{"id":2792,"date":"2012-12-11T11:23:31","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T19:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=2792"},"modified":"2012-12-11T11:23:31","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T19:23:31","slug":"typhoon-lessons-learned-in-philippines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/typhoon-lessons-learned-in-philippines\/","title":{"rendered":"Typhoon lessons learned in Philippines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ciony Ayo-Eduarte (in yellow shirt), the director of operations in the Philippines for the United Methodist Committee on Relief, distributes emergency food supplies to people displaced by Typhoon Bopha in Iligan, on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao. Photos by Paul Jeffrey\/ACT Alliance.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

By Paul Jeffrey*<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

3:00 P.M. Dec. 10, 2012 | MINDANAO, Philippines (UMNS)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although hundreds of people died as Typhoon Bopha raged over the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines on Dec. 4, lessons learned during\u00a0Typhoon Washi<\/a>, which ravaged the region a year earlier, helped hundreds to survive the disaster this time around.<\/p>\n

A variety of faith-based organizations, including the\u00a0United Methodist Committee on Relief<\/a>, have focused on disaster risk reduction during the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cA year ago, people weren\u2019t prepared. They didn\u2019t care that a typhoon was coming. And they paid the price,\u201d said Ben Ramiso, the emergencies program manager for the\u00a0Muslim-Christian Alliance for Advocacy, Relief and Development<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this time around, because of their experience and the training we\u2019ve done in disaster risk reduction, the people were prepared. Those living along the river banks were evacuated two days before the storm,\u201d said Ramiso, whose organization\u2019s relief work near Cagayan de Oro was funded by Christian Aid, an\u00a0ACT Alliance<\/a>\u00a0member based in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, the people had to save themselves. But today, because of better organization within the communities, the people mobilized quickly. The early warning systems the people established helped a lot. We did training four months ago during which people were identified as contacts for their neighborhoods. As local political leaders received the alerts from the government this time, the information was immediately disseminated to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Cagayan de Oro and nearby Iligan were ground zero for the destruction of Washi, which killed more than 1,200 people, this year timely evacuations took place well before the\u00a0arrival of Typhoon Bopha, known locally as Typhoon Pablo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one died this time around,\u201d said Nestor Hurano, the captain of Maasin, a village in Bukidnon province where three people were killed or disappeared during Typhoon Washi. \u201cBecause of the workshops and planning we\u2019ve done with Christian Aid and MUCAARD, we were prepared for Pablo. We had considerable physical damage, but that can be repaired. Human lives cannot be replaced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Armando Guniyon pulls apart the rubble of his home, damaged by floodwaters from Typhoon Bopha, in Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, Philippines.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet not everyone gives the government high marks. Sineyda Valoria, secretary of the Survivors Collective in a neighborhood along the riverbanks in Iligan, said families there were ordered to evacuate to an elementary school. \u201cThe government did well in ordering us to evacuate in time,\u201d she said, \u201cbut when we got to the evacuation center there was no food or water.\u201d A private group and municipal authorities finally gave each family three kilos of rice, but Valoria said that wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe were supposed to wait there until Saturday, but the people couldn\u2019t wait. We preferred to come back here rather than be hungry there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 6,\u00a0Balsa Mindanao<\/a>, a network of popular organizations and development groups, delivered food packages to some 40 families in Valoria\u2019s neighborhood who were cleaning up their homes that were partially flooded in their absence. The food was purchased by UMCOR, a member of the ACT Alliance, and repackaged by Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, a Roman Catholic activist group.<\/p>\n

UMCOR\u2019s director in the Philippines,\u00a0Ciony Ayo-Eduarte<\/a>, said that while her organization will continue to fill in gaps with food and other emergency supplies, it will intentionally focus on disaster risk reduction with communities in several parts of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be proactive and not just react, so capacity building among the people is the focus of our humanitarian response,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Imee Manginsay, executive director for the Muslim-Christian alliance, said one key to the success of disaster plans has been the intentional involvement of women in planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring disasters, it\u2019s the women who care for the children and think of the impact on the family. So during our training and our mapping of risks in the communities we insured that women participated fully. It\u2019s the woman who will prepare the emergency kit and be sure that there\u2019s a flashlight and batteries. The men will worry about the cows and water buffaloes, but the women will insure that the family survives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Give to\u00a0Philippines Emergency, UMCOR Advance #240235<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and bring relief to typhoon-battered communities.<\/p>\n

\n

*Jeffrey, a United Methodist\u00a0missionary and photojournalist<\/a>, wrote this story for the ACT Alliance.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ciony Ayo-Eduarte (in yellow shirt), the director of operations in the Philippines for the United Methodist Committee on Relief, distributes emergency food supplies to people displaced by Typhoon Bopha in Iligan, on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao. Photos by Paul Jeffrey\/ACT Alliance. By Paul Jeffrey* 3:00 P.M. Dec. 10, 2012 | MINDANAO, Philippines (UMNS) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":2795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[125,32,3],"tags":[108,152,109,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-2792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-emergency-response","8":"category-news","9":"category-umns","10":"tag-philippines","11":"tag-typhoon","12":"tag-umcor","13":"tag-umns"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/typhoon-response.jpeg?fit=706%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-J2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2792"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2799,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2792\/revisions\/2799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}