World Vision: One year on - Ketsana highlights long-term impact of disasters on poor
The long-term impact of Typhoon Ketsana can still be felt one year after it ravaged the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with devastating flooding and high winds.
Ketsana struck the Philippines on September 26, 2009. In places it dumped almost half a metre of rain in a day. Ketsana then moved on to thrash mainland South East Asia and was quickly followed on its heels by Parma which pounded the northern Philippines. In total, more than 1,000 people were killed.
Together the typhoons devastated the lives of many millions, destroying livelihoods, homes and crops and leaving TV news viewers shocked at the sight of thousands of people wading through floodwaters in central Manila.
Those impacts are still being felt. In the Philippines thousands of the poorest survivors are still living in tents, displaced from their former shanty homes onto patches of land where they face an uncertain future as authorities attempt to negotiate land rights that would grant them a permanent home.
The country’s disaster preparedness budget was also severely drained by last year’s disasters. Incoming President Benigno Aquino was alarmed to discover the typhoons had depleted the nation’s disaster fund of USD 44 million, with 70% of the fund already spent – leaving the nation extremely vulnerable to this year’s monsoon season.
World Vision Philippines, which leads the Philippines Disaster Risk Reduction Network, says much more needs to be done to prepare for disasters if survivors are to escape long-term misery.
The organisation’s advocacy director Minnie Portales says the struggles facing one community of 2,000 survivors living in tents in Pinugay, outside Manila, highlights want can happen when the poorest are hit by disaster.
“Some survivors are living 20 km away from their original homes. They have lost their jobs. They have no permanent land to live on. Their children are suffering from respiratory diseases. Their girls go to bed at night fearing that they will be sexually assaulted by others in the camp. These people are losing hope that they’ll ever have a better life.”
She said the recent passage of a disaster risk reduction act by Congress was one positive step but the country and its provinces needed to urgently heavily invest in disaster and mitigation work and top up the disaster fund if a predicted increase in climate-change related disasters did not force those living on the edge into permanent emergencies.
In southern Laos, efforts are underway to respond to a silent emergency brought about by Ketsana. Last year the storm flooded rice fields destroying crops just before they were due to be harvested, pushing subsistence farming families over the edge. In the year since, children in places like Attapeu province have suffered. Almost 20% of children aged under-five are now acutely malnourished and facing an ‘emergency situation’. Aid organisations are sending in therapeutic feeding kits for the worst affected children.
World Vision Laos operations director Grant Power said: “In Laos, the UN, the government and aid agencies are working together to get on top of this issue. But what worries when I look across Asia is what I am beginning to sense from places like flood-affected Pakistan. Is Pakistan the canary in the coal mine for climate change induced disasters in Asia? Are we facing an uncertain future where literally millions of people who are already vulnerable will be tipped into crippling poverty from which they cannot escape or that will require massive on-going emergency support?”
During the last year World Vision’s response has included:
* In the Philippines: A USD 1.6m response that has met the needs of more than 100,000 people with a variety of aid interventions that have included food, emergency kits, tents, medicines, food for work clean-up schemes, and child protection and care activities.
* In Laos: Providing immediate relief aid; partnering with the World Food Programme to distribute over 2,000 MT of food in Savannakhet province to almost 28,000 people; supporting livelihoods recovery with animal distributions.
* Responses were also carried out in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Media contacts:
Minnie Portales: World Vision Philippines Advocacy Director: Cell phone: +63 9175342165
Grant Power: World Vision Lao PDR Operations Director: Cell phone: +856 2055599349