PHILIPPINES: Typhoon Bopha survivors face bleak holiday season

Family seen living under tarp at the side of the road. photo: ana santos/IRIN

(IRIN) BAGANGA, December 21, 2012  -  Survivors of Typhoon Bopha  which struck the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on 4 December face a bleak Christmas more than two weeks on.   

“My parents and my one-year-old baby died when our house collapsed on them and they were buried under the debris,” Richee Antulan said outside the remains of her home in Banganga, a municipality now viewed by many as “ground zero”.

She is among 6.2 million people affected by the typhoon, the most powerful to hit the country in 2012. On 7 December President Benigno Aquino declared a state of national calamity.
 
According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction andManagement Council (NDRRMC), 1,050 people were killed, over 2,000 were injured, and more than 800 are missing.

Of the 168,227 homes damaged, over 65,500 were totally destroyed. The estimated value of property damage is over US$839 million.

Close to 12,000 people are still in 43 evacuation centres.

“The devastation was total,” NDRRMC head Benito Ramos told IRIN.

Many public buildings which were designated areas for evacuation centres were severely damaged, mostly with roofs blown away.


Richee Antulan (blue shirt) just buried her family. photo: ana santos/IRIN

“We urgently need tents and tarpaulins. We have gone as far as gathering tarpaulins from old advertising billboards in Manila to bring down to the affected areas. We want the survivors to have some kind of shelter before Christmas,” said Ramos.

In Baganga, where the storm first made landfall, not a single public building is usable.
“We have no evacuation centres. In Baganga, all 31 schools were damaged, all the churches, too. We estimate that 95 percent of the 18 villages [in this municipality] have been totally destroyed,” said Rowena Abayon, a second lieutenant in the Philippine Army who was manning the incident command post in Baganga.

“The most immediate need now is shelter. The people need tarpaulins to at least give them shade or protect them from the rain,” said Wilson Mondal, a field delegate from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“[Without temporary shelter], the food distributions they receive will get wet. Tarps will also keep their kids from getting wet and getting sick,” Mondal said.

ICRC has started distributing two tarpaulins (measuring 4 x 6 feet) as well as food and non-food items to each family in the three most affected municipalities of Baganga, Cateel and Boston. An estimated 90 percent of affected people in the area are in need of additional assistance, he said.

“The people here are resilient, but will require support for quite some time to get back on their feet,” David Carden, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said from the affected area.

On 10 December, the government and the UN Humanitarian Country Team launched the six-month Bopha Action Plan for Response and Recovery, requesting $65 million to assist nearly 500,000 of the most affected people.

“Emergency shelter support is a priority, as is water and hygiene kits, along with debris removal,” Carden said.

Meanwhile, the local Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) says it has begun the first phase of establishing temporary shelters for 3-6 months for those in the worst affected area. 

Sixty bunkhouses are now slated to be built in the three worst affected municipalities (20 in each). Another 21 bunkhouses will be constructed in the other affected areas of eastern Mindanao, in Compostella Valley.

“Each bunkhouse structure, which measures about 178 square metres, will have 10 rooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a washroom. One room, can fit one family,” said DSWD coordinator Varnell Dagansan.

The target date for completion of the bunkhouses is 30 December, though Dagansan doubts this deadline will be met: The nearest source of construction materials is the city of Davao, which is a 5-8 hour drive away.

Nearly half of the 225m-long Manorigao Bridge, one of area's main bridges, was damaged, hampering road transport in the Baganga-Cateel-Boston area.

“The hardest part is getting construction materials to the construction sites. It takes 2-3 days for them to get here,” said Dagansan.

The government reports at least nine bridges and one road remain impassable in the region as of 21 December, with many areas still experiencing power outages.
 

as/ds/cb

There is a pending Inspector General investigation involving Undersecretary Vickers

(BMLTV) WASHINGTON, December 19, 2012 - Pentagon Press Secretary George Little released a statement yesterday stating that there is a pending Inspector General investigation involving Undersecretary Vickers, and the IG will and should reach her own conclusions. 

