Typhoon Survivors Expect Long Wait For Help

By Stuart Ramsay, Chief Correspondent, in Cebu

For hour after hour, driving into the heart of typhoon-stricken northern Cebu, it was the same picture.

Hundreds of families, picking through the remains of their destroyed homes, hoping to find some treasured keepsakes; and children lining the roadside, for mile after mile, pleading for water, food and money.

It has been four days since Typhoon Haiyan - or Yolanda as it is known in the Philippines - swept across the centre of the country, destroying homes and livelihoods in its path.

So far, in northern Cebu at least, very little aid has reached those who need it most.

Stephen was born a month early during the storm

Supplies of water and rice are trickling through from independent charities but as we drove north, the scene of destruction worsening the further we went, there was no evidence of any food convoys and no airstrips are operational in the area.

Thankfully there was no storm surge in northern Cebu, but the winds struck with a savagery which stunned residents well used to typhoons, believed to have been in the region of 250 miles per hour.

Bonifacio Reviero said: "We hid in the house with our grandchildren but we could hear the telephone and electricity poles snapping like twigs outside, and branches smashing into the roof. It lasted hours.

"When it was over, the roof was gone and the house was ringed by huge trees, which had crashed down but not on us. I don't know how we were so lucky."

One village lost 12 fishermen when four boats capsized in the storm.

In the hills, miles of banana trees have been uprooted or ripped in half. The coconut trees stand bare and broken. There will be no harvest here for a very long time.

Bonifacio Reviero sits outside what remains of his home

More than 90% of the homes in northern Cebu, an area hundreds of miles square, have sustained considerable damage; many pancaked, storey on storey. 

No one expects help to come any time soon, hence the pleading with passing motorists for money, to buy new building materials as soon as possible. The remnants of their old walls and roofs are spread across the nearby fields.

The injured line the walls of the only medical facility in Bogo City, many of them young children.

In one jam-packed ward of the tiny Severo Verallo Memorial District Hospital the very youngest patients lie four to a bed. Since Saturday the hospital has delivered 40 newborns.

Curled up around them on the beds are their hollow-eyed parents, who know they should be celebrating one of the happiest moments of their lives but are unable to amid the chaos and destruction outside; worries about injured relatives, and the knowledge for many that they have no home to take them to. 

Two-day-old Stephen's mother, Maria Janairo, who went into labour a month early during the storm, said it would be a very strange feeling when so many children in the town were celebrating their birthday together every year.

"On the one hand I will be happy that we survived for them to be born, but on the other it will be a haunting reminder of everything we lost."

:: To make a donation to the DEC Philippines Crisis Appeal visit www.dec.org.uk, call the 24-hour hotline on 0370 60 60 900, donate over the counter at any high street bank or post office or send a cheque.

You can also donate £5 by texting the word SUPPORT to 70000.

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