On November 8th, after Typhoon Haiyan hit, Helen Merino, a forty-four-year-old housemaid in Manila, tried to reach her parents in rural Barangay Tolingon, part of Isabel municipality in Leyte province. All power and communication lines were down, but somehow Facebook was accessible. READ FULL STORY
Lieutenant Colonel Fermin Carangan is the Commanding Officer of TOG 8, the Air Force unit tasked to provide air support for Samar and Leyte. Here he narrates his ordeal as Supertyphoon Haiyan (local name: Yolanda) unleashed her fury on Tacloban on that fateful morning of November 8. READ FULL STORY
TACLOBAN CITY – Tormented survivors of Super Typhoon Yolanda that is feared to have killed thousands rummaged for food through debris scattered with corpses, while frenzied mobs looted aid convoys. Two days after one of the most powerful storms ever recorded flattened communities across a large part of the country last Nov. 8, desperate survival tactics created fresh horrors. On the outskirts of Tacloban, a coastal eastern city of 220,000 where tsunami-like waves destroyed many buildings, Edward Gualberto accidentally stepped on bodies as he raided the wreckage of a home. Wearing nothing but a pair of red basketball shorts, the father of four and barangay councilor apologized for his shabby appearance and for stealing from the dead. “I am a decent person. But if you have not eaten in three days, you do shameful things to survive,” Gualberto told AFP as he dug canned goods from the debris and flies swarmed over the bodies. “We have no food, we need water and other things to survive.” After half a day’s work, he had filled a bag with an assortment of essentials, including packs of spaghetti, cans of beer, detergent, soap, canned goods, biscuits and candies. People entered stores and homes just to to survive the day. “This typhoon has stripped us of our dignity… but I still have my family and I am thankful for that.” Elsewhere in Tacloban, other survivors were employing more aggressive means as they took advantage of a security vacuum created when most of the city’s Read More …
TACLOBAN CITY — Corpses hung from trees, were scattered on sidewalks or buried in flattened buildings — some of the thousands believed killed in one Philippine city alone by ferocious Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) that washed away homes and buildings with powerful winds and giant waves. As the scale of devastation became clear on Nov. 10 from one of the worst storms ever recorded, officials said emergency crews could find more bodies when they reach parts of the archipelago cut off by flooding and landslides. Desperate residents raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water as the government began relief efforts and international aid operations got underway. Even in a nation regularly beset by earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical storms, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record. Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippines on Nov. 8 and quickly barreled across its central islands, packing winds of 235 kph (147 mph) that gusted to 275 kph (170 mph), and a storm surge of 6 meters (20 feet). A man brings his lifeless 6-year-old daughter to the morgue in Tacloban City. Hardest hit in the Philippines was Leyte Island, where regional Police Chief Elmer Soria said the provincial governor had told him there were about 10,000 dead, primarily from drowning and collapsed buildings. Most were in Tacloban, the provincial capital of about 200,000 people that is the biggest city on the island. Reports also trickled in indicating deaths elsewhere on the island. On Read More …
Rosalyn, already a mother of six children, is waiting to give birth. But she will not enjoy the privacy of her own delivery room. Instead, Rosalyn will be one of the 300 new mothers crammed into the wards at the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila, which sees, on average, 60 new babies come into the world every single day. READ FULL STORY (See Related Story)
By James M. Noriega It does not really matter how often I go back to the Philippines. The same nostalgic feeling always brings back old memories but absence and distance have given me a different perspective and appreciation of what I always call home. PHOTO – Author (right) with Filipino worker Ronaldo Go. The visit this time, however, was for a special purpose. I came home to test and interview shortlisted candidates with the goal of hiring 15 Stainless Steel Tig Welders for a Canadian company, a rare opportunity that could change the lives of the applicants and their families. How so? For starters, the successful applicants will receive a fortune based on Philippine standards. At $25.62 per hour, they will earn about Php 190 thousand a month, or about Php 2.3 million a year, and with overtime, they can probably add another million pesos. The author, James Noriega, (right) with two of the Filipino workers – Jordan Lucaben and Juris Ballugo. Likewise, they get medical and dental benefits, paid holidays, and disability and unemployment insurance. The best part is the chance later to become permanent residents of Canada, bring their families with them, and eventually become Canadian citizens. And not to forget, they will be working not in some far-flung area but close to one of the most livable cities in the world, Vancouver. The interview process was both an eye-opener and a tearjerker. Most of the applicants were former OFWs, with stints in the Middle East, Asia Read More …
