Tropical Storm Ondoy left a huge mark among many Filipinos, particularly among the Manilenyos, when it hit Metro Manila in 2009. According to reports, a total of 464 deaths were reported when the storm had finally subsided. Many experts have said that this tragedy should have taught a great lesson among Filipinos as well as the government on how cruel a storm can get. However, recent events had proven this otherwise when Super Typhoon Sendong had hit Visayas and Mindanao on December 16.
Devastation of Sendong
According to Philippines current events, over a 1000 were reported dead, while hundreds more are still missing, more than what Tropical Storm Ondoy had left in Metro Manila. The irony with this is that experts had already foretold of the same tragedy that Ondoy had caused 3 years ago, yet the government was still unprepared when a similar, more devastating, storm had made a land-fall in the Philippines.
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The Aftermath
The deaths don't only stop on Sendong's devastation. Diseases had already plagued many evacuation centers in Mindanao, particularly in Cagayan De Oro and Iligan City.
Survivors of devastating Philippines flash floods face a growing threat of disease including cholera and typhoid, officials warned Wednesday as the death toll rose above a thousand.
Assistant Health Secretary Eric Tayag warned the crowded conditions could lead to outbreaks of leptospirosis, diarrhoea, cholera, hepatitis A, typhoid fever and dysentery, with children and pregnant women the most vulnerable. "We may be paying so much attention to the corpses we will ignore the evacuation centers," he said in a television interview.
"If there is any epidemic or threat to health, it will come from the evacuation centers," Tayag added.
Aiding those in Need
As a step by the government, President Benigno Aquino pledged to aid communities hit by flash floods that walloped the south. PNoy flew to Mindanao islands to inspect the ports of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, choked with drying mud and crumpled homes, as well as hundreds of decomposing corpses that have raised health fears.
"I assure you the government will help you rebuild your homes. But in return we expect you to refrain from moving back to those places that put your lives at constant risk," Aquino said in a speech at an evacuation center.
Mass Burials
According to Current Events in Philippines, a mass burial site was proposed by the local government to bury hundreds of unclaimed cadavers in both Iligan City and Cagayan De Oro.
However, the Department of Health DoH reiterated that burying decomposing bodies of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City flood victims in a temporary burial site was better than interring them in mass graves, a report from Radyo Inquirer 990AM said Tuesday, even though many was already buried in a mass grave site. For more information visit to our site at http://www.inquirer.net/
Author Resource:-
Maria Antoinette Del Castillo is a self-proclaimed journalist/writer whose interest is to share the latest and the hottest news not only in the Philippines but also around the world, either in Philippines Current Events, entertainment news Philippines, business, foreign exchange, particularly in Current Events in Philippines.
