Date of interview – 13th October 2009
Apologies for the quality of the phone line recording. Please find the interview transcript below.
Transcript
“I’m about three hours drive north of Manila, in a place called Rosales. It’s a small town with a population of between 50,000 and 100,000. It lies in the valley, next to the river, and it’s a low-lying area that’s not far from the dam that released the water last Thursday. The water due to the typhoon and the torrential rain basically filled up the dam and they had to release a huge amount of water, which caused a flood in the low-lying areas here.
"One of our teams got here on Friday and there was basically a river going through town. The depth of the flood at some points was between eight and 10 feet. So the devastation is tremendous – comparable to what I saw in Kashmir in 2005 after the earthquake.
"The houses are built of light materials – bamboo and thatched roofs – and were swept away completely. Generally speaking the devastation is tremendous and nearly 100 percent of the households were affected.
"The living conditions of people in evacuation centres; scarce food and no hygiene kit distributions, no Non-Food-Item [general emergency relief] distributions, and this is why we are trying to support and assist as much as we can. And the medical needs will follow after that, when the water settles and skin rashes, upper respiratory infections, these types of diseases, we are expecting to come up.
"Normally we have criteria for the assessments, but this is basically a total destruction and the houses are completely swept away. So the criteria are just very clear for us. The needs are huge and identifying the most affected places and distributing the items will be our main activity. Besides of course medical check-ups, conducting mobile clinics, that’s another thing we’re concentrating on.
"So, we have a stock of 1,000 kits in Manilla and they’re coming tomorrow and on Wednesday. We’ve just ordered another 4,000 kits and it’s just a matter of packing and transporting them to us, which should take two days. And we will just work around the clock to accommodate the affected population with the basic needs. We don’t have any information about other actors, except for local government and the military, which are also working around the clock. But no other actors as of today. I just hope that more support will come..."