggest storms to ever hit the coast.

It was one of the worst hit areas in Samar.

There is little government presence in Basey and private groups and officials from nearby towns have been distributing most relief goods.

Houses near the seawall in the town proper were flattened when the storm surge, which many here have likened to a tsunami, crashed through concrete and wooden buildings strewing piles of rubble and mud through the streets.

However, some outlying barangays on the coast suffered more extensive damage because the buildings made from lighter materials could not withstand the winds or waves.

Trees were flattened, power lines knocked down and officials estimate more than 300 people were killed despite the official death toll of 190 dead in Basey.

The official death toll included the bodies that were identified before the remains were buried in a mass grave.

However, residents are beginning to move on.

The sound of progress – hammers hitting nails, saws cutting through wood – could be heard throughout the town yesterday.

Rosito Mensones, 57, started rebuilding his home at the seawall using whatever wood and materials he could find in the debris.

The house was destroyed by the waves when the storm hit on Nov. 8 and all that remained was the concrete foundations.

“We are starting to slowly rebuild our house,” Mensones said yesterday. “We don’t have money yet that’s why we are trying to rebuild with whatever we find in the scraps.”

Mensones, a fisherman, said it would take about three months to complete the rebuild.

“It’s the fifth time a typhoon hit this place and we stay here because I’m making a living from this place. I’m a fisherman. We are hungry. No money, nothing at all,” he said.

Bienvenido Yancha, 62, who has lived in Basey all his life, said the government did not warn the residents about the possible impact of the storm surge.

“We are disgusted that they did not tell us that there would be big waves. That’s why we were caught on the wrong foot when the waves came. We knew it was a super typhoon and we’re used to experiencing typhoons but this is the first time that we’ve experienced big waves,” Yancha said.

“They only told us it was a super typhoon because they thought we might panic. It’s better to panic before the waves come than when the waves come.”

Yancha, who lives one block from the sea, said the water reached chest level on the second floor of his home, but he and his family were able to escape to a relative’s house.

He said the storm surge was like a tsunami.

“Early in the morning the sea was so shallow. It retreated. Then suddenly it came back,” he said.

“It was just like a tsunami, but it was not a tsunami, it was just a wave that was pushed by the wind.”

Surrounded by piles of wood, concrete and other debris, Yancha said it would be a long process of rebuilding in Basey.

“We will be starting anew,” said Yancha.

For several days after the onslaught of Typhoon Yolanda, 50-year-old high school principal Beatriz Esquirdo and her four children along with her husband, with nowhere to go, were forced to sleep under a roofless house and have to cook and eat ubod that they harvested from fallen coconut trees to survive in Salcedo, Eastern Samar.

Yesterday, Esquirdo decided to leave her children and husband Jemilo, 51, and went to Manila on board a United States Air Force C-130 cargo plane from the airport in Guiuan, Eastern Samar to ask for help and assistance from relatives.

“I am not abandoning my family. I am going back next week if there’s already enough money from our relatives here, to buy what we need down there, especially rice,” she told The STAR in her relative’s house in Mandaluyong City.

She recounted that after the storm, even well to do residents in Eastern Samar, especially in Guian and Salcedo were not spared by Yolanda.

She said the typhoon’s fury blew off roofs and destroyed most houses and buildings in her hometown.

Even coconut trees, which are the main source of livelihood in Eastern Samar, were not spared.

She added that everybody was waiting for government aid to arrive but the only relief good they received was a three-kilo bag of rice distributed by the local government.

With the food shortage, she said that the people have turned to the fallen coconut trees by cooking and eating the tree’s inner bark, called ubod.

Esquirdo, a native of Marinduque, said that before the typhoon the life of residents in Barangay Bagtong in Salcedo was simple but people were contented.

“We have a lapu-lapu fish farm that is augmenting my income as an elementary school principal. We live in a bungalow-type house. But after the storm, everything was gone. Our house had been reduced to only one wall because its roof was blown out by the storm. Our fish farm was wiped out. For almost a week now, we are staying inside our roofless house and my husband placed a tent above our heads to shelter us from the rains and the elements,” she said.

When Beatriz finally arrived at her kin’s house in Mandaluyong, they cried as relatives were worried and communication lines were down in Samar.

“Next week, I will return to my family, perhaps with the provisions we need until distribution of government aid is finally established in all communities,” she said.             – With Jaime Laude