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16th December 2004, 12:58
GENERAL NAKAR (AFP) - Survivors of floods and landslides that devastated the Philippines may need years to fully recover and will need food aid for at least another month, officials say.
President Gloria Arroyo, the World Health Organization and the International Committee for the Red Cross have appealed for foreign assistance for at least three million displaced people out of the national population of 84 million.
The focus are the towns of General Nakar, Real and Infanta on the slopes of the Sierra Madre range on the east coast of Luzon island, which together accounted for more than half of around 1,800 people dead or missing.
US Marine and Philippine Air Force helicopters thunder daily across the mountains to unload relief goods on the region, large parts of which are cut off from the outside world due to landslides that destroyed roads and bridges.
The airlift of hundreds of tonnes of food and other basic items, which US authorities say will cost about seven million dollars, is vital to keep the survivors from starvation.
More than a hundred residents of General Nakar have been forced to huddle inside the unfinished municipal hall after they lost homes, relatives, crops and animals to floods and mudslides.
General Nakar, a town of about 23,000 people, suffered about 500 casualties, including 262 dead, said its police chief Miguel Anajao.
"We need to feed these people for at least one more month," said Noel Fortunato, a member of the municipal council.
"It would probably take our town five years to recover," he added.
The civil defense office in Manila said the four storms and typhoons that hit Luzon in a month had displaced more than three million people.
The floods wiped out about 206,000 tonnes of rice and 350,000 tonnes of corn, or 1.38 percent and 5.9 percent respectively of the country's projected 2005 output for the cereals.
"We are on the rehabilitation phase already," said Mayor Arsenio Ramillosa of nearby Real.
"The number of evacuees is down because they have returned to their villages," he told AFP. Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman had assured him that the relief operations will last up to January 15, the mayor added.
"The Philippines has the misfortune of being located in such a typhoon-prone area and with volcanic activity and earthquakes as well," said US Ambassador to the Philippines Francis Ricciardone, visiting the region on Tuesday.
"At the same time, there are things that people or communities can do to prepare for those calamities when they come and then to mitigate their effects."
Filipino officials have blamed forest denudation caused by commercial logging and population encroachment for the ferocity of the natural disasters.
A helicopter tour of the region shows huge and widespread ochre-colored landslips on hillsides planted with coconut and bananas.
Logs washed down from the mountains line the length of the narrow coastline of General Nakar and Infanta.
Marine Brigadier-General Ken Glueck, commander of the 600-member US storm relief mission, told AFP the speed of the region's recovery would depend on "the rate that relief goes in there, how that relief works into the populace, and how much infrastructure would be rebuilt."
Civil defense official Neri Amparo said it "would depend a lot on the capability of the survivors," with families who lost their principal breadwinners expected to be worse off.
Amparo said the government is providing a "stress debriefing program" for the survivors.
Fortunato, the municipal official, said the local government plans to resettle some of the survivors to get them out of harm's way come the next typhoon season in the Philippines next year.
But Glueck did not think moving entire populations out of harm's way would work.
"People are not going to move away from their homes. They will rebuild and you just hope that there will not be a recurrence," he added.
Long-term, Fortunato said, his fellow residents needed other jobs that did not depend on exploiting the forests.
"If we don't stop logging, then it is not inconceivable that this will happen again," he added.
President Gloria Arroyo, the World Health Organization and the International Committee for the Red Cross have appealed for foreign assistance for at least three million displaced people out of the national population of 84 million.
The focus are the towns of General Nakar, Real and Infanta on the slopes of the Sierra Madre range on the east coast of Luzon island, which together accounted for more than half of around 1,800 people dead or missing.
US Marine and Philippine Air Force helicopters thunder daily across the mountains to unload relief goods on the region, large parts of which are cut off from the outside world due to landslides that destroyed roads and bridges.
The airlift of hundreds of tonnes of food and other basic items, which US authorities say will cost about seven million dollars, is vital to keep the survivors from starvation.
More than a hundred residents of General Nakar have been forced to huddle inside the unfinished municipal hall after they lost homes, relatives, crops and animals to floods and mudslides.
General Nakar, a town of about 23,000 people, suffered about 500 casualties, including 262 dead, said its police chief Miguel Anajao.
"We need to feed these people for at least one more month," said Noel Fortunato, a member of the municipal council.
"It would probably take our town five years to recover," he added.
The civil defense office in Manila said the four storms and typhoons that hit Luzon in a month had displaced more than three million people.
The floods wiped out about 206,000 tonnes of rice and 350,000 tonnes of corn, or 1.38 percent and 5.9 percent respectively of the country's projected 2005 output for the cereals.
"We are on the rehabilitation phase already," said Mayor Arsenio Ramillosa of nearby Real.
"The number of evacuees is down because they have returned to their villages," he told AFP. Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman had assured him that the relief operations will last up to January 15, the mayor added.
"The Philippines has the misfortune of being located in such a typhoon-prone area and with volcanic activity and earthquakes as well," said US Ambassador to the Philippines Francis Ricciardone, visiting the region on Tuesday.
"At the same time, there are things that people or communities can do to prepare for those calamities when they come and then to mitigate their effects."
Filipino officials have blamed forest denudation caused by commercial logging and population encroachment for the ferocity of the natural disasters.
A helicopter tour of the region shows huge and widespread ochre-colored landslips on hillsides planted with coconut and bananas.
Logs washed down from the mountains line the length of the narrow coastline of General Nakar and Infanta.
Marine Brigadier-General Ken Glueck, commander of the 600-member US storm relief mission, told AFP the speed of the region's recovery would depend on "the rate that relief goes in there, how that relief works into the populace, and how much infrastructure would be rebuilt."
Civil defense official Neri Amparo said it "would depend a lot on the capability of the survivors," with families who lost their principal breadwinners expected to be worse off.
Amparo said the government is providing a "stress debriefing program" for the survivors.
Fortunato, the municipal official, said the local government plans to resettle some of the survivors to get them out of harm's way come the next typhoon season in the Philippines next year.
But Glueck did not think moving entire populations out of harm's way would work.
"People are not going to move away from their homes. They will rebuild and you just hope that there will not be a recurrence," he added.
Long-term, Fortunato said, his fellow residents needed other jobs that did not depend on exploiting the forests.
"If we don't stop logging, then it is not inconceivable that this will happen again," he added.