Within several days, a coherent picture of the situation in the areas devastated by Typhoon Yolanda (international code name: Haiyan) which hit the Philippines on the 8th November 2013 has been produced by an international team of crisis management experts. The Situation Report published on the 13th November 2013 by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs highlights the following with regard to the crisis:
– An estimated 11.5 million people are affected by Typhoon Haiyan; 544,600 people remain displaced.
– Trucks and fuel are urgently needed to deliver aid. Debris and logistics continue to severely constrain the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
– The Emergency Relief Coordinator visited the most affected areas of Tacloban City to take stock of the humanitarian situation.
– Transporting and distributing food, emergency shelter material, hygiene kits, body bags and establishing a family tracing service are urgently needed in Tacloban for the next days.
– The Haiyan Action Plan, launched on 12 November, is 13 per cent funded ($38 million).
Very nice, but ultimately useless symbolism
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SO1: Mortality, morbidity and malnutrition levels are brought to pre-typhoon levels within two months of the disaster.
SO2: Within one month, people targeted by this plan who were made homeless by the typhoon will have transitory shelter solutions.
SO3: Within four months, starting with immediate short-term employment, people with lost or reduced livelihoods targeted by this plan start to re-establish their livelihoods and regain self-reliance.
The funding estimate is allocated across the following critical areas that impact human wellbeing the most that need to be addressed, what are termed “Cluster Narratives” in the report:
| Cluster | Requirements ($) |
| Agriculture – assist in resumption of farming and fishing activities | 24,048,200 |
| Camp Coordination and Camp Management – management of temporary accomodation for displaced people | 5,500,000 |
| Coordination – orchestration of all stakeholders at all government levels and across community sectors | 2,627,537 |
| Early Recovery – immediate debris-clearing activities, aimed at reducing threats to lives and health risks due to prolonged exposure to unsanitary environmental conditions, and making critical assistance and services available. | 20,000,000 |
| Education – restoration of education facilities and services | 24,721,443 |
| Emergency Shelter – development and implementation of emergency and durable shelter solutions | 45,665,081 |
| Emergency Telecommunications (ETC) – resume reliable and independent data and voice communications | 3,244,537 |
| Food Security – provide immediate life-saving and recovery assistance in the form of robust food distribution capability and livelihood | 76,065,102 |
| Health – establishment of temporary support facilities and supply line of essential medicines and care services | 21,566,310 |
| Livelihood – provide emergency employment opportunities and skill development programs | 31,223,562 |
| Logistics – assessment of transport and storage requirements (limited info makes estimate tentative for now) | 5,000,000 |
| Nutrition – mitigate risk of malnutrition amongst displaced and affected people | 7,000,000 |
| Protection – identification of people requiring specific needs | 11,705,914 |
| Security – further analysis required to establish order in the affected areas | 497,810 |
| Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) – implementation of measures to assure supply of water and other sanitation facilities and services | 22,000,000 |
| Grand Total | 300,865,496 |
The scope of the plan covers a six-month horizon from the 13th November 2013 through to the 31st May 2014 encompassing the affected municipalities of Regions VIII (Eastern Visayas), VI (Western Visayas) and VII (Central Visayas) are hardest hit. Regions IV-A (CALABARZON), IV-B (MIMAROPA), V (Bicol), X (Northern Mindanao), XI (Davao) and XIII (Caraga).
As this situation report and action plan has emerged as pretty much the only source of much-needed clarity and coherence surrounding this awful mess, perhaps it is about time that Filipinos re-evaluate the continued mandate of the current government to lead and administer this sad nation in this time of appalling suffering.
You can download the full report here.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
UN have their action plan on the Philippines. The Philippine government on the other hand, has nothing to show for. Such humiliation! This government has humiliated us, filipinos, one too many times. Filipinos, wake up!
and what are you going to do when everyone wakes up?
Go out into the middle of the road and demand change? Wake up? No.
Get a clue!
I’d rather get a private firm to fix and manage the country than UN. Believe me, UNs politics and red tapes is as worse as the Philippines. And if UN runs the show its not going to be economical.
Filipino Government Officials and Politicians are only good at pocketing taxpayer’s money. They don’t care for the welfare of the Disaster victims, instead they are now planning how to get hold of the huge Foreign cash donations.
That’s why it’s always important to never give donations or such through either the Philippine Government or the Philippine Catholic Church.
