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TENS OF THOUSANDS of people were forced into cramped shelters by a powerful storm pounding the Philippines, making social distancing nearly impossible as the nation battles the coronavirus pandemic.
Typhoon Vongfong flattened flimsy coastal homes when it roared ashore on central Samar island yesterday, but then weakened into a severe tropical storm on its path north to the capital Manila.
The storm hit as tens of millions of Filipinos are hunkered down at home against the coronavirus, but at least 141,700 had to flee in central Bicol province because of the powerful storm, disaster officials said.
“We have to wear masks and apply distancing at all times,” local police official Carlito Abriz told AFP. “It’s difficult to enforce because they (the evacuees) are stressed. But we are doing our best.”
Bicol saw less damage than hard-hit Samar, so some of those in shelters had begun to return home after the storm passed on Friday, disaster officials reported.
Authorities have said they will run shelters at half of capacity, provide masks to people who don’t have them and try to keep families grouped together.
However, many spaces normally used as storm shelters have been converted into quarantine sites for people suspected of being infected with coronavirus.
“The challenge really lies in the physical distancing,” said disaster official Junie Castillo, who added they were housing people in classrooms emptied by the pandemic.
Fortunately the central region where the storm struck first is not one of the hotspots of the Philippines’ outbreak, which has seen 11,876 reported infections and 790 dead.
Overlapping disasters
Tens of millions more people live along Vongfong’s path, which is forecast to take it near the densely populated capital Manila later today or early tomorrow.
Disaster officials in Manila, which is the centre of the nation’s virus outbreak, said they have not ordered pre-emptive evacuations for the capital but have issued storm warnings.
Authorities have not reported any deaths so far, but disaster crews had not yet completed their assessment of hard-hit areas cut off by the storm.
It is not unheard of for disasters to overlap in the Philippines, and some 22,000 people were evacuated from the slopes of the active Mayon volcano ahead of the typhoon’s arrival.
Heavy rains in the past have sent landslides of debris cascading down the volcano, burying and killing the communities in their paths.
Typhoons are a dangerous and disruptive part of life in the Philippine archipelago, which gets hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year.
The storms put millions of people in disaster-prone areas in a state of constant poverty and rebuilding.
A July 2019 study by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank said the most frequent storms lop one percent off the Philippine economy, with the stronger ones cutting economic output by nearly 3%
Many of the areas in Vongfong’s path have already gone through much of their emergency disaster money while responding to the pandemic, and have asked the national government for help.
The country’s deadliest cyclone on record was Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in 2013.
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The public service will finally bankrupt this country once and for all. The money just isn’t there to meet their demands. Unless the Government can raise money through taxing the private sector workers or raising corporation tax, there is no way this money can be paid. Then again a Government desperate to get re-elected are capable of doing anything to hold on to power. The unions are well aware of when the best time to declare war is.
@jo mixon: It’s the Consultants on big money who are draining the system not the hardworking nurses imo.
@ianglen: And why is 1 in 5 consultant jobs unfilled?
Perhaps you should campaign for further pay cuts for consultants ?
ANd any that dont like it can go off to Canada/Australia.
@jo mixon: Weel . They found the money to give the banks a 30 year tax write off.
@jo mixon: And there’s way too many clipboards managers as well. Morale isn’t good among hospital staff atm.
@ianglen: anyone who believes this is an idiot.
@jo mixon: yep the public service ie people who live work and spend in this country as unlike nama bondholders banks developers tax exiles and the other fuxxers who have had free run protected by government ask my hole merry xmas fg trolls
@ianglen: actually..healthcare workers are are team, we work together to care for our patients and it is an insult when ignorant comments such as this are made. I am an NCHD and work 80+hour weeks. I will leaving Ireland in July to Canada…leaving my family and friends in Ireland..this is not for money, but for a decent work life balance and a better system. I will be supporting my nursing colleagues as they strike. The system needs to change and the public needs to stop pointing fingers at those healthcare workers in it; we all work hard to do our best in a system stretched beyond its limits.
Duties above their original description. Bloody unions will co.e up with any inventive way of saying we want more money . Black hole of a health service. Cost multiples of the bus in Manchester and services the same amount of people where is the logic.
@john s: exactly, wont fix or go in any way to solve the mess that is the HSE and the inefficiences in that system which results in suffering for everyone
People blame consultants. Consultants are amazing, not when you have to fork in 150 euro for a consultancy,but when your life is in their hands. They are people that fix people. They face more decisions in a week, than a bank CEO and get paid less. I would hate their job.
This problem is on repeat now, Wage Inflation. We have an artificial property bubble that is driven by lack of supply. It is the source of all our ills at the moment. Money is the means to make things more affordable, but the driver is affordability.
Insurance, mortgage rates, house prices, we’re like an out of shape flabby tiger.
It will tank the economy, it tanked it before. It depends on Government action and leadership they need put about 2Bn into a NAMA style build project. This will just get worse and the strikes and protests will continue. We all sign into a private/public economic stability model, where the government delivers affordable housing as a core tenet and freely fully opens sectors such as insurance etc., mortgage rates. This public worker, private workers is nonsense, we all live here.
Remember the New children’s Hospital is running close to a billion over cost which also has to be paid the whole system is f##} up
Follow a consultation, Dr, Nurse and hca for a week at work and tell me that 99% don’t deserve a good wage compared to all the other fu#k wits in the HSE and other government departments.
Leo our leader was in charge of Health for a while and did SFA and
watch as he performs the same act again as the unions walk all over him
Blame the unions, blame the consultants, blame the public service. Such other and total rubbish.
The problems have been pointed out repeatedly by the unions and the nurses and the unions and even the patients and have been ignored by government for years,
The hard working private sector pay for everything. Wrong guess what public servants pay tax as well.
The HSE and Dept of Health is top heavy and technically in the dark ages as regards records and such. The actual part of the system of curing and helping people works well its the admin and management that costs so much.
Doctors should do doctors work and managers manage the business. At times its the other way around.
Take it apart and start again is the only solution
Britain spends 125 billion with 70 million people we spend 20 billion with 4 million people. I suppose some Numpties are going to tell me that Britain are spending too little ???? Doing the math that means Britain should spend a 2.2 trillion. Scary isnt it ????
@Marcus o Dhonnghaile: £127 ( 142 billion euro) billion spend is on England alone ( pop 55 million).
Irish population is 4.7 million HSE spend is 17 billion.
Not sure where you are getting the 2.2 trillion?
I find this scary, but for different reasons.
have your say