SEVEN years after super-typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) hit Samar, Leyte, and the rest of Eastern Visayas on November 7, 2013, killing over 6,300 people and damaging over a million houses, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles announced this weekend that the housing project for Ormoc City victims has now been completed.
Yolanda was one of the most powerful and deadliest typhoons ever recorded. When it hit land in Guiuan, Eastern Samar, at 8:40 p.m., it had maximum winds of 280 kilometers per hour. It then hit Leyte and four more islands in the Visayas before emerging over the South China Sea. It then turned northwestward, eventually hitting Vietnam on November 10.
The typhoon severely affected 171 municipalities in 14 provinces as it crossed Eastern Visayas, destroyed around 580,000 houses, and damaged about 580,000 others, many of them in Tacloban and Ormoc cities which are situated near the end of bays and were thus hit with huge storm surges.
Aid came from many countries. President Benigno S. Aquino III created the Office of the Presidential Assistance for Rehabilitation and Recovery (OPARR) in December, 2013, to coordinate the rehabilitation work. A Comprehensive Recovery and Rehabilitation Plan was drawn up with funding of some P170 billion.
The National Housing Authority was assigned the task of rebuilding 205,128 housing units at a cost of P61.25 billion. Also involved in the task were 15 other national government agencies, 41 local government units, international donors, local non-government organizations, and others in the private sector.
The succeeding months and years, however, saw much confusion and delay in the rehabilitation efforts due, in part, to the involvement of so many organizations. Sixteen months after the typhoon struck, only 124 houses had been built in Tacloban, as other public projects such as flood defenses were prioritized. Only 14 percent of the national target of rebuilding 205,128 housing units had been built by November, 2016, three years after Yolanda struck in 2013.
This is why it was good news that the construction of homes for Ormoc residents had finally been completed after almost seven years. Secretary Nograles, who is now chairman of the Inter-agency Taskforce for the Unified Implementation and Monitoring of the Rehabilitation and Recovery Projects and Program in the Yolanda-affected Areas, said that of the total 54,508 housing units planned for Region 8, 35,462 have already been delivered.
Construction work continues for 10,877 more units in Cabucgayan, Biliran, and Almeria in Biliran province, in Tacloban City, Baybay City, and Basey, Samar. This would amount to an 85 percent completion rate.
It has been a long seven years since super-typhoon Yolanda struck and the housing reconstruction and recovery continues. We look forward to the completion of the last 15 percent of the houses, to finally put an end to the difficulties suffered by Yolanda’s victims in Eastern Visayas.
