Survivors

While attention is focused on the devastation wrought by the earthquake in Central Visayas, spare a thought for other people laid low by past disasters. For many of them, surviving a disaster is only the beginning of their struggle.

After the initial terrifying blow—whether flood, landslide, earthquake or fire—survivors endure feelings of grief and helplessness, as well as hunger and exposure to the elements. Eclipsed from public attention when the situation appears to have normalized, they are left to pick up the pieces on their own. It requires a tapestry of efforts by the government—among others, the Department of Public Works and Highways clearing roads and repairing bridges, the Department of Social Welfare and Development sheltering and feeding the displaced families, the Department of Education rebuilding learning centers—before it can effectively help survivors get back on their feet.

Tents are one of the first signs of massive displacement. In the immediate aftermath of a strong typhoon such as “Pepeng” or, farther back, the eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo, survivors learn to live in close quarters in “tent cities”—a phenomenon that can endure for months or, in the worst cases, years. In 2010, the government struggled to provide funding aid and start restoration work on infrastructure damaged by Pepeng on Sept. 29, 2009. In 2011, or at least 14 years after Pinatubo’s eruptions in 1991-1997, Vice President Jejomar Binay, chair of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, was reported as pledging to speed up the distribution of land titles to displaced residents of Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales.  The national government’s “dilemma” is that “it has to deal with so many problems all over the country,” Binay was quoted as saying.

Only when the survivors move out of the tents can their new lives begin. In Rosales, Pangasinan, hundreds of Pepeng victims were happy to receive housing materials and land to build new homes. “After the flood, we couldn’t go back [home] anymore. We couldn’t afford to have a new house constructed and we know it is not safe to live near the river,” evacuee Frank Palaganas told reporters. Another evacuee, Cecilia Ramos, said she and her family were “finally … safe in our own home.”

It makes sense to start over somewhere else. In 2011, Tropical Storm “Sendong” displaced over 700,000 people in northern Mindanao. President Aquino had to instruct police and military forces to prevent those displaced from returning to their original settlements in areas unsafe—because unfit—for habitation. But often, it is imperative to return home. How are the people of Zamboanga City, victims of a recent disaster of quite another nature, picking up the pieces of their lives, hopefully with the government’s help? While the fighting has ended between government forces and the Misuari Group in the Moro National Liberation Front, the battle to regain normalcy has just begun. The government has allocated at least P3 billion for the rehabilitation of those displaced, but it’s a long way from solving the problem at hand. “We will make sure that we build better communities for the affected families,” Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman has declared.

But with the country seemingly lurching from one disaster to another, the continuing plight of the residents of Little Kibungan in Benguet is an object lesson on how people are trying to cope with the government’s forgotten promises. Pepeng caused landslides that buried the town in 2009, killing 77. The survivors left Little Kibungan, counting on the government to come through on a promise of relocation. But it hasn’t happened. The survivors, desperate, have returned and are living again in the danger zone. “Of course we are afraid, but we just entrust our safety to God. We have nowhere else to go,” said a mother just last week. She lamented that the government’s earlier assurances to her and the others were just talk, just lip service. “I don’t think we will be relocated…”

Out of options, and now out of hope—what can be worse? But this is what happens when the government forgets its promises. Let this not be the fate of the earthquake survivors of Bohol and Cebu, for the moment the most in need.