Super Typhoon Emergency Relief

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JANUARY

Santa had to visit a lot of evacuation shelters last month but he managed it! Thank you so much for everyone’s support and encouragement through this truly difficult time. Over Christmas we were able to distribute over 600 food and gift packages to all of our sponsored children and more. It was a huge effort from volunteers and staff, who themselves have lost so much. In true Filipino spirit everyone came together to bless the community and get the job done for Christmas! However that is just the start of what we have planned.

At a national level international aid has not been allowed to come into The Philippines to help victims of Typhoon Ria. Travel is only allowed for Filipino nationals and their families. On the ground help and assistance from the local government is very minimal. Thousands are still living in evacuation centres and temporary camps made from salvaged materials in our city. Our aim to get every child on our schooling program into a safe home as soon as possible.

Our director Tim Rosal has arrived in Cebu this week to project manage building efforts. Water and electricity have just been restored in the last few days so we are excited to get going with building. The community team have continued covering a lot of ground assessing families and their needs. We will be getting individual updates for sponsors out as soon as we can! So

DAY 5

The situation in Cebu remains extremely challenging for our team and the wider community. There is no coordinated emergency response at a national level of government leaving Cebu with a massive shortage of water, food and fuel. There is still no power. For the wealthy they can afford to leave the city of pay hugely inflated prices for the small supplies available but it is the poor who suffer the most. Most families are queuing for water for 4 or 5 hours a day. Water is rationed to just 1 gallon per person per day. Many people have resorted to drinking untreated water. At our children’s homes are having to boil and treat water from a well ourselves. Widespread dysentery is a real concern right now.

We moved forward our Christmas Box distribution by 2 days so we can get the much needed food supplies we had prepared out to families. They will be going out today! We are gathering information on each one of our sponsored kids families. For those of you asking for specific updates we will get that out to you as soon as we can. Our initial estimate that around 75% of kids have lost their homes seems to be correct. Families are having to choose between living in very unhygienic evacuation centers or in the ruins where their homes once stood.

DAY 3

It’s been hard getting information from Cebu but it has trickled through to us. Once our team were able to check on one another, their own homes and secure our properties and kids they finally managed to get into the wider community. The devastation is awful. For communities along the shoreline they have almost entirely been wiped out! Although many roads are shut our team has been going by foot at great risk to themselves to try to check on each and every schooling program child we work with. We estimate around 50% of our families have lost their entire homes and all of them have damage to some level. It is so heartbreaking to see how much they have lost and how sad and traumatised everyone is from this tragedy.

The good news we can report is that so far every single one of the families we work with were able to safely evacuate in time and so we have no lives lost or major injuries, which is truly a miracle! For those who are homeless they are being housed in school gyms and sports halls. The biggest immediate problem right now is water. No water is working apart from those who have private wells. We do have a well but it’s not for drinking so we are having to boil everything! We have a huge road ahead to recovery and it’s not going to be easy. Please pray for the water to be restored to the city and for the funding we need to help each and very family re-build as soon as possible!

On a side note our Christmas Boxes will go ahead as last month the team decide to buy plastic storage containers this year, instead of cardboard boxes. What an absolute stroke of genius! It meant everything we had already bought was safely prepared and sealed in the box so it all made it through the typhoon!

DAY 1

Just 24 hours ago we had an eye on Typhoon Rai, it was predicated to be category 2 typhoon bringing some small disruptions. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case. It rapidly developed into a category 5 super typhoon with winds of over 160mph. The eye of the storm made landfall on Thursday directly over Talisay, the costal city where most of our work is based.

The local government did their best evacuating families living in insecure homes and those from costal communities. Schools, gyms and churches have become temporary evacuation shelters. Our team were checking on as many vulnerable families and children as possible to ensure they were in a evacuation centre.

We battened down our properties as well as we could and stocked up on essentials in our of our homes including food, gas and emergency lights.

Reports started coming in a few hours ago that the winds and rain have been brutal and caused extensive damage. We have a few hours until sunrise to properly assess the situation and the tail end of storm is still in the area. All electricity is now down but we hope our team will find means to communicate with us in the next few hours.

As families emerge in the morning to see what is left of their homes we know their will be lots of tears and sadness but Filipinos are also the most resilient people! At times of crisis they pull together as a strong community and make the best out of anything they are faced with. Although we don’t know the full picture yet we are launching a fundraising campaign so we can get as many families as possible, rebuilt and back in their homes for Christmas! Please help us pray for all the families affected.