Yolanda, a year after

By Julius D. Mariveles

TWELVE MONTHS after super typhoon Yolanda left a swath of destruction in 44 of the 80 provinces of the Philippines, mixed images of hope and hopelessness, communities rising or falling back to worse times, and families resettled in permanent and transitional homes or making do with makeshift dwellings built from salvaged scraps.

From Oct. 29 to Nov. 10, 2014, a team of PCIJ reporters visited some of the villages that Yolanda had ravaged in Tacloban City, and Leyte and Samar provinces. A year after, the disaster that was Yolanda seems to linger still.

: ‘We don’t know when we would be transferred to a permanent relocation site,’ says this mother, one of the many residents from Village 88 in Tacloban City now living in a bunkhouse built by the government. She says that without any source of livelihood, they would have to depend on assistance being given to them.

: Made of wood with corrugated iron roofing, each unit of this bunkhouse in Tacloban City measures less than 10 square meters.

: Children in a bunkhouse in Tacloban City built with help from the people of Japan.

: The storm is gone and children get time for play.

: The remains of uprooted trees lie just outside the domestic airport in Tacloban City.

: Marlene Martinez lives in a makeshift house made of corrugated iron roofing salvaged from the sea. ‘It’s like an oven when the days are hot, and like a refrigerator when the nights are cold,’ she says in the vernacular.

: Marlene Martinez and her brood still live inside the no-build zone and thus cannot receive any government assistance.

: A year after typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines, some residents in Tacloban City still live in tents, like this one provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

: One of many testaments to the devastation on November 8, 2013, when super typhoon Yolanda visited.

: In New Kawayan, Tacloban City, children have no open space to play. They live in transitional housing units built on what used to be open space. The ground gets muddy when it rains.

: Residents here have to wait for several more years before they can be transferred to permanent housing units that would be built by the government.

: Rolando Flores, a cook from New Kawayan Village, works in Tacloban several kilometers away.

: A boy takes on household chores in New Kawayan, Tacloban City.

: Relatives Yolanda’s victims light candles on All Saints’ Day, Nov. 1, 2013, at a mass grave in one of the cemeteries of Tacloban City.

: At this Tacloban City mass grave, relatives of Yolanda’s victims pick crosses at random to remember their loved ones whose bodies had not been retrieved, a year after the typhoon struck.

: Children join the adult in lighting candles for the dead at a mass grave in one of the cemeteries in Tacloban City on Nov. 1, 2014.

: Among the first permanent housing units to rise in Tacloban City were built on charity donations to a television network’s foundation.

: A year after Yolanda struck, residents of Anibong district in Tacloban City still live beside the sea. The typhoon whipped storm surges that destroyed the village.

: The children Anibong district walk to school across scenes of the destruction that Yolanda left.

: Romeo Reyes is almost blind. He lives alone in this makeshift house beside the sea, a no-build zone, in the district of Anibong in Tacloban City.

: The tide is out and this boy turns to play.

: An aluminum pot is all that Romeo Reyes has in his makeshift house.

: Baby Yolanda Jacosta, right, was born on Nov. 8, 2013 when the super typhoon visited. She turned a year old on Nov. 8, 2014 in Anibong district, Tacloban City, where her family still lives.

: Patrick, Yolanda’s father, cooks lunch to mark Baby Yolanda’s first birthday.

: Analiza Jacosta, Baby Yolanda’s mother.

: Residents of Basey town in Eastern Samar still use tents as temporary shelters, a year after the typhoon struck.

: Residents of Basey town in Eastern Samar still use tents as temporary shelters, a year after the typhoon struck.

: Residents of Basey town in Eastern Samar still use tents as temporary shelters, a year after the typhoon struck.

: This community in Giporlos town, Eastern Samar, was one of the villages nearly leveled to the ground by super typhoon Yolanda.

: This community in Giporlos town, Eastern Samar, was one of the villages nearly leveled to the ground by super typhoon Yolanda.

: This community in Giporlos town, Eastern Samar, was one of the villages nearly leveled to the ground by super typhoon Yolanda.

: Yolanda sent their families to penury, but these women remain undaunted. They have formed the Gigolos Women’s Association to engage in livelihood activities like making dried fish, and selling rice and chicken feed raise money for their families.

: Yolanda sent their families to penury, but these women remain undaunted. They have formed the Gigolos Women’s Association to engage in livelihood activities like making dried fish, and selling rice and chicken feed raise money for their families.

: Pop-Up Kitchen in downtown Tacloban City is now a favorite hangout of aid workers. Here, they come almost every weekend for burgers and chats with friends.

: Aid workers enjoy their Friday night at an Italian restaurant in Tacloban. Bars and eateries here have enjoyed almost a steady flow of customers since NGOs and iNGOs turned the city into the base of their operations for communities in the provinces of Leyte and Samar.

Acknowledgment:

“Christian Aid funded this project/report as our contribution to the interest of the public’s right to know how the Yolanda funds are managed and used, and that the findings and recommendations are meant to feed into the policy discourse on Republic Act No. 10121 (The Philippine Risk Reduction and Management Plan of 2010) review and the Yolanda budget process.”