I visited my hometown, Batan, Aklan, last Dec. 1 and saw for myself how badly Supertyphoon “Yolanda” devastated the place last Nov. 8.
Yolanda destroyed most of our school buildings and scores of houses, and thousands of families in 20 barangays have been left without a source of income, if not homeless, their agricultural resources practically laid waste. I feel that without the help of the local and
national government, it will take a long time for the town to recover.
As a concerned senior citizen, I am thanking World Vision for extending relief aid to most of the barangays of Batan in the form of rice, cooking oil, mosquito nets, canvas/tulda, canned goods, biscuits and other goods.
We would also like to thank the ABS-CBN group headed by Korina Sanchez-Roxas who visited Barangay Songcolan, a coastal area, where they distributed relief goods and had a dialogue with typhoon survivors.
Various public structures (e.g., electric posts, school buildings, residential houses, civic centers, barangay halls) and means of livelihood/sources of income (e.g., agricultural crops, farm implements, fishing gear) were wiped out by Yolanda’s 315-kilometer-per-hour winds, the strongest to hit land in recent memory (weather experts say). Many parts of the city were without electricity.
And of course, we thank the foreign governments and organizations that extended relief assistance to typhoon survivors and helped
repair damaged public facilities.
—BIENVENIDO P. CORTES,
Punta Tabuk, Roxas City