But because yesterday's press reports on Mr. Vickers are unwarranted, unfounded, and unfair, we are obliged to correct the record. He deserves better. "In July 2011, Mr. Vickers was asked by the Department's Office of Public Affairs to provide background information to filmmakers working on a movie about the successful raid that killed Osama bin Laden. 

 The Office of Public Affairs arranges these types of meetings on a routine basis. The interview was a coordinated response to questions, just as we handle questions daily from journalists, writers, and media producers. The Office of Public Affairs was present for the unclassified interview and transcribed it. "The Department's Office of Security Review reviewed the transcript and concluded that it is unclassified in its entirety. 

It was then released publicly by the Department of Defense in May 2012. Senior special operations officers approved in advance the offer Mr. Vickers made to arrange a potential discussion with a special operations planner -- someone who was not part of the Bin Laden raid team -- but such a meeting never occurred. 

Where there are redactions in the transcript, it is for privacy reasons only, not because the redacted material is classified. "The secretary has full confidence in Mr. Vickers and believes he is doing an outstanding job. Mr. Vickers is a national security professional with a long career spanning multiple administrations, including distinguished service in Special Forces, the CIA, and at the Pentagon."

Army Officials are investigating Fort Myer Child Development Center for abuse

(BMLTV) WASHINGTON, December 18, 2012 - Officials from the U.S. Army announced today they have begun an investigation of personnel procedures at the Army's Child Development Centers after a review of personnel records at the Fort Myer CDC found "derogatory information" contained in the background of a number of its employees.

 "The safety of the children under our care is our most important responsibility," said Col. Fern Sumpter, garrison commander at Fort Myer. "The quality of their care and safety has been and will continue to be our most important priority.

" In October, the Army's Installation Management Command replaced the CDC's management team following concerns received about facility leadership. A subsequent review found background issues with a number of employees. Not all the workers were directly responsible for child care. "Out of an abundance of caution, we removed those employees and temporarily closed the facility, moving students to the Cody CDC (also located on Fort Myer),

" Sumpter said. "An investigation was ordered to determine whether background checks were properly done at the time these employees were hired, and whether required procedures were followed. That investigation has just begun.

" Fort Myer officials also empanelled a Program Review Board to review the background files of about two dozen employees to determine whether they should be terminated. The Center's Child Youth Coordinator and deputy were both reassigned while those investigations and reviews are underway. Following the initial findings at Fort Myer, Secretary of the Army John McHugh directed an Army-wide review of management and procedures at child care centers, and review of compliance with those policies and procedures.

 "It's a fundamental responsibility to ensure the highest quality of care for the children of our men and women in uniform, many of whom rely on us to care for their children while deployed," he said. "These initial findings are not only troubling, they are unacceptable, and we will make certain that adequate policies and procedures are in place, and that they are strictly followed and fully enforced."

SRI LANKA: Learning from Nepal's search for the missing

Pictured here is 70-year-old Adhri Rajbanshi's, her son disappeared in 2002.
© Amantha Perera/ IRIN 

(IRIN) JALTHAL/KILINOCHICHI, December 5, 2012 - Nepal and Sri Lanka share few similarities in their post-conflict experiences. The former has a peace deal, a government ministry overseeing post-war reconstruction, a national programme to trace missing persons and an NGO to advocate for their families - none of which exist in Sri Lanka. But the two do have something essential in common: grieving relatives of the missing who are now searching for answers.

In her village of Jalthal, 550km southeast of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, 35-year-old Reena Mecha had for years avoided talking about her husband’s 2004 disappearance during Nepal’s civil conflict.

“At the beginning, there was no one to talk to, no one to understand what I was going through,” Mecha told IRIN. The 2006 peace agreement that ended the decade-long conflict did little to ease her burden. It was only in November 2011 that she found comfort after joining a support group for families of the missing, coordinated by Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC), a local rights group.

Some 1,500km away, in northern Sri Lanka, 23-year-old Maheswari has embarked on a similar journey. Her brother has been missing since May 2009, when the entire family fled Kilinochchi to escape fighting between government forces and separatist rebels from the Tamil ethnic group. Some 40,000 civilians died in the final months of fighting, according to the UN.