Amen brother. Give your donations to the Born Again Movement Instead. We are the True Representatives of Jesus Christ and we need funds for our outreach program in Bali, Indonesia. Why Bali? Yes, its a nice tourist destination but we must save all those Buddhists and Muslims from the eternal damnation by telling that God loves us so much that he sacrificed his only Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to save us from our sins. We accept checks, credit cards, paypal and bitcoin.
Let us pray for the clueless Indonesians.
WOW, they are fine! save yourselves Filipino’s are trapped under rubble right now. and your going to raise money for another country?
Un-be-lievable!
Gerry,
Correction, we plan missionary work in many countries: Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong.
We must spread the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and we need your support. We have a prayer rally at Starbucks tomorrow. If you can make it, please join us. If you cannot afford Starbucks coffee, you don’t have to come.
I never in my life would see a real life Spaniard missionary from the Exploration Days be still alive and use the internet to convert the “heathens” Amazing!
I hereby revoke Pastor Ernie’s mooching privileges.
Pastor Ernie, are Indonesian? If so, I understand. But if you’re a Filipino. I don’t get your logic. They (Indonesians) are fine but we, Filipinos are the one in need.
No, correction! Take care of your own country-men/woman first, RIGHT NOW. This is a clas A disaster and people are dying for lack of a response by the gov’t. that is reportedly ‘paralyzed’. This is un-acceptable Padre, why don’t you just go there yourself, to Indonesia and see how they react to you when you say that you represent the ‘one true Catholic and Apostolic faith’ and that you are there to save them, OK?
Bring a film crew to, I’d love to see the response that you receive.
You’re a big joke! HAHAHA!
Since the Philippines is an agricultural country, I would suggest that land be distributed to each family which will be their source of food and income and every community should have a windmill or any source of electricity and water supply. Housing need not be fancy as long as it is sturdy to withstand typhoons and earthquakes, with ethnic architecture and design, surrounded by a vegetable garden herbal and orchard to provide basic food and income, a big storage for dry and wet goods, a cooperative instead of middlemen, machinery for milling rice, tilling the soil,harvesting, etc., agriculturists to provide training and farming education, and for transportation, revive the railroad train to go across the whole country and water vessels to go island hopping to make all islands accessible in all directions;airports, fishing ports, reforestation program to revive the forests and prevent more disasters, stop mining and cutting of trees.
So you want people with land to give their own land to other people for free, and the government to give them welfare etc etc. From taxpayers money? Are you communist?
the current system is clearly not working.
at this point, anyone with a better idea should be listened to.
Communism is not inherently bad. It’s just never been put to practice well outside of the paper. A lot of people here do think otherwise because they were indoctrinated by the West to think everything democratic and supporting Freedumb is the best from the Cold War. Oh and China’s commie and China is the big bad bully therefore communism is evil.
China communism?? You must be kidding me! China is communist on paper but is currently capitalist country. Except that there is no freedom of expression, freedom of press, and freedom to choose their leader they are very much socialist/capitalist hybrid.
Why don’t you site Cuba and DRPK as example? Food stubs you but caviar and cognac for the officials – is that your idea of fairness?
Hey Dude…if you want communist Gulags; forced indoctrination; line rationing of food; etc…be a communist. Stalin murdered 30 million Soviets in his reign. Pol Pot of Cambodia, murdered almost a million Cambodians…I don’t want communism…to hell with it..
lazy, stupid, insensitive, incompetent.
pnoy aquino has a large range of caps to fit his balding pate.
where is he hiding this time.
who is he looking to blame.
what a poor excuse for a man he is
That’s the UN for you: thinking ahead. In the Philippines, thinking ahead is an alien concept.
Not just ahead; just plain thinking would be an alien concept.
PHILIPPINE government officials most of them are corrupt from the lowest position to the highest position..,, Shame !
Filipino’s posses the same brain as the so-called ‘experts’.
Get the airports cleared, fly some heavy equipment in, clear the roads and get to the far flung areas as quickly as possible with water, food and medicine.
there, I said it.
just do it already, and no one else wants to govern the Filippines, as Ilda asks in another article, or else it would have happened already. stop robbin the treasury and the funds will eventually be there to do this yourselves.
This estimated amount for typhoon victims recovery is very little compare to the total amount the Philippines Government received donations from other countries and institutions, (in fact, the country is still recieving millions of donations in cash and kind). In a clear vision on how this government rule its country, expects that one fourth if not half will only go to everyone’s pocket who has the power to rule his people. Shame from top to lower level of the government. ADMIT that the Philippine government is INCAPABLE and NOT and DO NOT have the CAPACITY to shoulder his PEOPLE. An evidence, the Government is (if not so) Only depending on Donations.