By Niki Yarte – President Benigno Aquino III certainly has an eye for the ladies. And it has nothing to do with being the country’s most eligible bachelor. In 2012 he named Maria Lourdes Sereno, 52, as the first female and youngest chief justice. In October this year he appointed Amparo Cabotaje-Tang presiding justice of Sandiganbayan, the anti-graft court. Earlier the President had tasked four women in four key agencies to enforce the administration’s daang matuwid initiative (a straight path to governance). Except for the Bureau of Internal Revenue, these agencies form part of the Interagency Anti-Graft Coordinating Council, the special body created to look into the misuse of the pork barrel funds of lawmakers. Defiant As associate justice, Conchita Carpio-Morales was handpicked by Mr. Aquino to administer his oath of office as president on June 30, 2010 – a function normally performed by the chief justice. The incoming president’s move was a testament to Morales’s courage, integrity and sterling record in the Supreme Court where she and Associate Justice Antonio Carpio were often the lone dissenting voices in highly controversial cases, as when the high court upheld then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s appointment of Renato Corona as chief justice two days after the May 10, 2010 presidential elections. One year later, after Morales retired from the Supreme Court, President Aquino named her Ombudsman, replacing Mrs. Arroyo’s appointee, Merceditas Gutierrez who was forced to resigned amid threat of an impeachment. While some considered this a demotion from her previous office, she Read More …
CEBU CITY — Devotees wept after a deadly earthquake on Oct. 15 rocked the birthplace of Catholicism in the Philippines, badly damaging the country’s oldest church and leaving other historic places of worship in ruins. (In photo is the limestone bell tower of the Philippines’ oldest church, Cebu’s Basilica Minore del Santo Niño, in ruins.) Ten churches, some of which have crucial links to the earliest moments of the Spanish colonial and Catholic conquest in the 1500s, were damaged as the 7.2-magnitude quake struck the central islands of Cebu and Bohol. “It is like part of the body of our country has been destroyed,” Michael Charleston “Xiao” Chua, a history lecturer at De La Salle University in Manila, told Agence France-Presse. He said the damage was particularly painful because the Philippines had already lost so many of its cultural treasures to war, typhoons, earthquakes and poverty-driven neglect. In Cebu, shocked devotees said prayers as they gathered in front of the Basilica Minore de Santo Niño (Basilica of the Child Jesus), the oldest church in the Philippines and home to one of the country’s most important religious icons. The limestone bell tower of the church, the latest version of which was built in 1735, was destroyed in the quake. “I wanted to seek sanctuary here but it turns out the church was damaged,” Fraulein Muntag, 32, a mother of two, told AFP as she wept and prayed the rosary at the site. Muntag was among 100 people who had gathered amid Read More …
It’s perhaps the unlikeliest of relationships. She was a student activist in her college days at the University of the Philippines (UP), while he was the defense minister who implemented Martial Law under the regime of Ferdinand Marcos. READ FULL STORY
By Niki Yarte Most Filipinos perceive our brand of politics as dirty and unethical, and by direct correlation, Filipino politicians are mostly corrupt and self-serving. The most recent P10-billion pork barrel scam reinforces this perception and further alienates the electorate from the self-proclaimed public servants. Yet every now and then we see extraordinary individuals who slay the dragons of traditional politics and its attendant tentacles – self-aggrandizement, abuse of power, incompetence – and challenge the status quo. Their vision, courage and determination help restore the people’s hope in politics and government. Among such exceptional leaders are five mayors from around the country whose commonality involves the successful transformation of their respective cities as well as the unique demeanor with which they approached their office. Arsenio H. Lacson, Manila, 1952-1962 The first mayor of Manila to be elected to three terms, Arsenio H. Lacson inherited a staggering debt of more than P20 million when he took over City Hall in 1951 after serving as congressman for one term. By 1959 he had managed to turn the city’s finances around. Lacson embarked on crusades to maintain peace and order and good government in Manila, firing incompetent employees and corrupt policemen. All throughout his 10 years as mayor, Lacson maintained his radio program where he lambasted politicians of all stripes and dissected local and national issues. The programs were pre-recorded in order to edit out his expletives and occasional foul language. Sporting a broken nose from his amateur boxing days and his trademark Read More …