In Worst-Hit Area of Tacloban, a Killer From Two Sides - NYTimes.comIn Worst-Hit Area of Tacloban, a Killer From Two Sides - NYTimes.com




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Devastation in the Philippines







In Worst-Hit Area of Tacloban, a Killer From Two Sides 




Jes Aznar for The New York Times
A woman held a trophy that she had salvaged from the wreckage of her house in Tacloban. 

 

By 
AUSTIN RAMZY

Published: November 16, 2013    













TACLOBAN, the Philippines — In the corner of what used to be her living room, Mary Grace Golondrina, 20, dug through the mud and recovered a trophy — first-place runner-up in a fund-raiser for Santo Niño Church. There is little else here.        



  
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Pictures of Typhoon Haiyan’s Wrath









Map:             Mapping the Destruction of Typhoon Haiyan





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Bryan Denton for The New York Times
The aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in Guiuan, on Samar Island.                            



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Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
South of Tacloban, a family slaughtered a pig on Saturday for food.                            




The force of the storm surge flattened her family’s single-story cement home and dozens more in her neighborhood, which Tacloban’s mayor, Alfred S. Romualdez, described as the worst hit in this city, which had 220,000 residents before the typhoon.        
“All the coast is bad but Barangay 88, it’s a peninsula,” Mr. Romualdez said. “They got hit from both sides.”        
Barangay 88, also known as San Jose, is home to some of the city’s richest and poorest residents. It sits on a peninsula 1,600 feet wide at its narrowest point in the southeast corner of Tacloban, just south of the airport.        
It is one of the city’s most populous neighborhoods, and the view from the road that runs down it once featured a jumble of houses. Now the view is sea and mountains in the distance — the houses have been turned to rubble barely three feet high at its tallest points. The overwhelming destruction here has raised questions about whether it is safe to live on such a low-lying strip of land, and ultimately, where the survivors will be housed.        
The mayor has a pink one-story house here with a large lawn and several cars in the driveway that were smashed up and tossed at odd angles during Typhoon Haiyan. At least it remained standing, though, and his wife survived the 12-foot-high wall of water that crashed through the neighborhood, climbing through the ceiling to the attic for safety. So did their cleaning woman, Tarsila Paminiano, 67, who first held onto the mayor’s Mercedes-Benz S.U.V., which now sits partly in a ditch.        
“The wind was coming from the northeast, then the water started coming from both sides,” she said. “We hugged each other and prayed.”        
When it was clear that she and other workers could not survive outside by clinging to a vehicle, they locked arms and made it to a row of guest apartments. When the water continued to climb, they broke through the ceiling, and climbed to the second floor. No one died in the compound, she said, but she is still searching for five family members who disappeared in other parts of the city.        
Just to the north, in the Fisherman’s Village area of Barangay 88, the ability to find an attic also marked the line between survival and death. Many residents here rushed to the Fishermen’s Village Elementary School. They first huddled in classrooms, but when the water climbed they made a panicked effort to break through the ceiling, said Wilma Ilvado, 48, a housewife. “Those who didn’t make it up died,” she said.        
Inside a classroom, above a sign that proclaims “Quality and Education Excellence” and another dedicated to José Protacio Rizal, who led the Philippine revolt against the Spanish, are signs of the struggle for survival: ceiling tiles ripped out to allow escapes and chairs jammed into the attic cross beams to allow a person to stand.        
Ms. Ilvado now lives in a tent with a mud floor that holds five families, more than 30 people in total. Her family members all survived. But about 20 who sought refuge in the school were believed to have died, along with another 20 or more in the neighborhood, said Edwin Cabanas, a Barangay 88 councilor.        
“We want to stay here,” said Ms. Ilvado. “We are afraid another storm will come but next time we will evacuate again to another place, a higher place with a higher ceiling.”        
In the poorer parts of Barangay 88, residents like Ms. Golondrina, a student majoring in computer science at the Asian Development Fund College, had a hard time finding a second floor to climb up to. She and her family waited as the storm came, but when they saw their neighbors running, they decided to flee. When she ran out the water was already knee deep. She hit her head on part of a falling roof and collapsed. Her aunt picked her up and carried her on.        
The family ran toward a grocery store. Gaudioso Moralde, Ms. Golondrina’s cousin, was briefly trapped with their grandfather under a jeepney, a Philippine transport vehicle. As the water rose the jeepney lifted, freeing Mr. Moralde, but his grandfather, 77, was carried away by the water and later found dead.        
“We were trying to hold onto whatever we could,” Mr. Moralde said. “When the water rose high enough we climbed into the second floor.”        
The family now lives in two rooms of the grocery store with about 40 others, the front entryways covered by tarps. A mound of debris sits between the store and the road. Cooking pots and wash basins are set atop the trash. Six chickens, many of their feathers missing, are tied together and peck at spoiled rice.        
Mr. Romualdez, the mayor, said tents would eventually be set up in this neighborhood to house the displaced.        
“They already put makeshift houses on different properties,” he said. “People don’t even own the property, but the point is it’s not safe to have houses with that kind of material. But I don’t want to talk to them until I have a place to put them.”        
The residents complain that for now they are forced to fend for themselves. They complain that they are short of food, medicine and most critically water. Many people have been drinking from a nearby well, and many of them have gotten sick from it, Mr. Moralde said.        
They lack suitable shelter. But Ms. Golondrina said she did not want a new home here. She just wants to leave.        
“My uncle said he wants to rebuild our house,” she said. “But for me, I was traumatized by the typhoon. Every night I can’t sleep. I don’t want to live here. After what happened, I guess it’s not safe to live here.”        



 
Jes Anzar contributed reporting from Tacloban. 
 









 

















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