Electricity restored in Tacloban, Leyte towns

CEBU, Philippines - A week after typhoon Ruby struck Eastern Visayas, electric power has been restored at about 2 a.m. yesterday in Tacloban City and neighboring towns, under the service area of the Leyte Electric Cooperative 2.

LEYECO 2 services Tacloban and the towns of Palo and Babatngon with a total of at least 51,000 consumers.

Marcel Avestruz, general manager of LEYECO 2, was happy of the resumption of power supply to the coop from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines.

Avestruz had no idea why the NGCP failed to restore the power supply at its target date of December 11, and she only knew that, to ensure safe power distriction, full assessment were done on electric posts and wires, damaged by Ruby earlier.

Businessmen and households were disgusted over the delay of power restoration, but were happy that it was finally back with only about two hours late from its timetable.

In the case of water supply, the Leyte Metropolitan Water District announced that due to heavy siltation of its intake facilities, brought about by flooding at the height of Ruby's onslaught, it conduced a series of desilting activities since Wednesday, resulting in an erratic supply of water to consumers in the city.

The LMWD advised its thousands of concessionaires to store enough water whenever available until such time the supply has been fully cleaned up.

Councilor Jerry Uy, who provided The Freeman with this information, added that affected hundreds of families, all Yolanda survivors, living in the destroyed tent city at San Jose district, this city, were relocated to the Astrodome temporarily, while some of them re-erected their fallen tents at the same site.

Uy said that Green Mindanao, a non-government organization, had promised to assist these families who were battered by both Yolanda and Ruby. (FREEMAN)