admin“It was as if the cities (Iligan and Cagayan de Oro) were hit by an inland tsunami,” Soe Nyunt-U said in Manila yesterday. “Entire areas were completely flattened. Only a few sturdy buildings remain standing, and these had sustained a lot of damage.
“Debris from houses, buildings and other structures that had been destroyed by the storm was all swept out to the sea, leaving huge areas devoid of all traces of habitation,” he said.
Soe raised concern about disease outbreaks among the thousands living in evacuation centres after their houses were washed away when Tropical Storm Washi unleashed flash floods last weekend.
The UN is appealing for $28m to help the Philippines respond to the needs of half a million affected people.
Soe said the funds would be used for water, food, shelter and essential household items for the next three months.
Officials yesterday put the death toll at 1 010. More than 45 000 survivors are now living in evacuation centres. Hundreds of thousands more are without shelter, as centres are unable to cope with the number of homeless.
“For a lot of people, the situation is incredibly desperate,” Matthew Cochrane, regional spokesman for the Red Cross, said yesterday.
“For people in evacuation centres, for people who haven’t been able to get into evacuation centres — who are trying to rebuild homes out of salvaged bits of walls — the situation is incredibly critical and incredibly severe.
“There is a concern about the potential outbreak of diseases in evacuation centres, so we are working to get clean water in and hygiene kits to give people information they need to be able to protect themselves and their families from opportunistic infections,” he added. — Al Jazeera.
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