Kamis, 01 Oktober 2009

Lagi : Badai & banjir di Manila, Subhanallah


MANILA - AS HE surveyed the floor of his living room awash in mud yesterday, Mr Barry Manook, a father of two, said: 'Next time, I'll be better prepared.'

His home is in Marikina, one of the areas in Manila that was hardest hit by tropical storm Ketsana over the weekend.

Like most residents in his neighbourhood, he lost most of his belongings.

Piled on a sofa are the family's hard-earned electrical appliances, now fit only for the junk shop, and his daughter's soft toys, drenched and covered in mud.

'You can see how high the flood water rose,' said the 38-year-old government worker, pointing to a grimy waterline about 10cm below the ceiling. Despite the extensive damage, he felt lucky. 'My family survived,' Mr Manook said.

Like many Filipinos long used to natural calamities, he is coping with the disaster with good-humoured though fatalistic stoicism. Still, if anyone should bear the blame, it would be the local authorities.

Residents angrily claim that they did not receive any warnings from the authorities about the severity of the flooding caused by last Saturday's deluge, which dumped more rain on the capital and the surrounding regions in nine hours than there had been in a month.

'We were totally taken by surprise,' said Ms Nery Deciderio, an office worker. She described how her family had only minutes to flee from their ground-floor home in a narrow alley, as water from the overflowing Marikina River rose quickly.

Two days after the storm, overwhelmed relief and rescue workers continued a desperate effort to help nearly half a million people forced from their homes on the main island of Luzon, as the official death toll climbed to 140.

The government is struggling to cope with the scale of the disaster. 'We are concentrating on massive relief operations. But the system is overwhelmed, local government units are overwhelmed,' National Disaster Coordinating Council head Anthony Golez told reporters

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