A year after: ‘Odette’ victims still to recover
Bohol governor says rebuilding in typhoon-devastated towns yet to be finished
UBAY, BOHOL—Last year, Ma. Rosa Batuan lost her father and her home following the devastation caused by Typhoon “Odette” (international name: Rai).
“It was the most horrifying experience I have encountered in my life,” said Batuan of the typhoon that struck her town in the evening of Dec. 16, 2021.
Her father, Urbano, suffered a heart attack at home at the height of Odette’s onslaught while her house was brought to the ground by the strong winds that night.
At least 111 people died in Bohol as Odette lashed through the province, which also left 280,000 families homeless and damaged P5 billion worth of infrastructure and agriculture.
Hardest hit was Ubay, located 124 kilometers from the capital city of Tagbilaran, where at least 23,000 families were displaced in a town that only had a population of 81,799 based on the 2020 census.
Like in other parts of the Visayas, the typhoon destroyed power and communication lines, leaving Bohol without electricity for about a month.
Promises
A year after the typhoon, housing and infrastructure projects in Bohol remained unfinished.
Affected families were still wait for the rebuilding of their homes that was promised to them by the government.
One affected resident, who requested not to be named, lamented what she perceived to be a “lack of urgency” on the part of the government to rebuild their houses.
According to the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office, over 84,560 houses that were destroyed by Odette still needed repairs.
The National Housing Authority’s (NHA) Emergency Housing Assistance Program allocated P797.535 million for the rebuilding of houses in Bohol.
It was only last month that some residents received a cash aid amounting to P5,000 or P10,000, depending on the degree of damage their houses sustained.
The provincial government of Bohol said the affected families in Barangay Fatima in Ubay received last November P10,000 each to help repair their homes. The cash aid was distributed by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
According to the DSWD, nearly 500 beneficiaries, who were mostly from Barangay Fatima, received the financial assistance.
Bohol Gov. Erico Aristotle Aumentado admitted in an interview on Thursday that there was still a lot of people who needed help in rebuilding their homes in the province.
He said the NHA has so far downloaded P100 million to Bohol to help repair the houses of families affected by the typhoon as well as to restore public school buildings damaged by Odette.
The towns of Talibon, Ubay, Loboc and President Carlos P. Garcia each received P25 million from the NHA to help rebuild their houses, he said.
Emmanuel Sanchez, 54, and a resident of Barangay Fatima, was grateful to the various humanitarian groups that came to the town to help them.
“I am very happy because they helped us to build a new house,” he said in an interview on Friday.
What needs to be done
However, not all Ubay residents were fortunate like Sanchez.
In Purok 6 and 7 in Barangay Tapon of the town, some families still lived in makeshift houses for a year now. Tapon has at least 866 households.
Jimmy Mabanag, 30, and his family still stayed in a small temporary house made of galvanized iron sheets they asked from neighbors.
He said their destroyed house was built in a mangrove swamp, located a few meters away from the seashore, and seawater would get inside their home during high tide.
Mabanag recalled that they were already placed in a shelter as part of the preemptive evacuation effort of the local government before Odette devastated Bohol. After the storm passed, he returned to his village and was shocked to find out that his house had been completely swept away by the waves.
Cash aid
In Cebu City, the government allocated P500 million to help families affected by Odette, said Dr. Ester Concha, head of the City’s Department of Social Welfare and Services.
So far, about 100,000 households received a P5,000 cash aid from the government but some 6,000 other families were yet to get their financial assistance, Concha said on Thursday.
“Families affected by the typhoon were able to return to their homes already although some of them are still waiting for the ayuda (help) from the government,” she said.
Dr. Salustiano Jimenez, director of the Department of Education in Central Visayas, said about 4,000 of the 5,000 classrooms that were damaged by Odette were already repaired.
He thanked the local governments and nongovernmental organizations for the “bayanihan spirit” in making sure that students throughout the region will have enough classrooms.
Odette left a P10-billion damage to school buildings and instructional materials in Central Visayas.
Aside from classrooms, also damaged by the typhoon were 6 million pieces of modules, computers, printers and photocopiers in the different schools in the region.