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PHILIPPINES Filipinos brace for new typhoon
20-10-2009
QUEZON CITY, Philippines (UCAN) -- The Church and other organizations providing disaster relief are helping people battered by two recent storms pick up the pieces of their lives, while bracing for a third typhoon.
Typhoon Lupit is expected to make landfall in the north of the country by Oct. 22, even as churches are still helping to house thousands of evacuees.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, who chairs the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC), urged residents in landslide-prone areas in Benguet province and adjacent Mountain Province on Oct. 19 to move to safer ground.
In Benguet, the province hardest hit by Typhoon Parma two weeks ago, church buildings are sheltering displaced people as priests continue to bury the dead.
Father Mario Tambic, parish priest in Abatan, Buguias town, said the bodies of at least 19 residents were lying at San Isidro High School in Tublay for people to pay their respects.
According to the NDCC, Lupit, which means "cruel" in Tagalog, has winds of more than 195 kilometers an hour with gusts of up to 230. On the morning of Oct. 20, it was off the country's northeastern tip, where it is expected to hit the Batanes group of islands -- Cagayan, Calayan Island, Babuyan Islands and Isabela -- the hardest.
Typhoon Ketsana wreaked havoc in Metro Manila and surrounding regions on Sept. 26, killing 420 people.
Then Parma struck on Oct. 3, killing 438 people including 342 who died in landslides in Benguet and Mountain Province. Entire villages were buried in some instances, and churches and aid organizations are still struggling in the aftermath.
Father Tambic said the school in Abatan is already serving as an evacuation center for about 200 people, and his parish pastoral council is providing them food.
The priest said parishes in the area are prepared to an extent to help each other respond to disasters, but more donations are needed, because the Church cannot handle calamities on too large a scale.
Father Benedict Villapa of Immaculate Conception Parish in Tublay town has also opened the church there to evacuees, after nearby Paoad Elementary School reached its capacity.
The priest and five seminarians began taking food to stranded evacuees at the height of Parma and brought the injured back to town.
The storms have left heartbreak in their wake for many.
Josefa Polsito, 62, lost two daughters, two sons, a son-in-law and two grandchildren, one aged 3 and the other 2, in a mudslide on Oct. 8 in the Benguet village of Little Kibungan.
Sitting beside her daughter's casket on Oct. 10, she told UCA News of her pain. "It's not natural that a mother survives her children," she wept.
The NDCC says it hopes to avoid more tragedies such as this if and when Lupit hits. "I hope our countrymen will believe (NDCC's warnings) this time and evacuate," Teodoro said.
http://www.ucanews.com/2009/10/20/filipinos-brace-for-new-typhoon/