She and her parents have since returned. “Life is hard, I am trying my best to look for him, but I don’t know where to start or whom to ask [for] information. There are thousands of others like me here [in the former war zone],” said Maheswari, who provided only her first name.

There are thousands still unaccounted for in both these South Asian countries. In Nepal, the tracing unit of the Nepal Red Cross, which helps reunite family members by tracking down the missing, is trying to locate 1,401 missing persons.

Sri Lankan government data from 2011 estimated 2,635 people in the country’s former conflict zone, Northern Province, are “untraceable” (missing). Other estimates are much higher.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 5,671 reported cases of wartime-related disappearance, not counting people who went missing in Sri Lanka in the final stages of fighting from 2008 to 2009. At the end of 2011, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Sri Lanka had compiled a database of 15,780 cases of missing persons, some of which dated back to 1990. 

Mecha in Nepal had one piece of advice for those like Maheswari: It will be a grim and lonely search, and your only solace will be the company of others like you.

Frustrated by lack of answers following his father’s disappearance in 2001, Ram Kumar Bhandari formed a regional group of missing families in the country’s west in December 2007. “Someone need[ed] to take the initiative and get the voice [of the families] heard and the trauma they undergo recognized,” Bhandari said.

By 2009 the group became the National Network of Families of Disappeared and Missing (NEFAD) in Nepal and now counts more than 800 families among its membership.

Aside from peer support and a forum for discussion, the activist said associations like NEFAD provide political leverage. “Politicians will listen to a collective voice,” he said.


The Nepali Red Cross is tracing those missing by conducting periodic interviews with their families. Red Cross staff follow up on new leads with government and other officials.

By contrast, in Sri Lanka, there is no national tracing programme thus far, though a local government unit in the northern Vavuniya District carries out local searches. Piencia Charles, who was instrumental in setting up this Family Tracing Unit in December 2009 (but who no longer serves in the north), told IRIN she was responding to the women she encountered daily who cried in her office. The unit’s main task is to find children, though it receives complaints about missing adults as well.

“One of their [families’] main expectations is [to find out] what happened to their loved ones, and after repeated [home visits from us and] no new information, they can get very emotional,” Shubhadra Devkota, a tracing officer with the Nepal Red Cross told IRIN. She said families frequently question whether to continue searching.

Back in Kilinochchi, in Sri Lanka, a church-based counsellor who requested anonymity told IRIN that families of the missing were only now coming out to seek counsel.

She said due to how contentious the issue of disappearances still is – the number of persons missing is disputed – there are few efforts to expand or institutionalize tracing.

“There is a long way to go here. A very long way,” the counsellor concluded.

ap/pt/rz

Norfolk offers free Aids Testing in worldwide unity fight against HIV

Toni Hawes, Dr. Latonya Lonnise Ricks,Pagan Hawes are three professional women committed to worldwide unity to end HIV. photo: abhi ahmadadeen/BMLTV©

(BMLTV) Norfolk, VA, December 4, 2012 -  The Norfolk Department of Recreation, Parks & Open Space together with Access AIDS Care will offer free AIDS testing in recognition of World AIDS Day. Testing will take place Tuesday, December 4th from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the East Ocean View Community Center, 9520 20th Bay Street, and is open to ages 16 and older. Test results will be available within 20 minutes.
 

World Aids Day is held on annually December 1st as an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died. The first World AIDS Day was held in 1988 and was the first ever global health day. 

The Norfolk Department of Recreation, Parks & Open Space (RPOS) enriches the quality of life for Norfolk residents by providing a full spectrum of recreational programming for youth, adults and special populations. RPOS maintains over 100 City parks, 18 recreation centers, four computer resource centers, three neighborhood service centers, five specialty centers, six pools, eight cemeteries, over seven miles of beaches, and a number of playgrounds and athletic facilities.

For more information, visit www.norfolk.gov/rpos, like the RPOS Facebook page at /NorfolkRPOS, or pick up the latest Good Times magazine at a Norfolk recreation center near you.