Let’s build them an ARK! These provinces are on the typhoon and earthquake belt of the Pacific rim. The Ark will be able to withstand the typhoon and earthquake can save thousands of lives. About 10 of these arks can save 10,000 lives before during and after the disaster.
Oh there will be a stampede to the Arks by people with no claim. Death will not come from the flood but similar to the Ultra disaster.
Let the United Nation take over our country. Like the failed states: Liberia, Haiti, Sierra Lione, etc…It seems our leaders cannot lead anymore. They are indulging in: politics; media propaganda to improve their images; directing traffics; disinformation;shaking hands; etc…U.N. has a better way to run our country.
Mar Roxas on CNN earlier said.
We have 20 trucks in Tacloban
50% are out delivering food
50% are out clearing roads
and another 25% are collecting the bodies
Then he realized what he said….
Mar Roxas once again showing why he is not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Classic Yawn, classic!
The idiots running the show are not the people running the gov’t., they are just the petty thieves.
Mar Roxas…thinks he is important but is really a dip-shit idiot. Like his boss and all the rest of them…idiots, who know how to do one thing well…steal.
Hi Gerry
During the interview the CNN reporter missed a golden opportunity to make Roxas look completely stupid.
The reporter asked Roxas about collecting the dead bodies as the stench was overwhelming.
Roxas said we are collecting them, the reporter said well those over there from where we are standing have been there FOR DAYS.
Roxas came out with, they are a new batch as all the bags are the same.
The reporter just looked at him as if to say Yeah Right.
When he should have said, so you collect dead bodies from other parts of the city then just dump them on the road side in the city center.
Too bad, huh? I did not see the interview but the fact that the USA and other countries were on the ground 5 days after the storm hit, but STILL ahead of Fail-ippine rescuers is just appalling. Especially when they knew it was coming.
The complete lack of caring about their own citizens and only stealing all the wealth from the country is what the government is all about.
They are truly despicable and should be made to spend all the Peso’s in the treasury before the International community gives them a dime.
How Filipino’s tolerate this is just beyond sanity.
oh thank god. I read the pdf. structure! POCs! an analysis of needs and gaps! contact numbers even! i feel a surge of relief.
i suppose i should reevaluate my answer to the question “what do you need?” by my friends outside the country from answering “food and water” to “leadership and crisis management”
The only speedy response by pnoy aquino was to have the policeman sacked who said “the death toll could reach 10,000” – shades of sacking the pagasa weatherman a couple of years ago.
Pnoy likes to bully little people but never take on the real villains.
I suspect it will be closer to 10,000 dead than aquinos 2500 final estimate. The policeman should be reinstated and pnoy sacked.
Anyway as usual pnoy misses the big picture. The moron
UN just announce death toll currently 4,460 and still rising.
pnoy propaganda exposed again – never believe a word this idiot says.
They also said 22,000 are still missing.
I just want to share a comment I found under a news source, please repost as an article.
from director Peque Gallaga:
“Not since Marcos have we as a people been so polarized. As far as our hearts and minds are concerned it’s like we’re in the edge of a civil war. We are forced to take a hard look at ourselves and what we value.
Because of this, we are fighting friends in coffee houses, on the telephone, and on Facebook. We are a people whose lives have been upended. We don’t know what to do to get things done right and right away. We lash out. We insult our leaders trying to get them to do a lot more than to pose for photo ops – of giving out relief goods on a one-by-one basis. We cry desperately for demonstrable government response – we get almost next to nothing. It is increasingly apparent that local media goes hand in hand with self-servicing Malacañang press releases which are more concerned with their showbiz image than confronting, accepting and dealing with the problem. What our leaders tell us is contradicted by the reports from international commentators who are understandably more objective and growing less dispassionate as they witness the horrors around them. What our leaders tell us is also contradicted by the victims in these areas who are slowly able to give us the true picture of the realities of the situation. And the reality is that people are starving. The dead still lie on the streets even five days after the event. There are anguished souls scavenging for whatever they can to survive, as well as professional looters ambushing the helpless and relief caravans. It’s a war zone out there.
