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By Jason Gutierrez Agence
France-Presse
GUINOBATAN, Albay: Ramon
Llenaresas stares blankly at the fading photograph of his wife and
one of their children, his last remaining memento of a happy family
life.
They were all killed in last
November’s typhoon, when a wall of mud and water washed away their
house, and the picture helps him try to remember what they looked
like. It is almost all he has left.
“Sometimes I don’t remember
everything that has happened. Pieces of my recollection are gone,”
the 34-year-old says. He has no remaining pictures of their other
five kids.
“What is more painful is that I
am starting to forget my children’s faces,” he says.
But like countless other
survivors, Llenaresas says he too is now being forgotten. Still
living at an old sports complex that has been turned into an
evacuation camp, they are running short of food and water—and
hope.
Four months after the tragedy of
Typhoon Durian, many survivors here in the hard-hit province of
Bicol say a lack of aid and basic supplies is keeping them from
being able to move on.
The camps are lacking clean
water, and the latrines are overflowing. Electricity has not been
fully restored. The storm’s fury virtually wiped out entire
industries, taking jobs and futures with it.
“Much more needs to be done,”
says Ida Mae Fernandez of the UN’s International Office of
Migration (IOM), the lead agency managing the camps, which are home
to thousands of typhoon survivors.
“What we’re facing now is a
prolonged displacement of affected families who continue to be very
much in need of assistance,” she says.
More than 1,300 people were
killed or went missing when the mud, water and boulders tore through
villages, and tens of thousands like Llenaresas were left homeless.
The United Nations says at least
30,000 people are still living in tents, school buildings and
improvised shelters. Meanwhile “large numbers” of families were
living with their relatives, straining household finances.
“There remains a huge gap to be
filled,” it says, despite efforts and appeals for donor countries
to pour in more funds.
While Australia, Canada, Sweden
and other countries pledged help, only six percent of the $46
million the UN originally estimated was needed have come in.
District governor Fernando
Gonzales says the provincial government has been practically
crippled, a combination of the typhoon’s destruction and the lack
of funds that have arrived to help rebuild.
“Because of the magnitude of
what happened here, it is taking much longer for us to be able to
stand on our own feet and start getting out of external help,”
Gonzales says. “We are appealing for a continuation of aid, for
the international community not to abandon us.”
In addition to the lack of
relief, many survivors are also still living in emotional limbo,
grieving for missing loved ones whose bodies have never been found.
“I do not think there is still
a future for me here,” says Daisy Abareta, 23, whose husband
Jerson and infant daughter Angel remain missing and are presumed
dead.
“My husband was such a nice
person, and my Angel had just learned how to walk. Why has this
happened to me?”
The force of the floodwater
stripped Daisy’s clothes off, and rescuers found her shivering and
naked, walking aimlessly among the dead bodies and debris hours
after the waters subsided.
“I celebrated my wedding
anniversary alone on January 3, and my daughter’s second birthday
on January 23,” she sobs. “I will be celebrating alone for the
rest of my life.”
--AFP
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