This disaster has affected, not only the islands in the path of Yolanda, but all of us as a nation. We have all been judged and found wanting. But more worrisome, is that we take a long hard look at our leaders and we judge and we find them wanting. It is worrisome because we have chosen them and are paying them to serve the needs of our nation and it seems that they can’t deliver. I don’t think that anybody, even the most criminal politician, can be that hard-hearted and close his eyes to this calamity so I can only surmise that they don’t know what to do. That they are impotent and incompetent. I am 70 years old and I don’t know what to do, but then again, I didn’t run for office promising the voters that I would take care of national concerns.
I am a private citizen and like most of my fellow citizens, have given of what I have to the relief effort. I have given to the point of hurting. I am 70 years old and have been stupid a lot of times for seven decades. I want to think that I can be a little less stupid now. This time, I want to make sure that my hard-earned money will reach its intended goal. I am sick and tired of throwing away my money; of making our politicians wealthy because of my unconcern and my inattention. I am sick and tired of my stupidity.
So I very much care now where all this help is going. I read Marvin Xanth Geronimo who was there when Yolanda struck: that TV personalities and politicians like Mar Roxas and Ted Failon going to Tacloban for the photo op. They never helped; endless tracking video shots of flattened towns with people walking clutching a plastic bottle of water with no government presence whatsoever; Korina Sanchez calling Anderson Cooper “misinformed”. Cooper was in Tacloban. Korina was not; the US landing 5 planes full of goods and not allowing any politicians to touch any of it. How much more do we need for us to realize that the enemy was not Yolanda? Yolanda was just a force of nature. The enemy is our leaders. And the leader of our leaders is the President.
So what now? There’s nothing I can actually do. I can only rage, rage against the dying of common decency. I can only rage against this man who claimed in a Christiane Amanpour interview that he couldn’t get to the disaster areas because the weather after the storm left didn’t permit him to fly. This is 24 hours after the sun was shining all over the Philippines by then. I can only rage against a man who made light of the tragedy, refusing to identify it as a major disaster; who made light of a victim of looting who was shot at by telling him, “But you did not die, right?” I rage against a man who continually blames the LGU’s on the ground for their incompetence and their inefficiency because it is beginning to dawn on me that these Visayan LGU’s happen to be Romualdez people and this man is playing politics with people’s lives.
This is a crime. What this man does is unconscionable. I can only state it here. I can do nothing about it for now. I will wait for whatever movement develops after this fiasco and I will join it. But for now, what I can do is to declare that I am deeply offended by the people who try to stop me and others from stating the obvious. All those people who charge us for criticizing, for being negative, for Aquino bashing – I am done with these people. In a very Yellow Army way, they try to hide behind an illogical argument that we cannot help if we criticize. I don’t know how good these friends are at multi-tasking, but one does not cancel out the other. We can help and we can criticize. And at this point I am convinced that we do help when we criticize; if at one point we can, as Hamlet says, “catch the conscience of the king.” But I know that this is futile. This man is no king. He is not even a real representative. What can you expect from someone who never worked an honest day in his life. What could he possibly relate to?
So my friends who accuse me of Aquino bashing: I want you to know that I’m done with your line of thinking. Either you defend this man or you defend the people that this man is ignoring. Don’t believe that the people are his “boss”. This was a piece of advertising sound byte created by showbiz experts to get the unthinking masses out there to swallow this uniquely unqualified man. This man who is totally unprepared for the most difficult job in the country. So my friends, as far as I’m concerned, you choose him or you choose the people. But if you instruct me again to stop bashing this man I am unfriending you. I will unfriend you in Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, and out in our leaderless streets.”
Sir,
I commend you for expressing and stating things so well and hope that others like you young and old, will see all that you have come to see and will themselves take action to change the way they might have thought or perceived things to be.
Sometimes it takes tragic events to expose the weaknesses, frailties, and in-competencies of a Government and it’s leaders while often this is perceived by many as negative it in reality is a very good and positive thing, it sheds light on the “Pink Elephant in the room that so many refuse to see! So Amen to all you have said and expressed!
May many more see it too!
Philippines Nov 15 (Reuters) – The death toll from Typhoon Haiyan in the devastated Philippine coastal city of Tacloban was 4,000, a notice board at City Hall said on Friday, nearly double the nationwide toll provided by the government in Manila.
There once was am American president who said: “Dont ask what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country”.
I really have some problems with this statement. The real victims (including the dead) of Tacloban (and other areas) cant do much, but the Philippine government is doing nothing at all.
You’ll dismiss this, but do you really have to say this is a “blast from the past” when it’s only three weeks old? 😛