TYPHOON YOLANDA

On November 8, 2013, a devastating occurrence befell the City of Tacloban. Typhoon Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda is a type of hydrometeorological hazard that took place in the city. Within just the first few seconds, everything was destroyed, things were out of place, many people met their end early, and Tacloban lost its beauty.

Tacloban City has a high level of exposure at (4/4). This is further supported by Tacloban City’s microscale population — mostly comprised of adults and teenagers. In addition, despite the number of citizens, the city has significantly many structures, a lot of which are found near the coast. Not only that but Leyte province is also known for its agriculture, specifically, open-air planted crops such as coconut and palay. Lastly, its land elevation isn’t high enough to prevent storm surges.

In 2020, Tacloban city had a total population of 251,881 occupants. And in 2015, it was censused that the population consisted of 122,516 (50.6%) males and 119,573 (49.4%) females. Among them, 75,655 (31.3%) are 0-14 years old, 156,271 (64.6%) are 15-64 years old, and 10,163 (4.2%) are seniors (TACLOBAN, 2021). With this information, it is known most of the occupants of Tacloban are teenagers and adults. Because these groups of people usually go out to work, attend school, as well as to buy necessities for the family, they are the ones most exposed to typhoons. Elderlies, children, and infants most of the time stay at home as they do fewer outside activities due to their age. As seen in the data, the city’s population isn’t significantly big. That is why being exposed to typhoons could be detrimental, as it may lessen the population even more. In times of disasters, not many people will be available for search and rescue, and there will be a lack of manpower. That being said, it will be a big loss for Tacloban City if it would lose more healthy citizens — as they are the elements that contribute to making the city function.

In all the days prior to November 2013, Tacloban City only had two government-owned and five private hospitals, 17 public health facilities, some 36 public buildings, 43 banks, an airport and seaport, and 141 government and private learning institutions (Paragas, Rodil & Pelingon, 2016). A lot of these structures are near the shoreline areas of the city because Tacloban is known for being a coastal city — approximately only 2 kilometers away from the sea. It has a land area of 201.7 square kilometers (Paragas, Rodil & Pelingon, 2016). Furthermore, it is surrounded by waters and mountains. The eastern and southern portions are occupied by bodies of water while mountains occupy the northern and western areas of the city (Ranada, 2013). Thus, structures present in Tacloban are highly exposed to possible disasters caused by typhoons: landslides, storm surges, and flooding.

On another note, Region VIII is known to be the top national producer of coconut and palay rice in 2012. They produced a whopping 1.771 million metric tons of coconut on 0.419 million hectares of land, as well as 0.984 million metric tons of palay rice on 0.285 million hectares of land (Mayans, 2014). These products were also exposed to Haiyan as landslides, storm surges, and flooding can occur and destroy these goods which are planted in open fields and areas. Moreover, Leyte province has a considerable amount of non-agricultural livelihoods; some of them are small-time vendors and sari-sari stores that many people (citizens, carpenters, drivers, and restos) buy their daily necessities from. As stated in Mayan (2014), a rapid assessment was done in the year 2013 to the interviewees/people in Leyte about their livelihood activity. In there, it was reported that 82% of the interviewees are agricultural laborers, 58% work in livestock husbandry, 10% in fisheries, 36% in wage labor, 36% in sari-sari stores, and 31% in the transport/service sector. These livelihoods are exposed to landslides, storm surge and flooding as the tools, equipment, transportation, shelter, and location can get destroyed by these natural disasters caused by typhoons. Plus, it has a land elevation of approximately 14.6 meters or 47.9 feet above sea level, which can be exposed to the typhoon as flooding and storm surges can occur (Tacloban, n.d.). Unfortunately, the date for this data as well as the research was not stated in the article. In interpreting the data, this means that Tacloban city is detrimental to flooding as storm surges may reach heights of more than 40 ft (How far can a storm surge travel inland?, n.d.). After all, storm surges as well as typhoons are unpredictable and can possibly make the impossible - possible.

For the level of vulnerability, Tacloban city’s rating is 3/4. This is because Tacloban city has highly vulnerable barangays, lacks education on disaster risk, experiences extreme tropical storms, has weak housing materials, and highly vulnerable areas and iniquitous coping mechanisms.

Just like all cities, regions, and countries, there is poverty. Poverty is no exception to Tacloban City but nevertheless, its citizens, fortunately, had an improvement in their poverty incidence. From having a poverty incidence of 25.1% in 2015, it went down to 21.9% in 2018 (Meniano, 2020). This data shows a 3.2% decrease in the number of impecunious people in their society — translating to about 8,060. Thus, this makes Tacloban a little less vulnerable to the typhoon as one of the factors that cause citizens to be vulnerable to the typhoon improved. However, that does not mean that Tacloban city is safe from the typhoon as there is still 1/4 of the population who are poor which is still a big amount. Poverty isn’t easily resolved. That's why having it improved by as much as 3% in a mere few years is already a major good thing for the city. 6.52% or 9 of Tacloban City’s barangays have a high vulnerability index (Toda, Orduña, Lasco & Santos, 2015).

Additionally, Tacloban City’s total social vulnerability is calculated by its “respective sensitivity, exposure, and adaptive capacity indices (Toda, Orduña, Lasco & Santos, 2015).” Citizens in Tacloban City who rely on barangays for service and assistance will be the most in danger as some barangays in that city are highly vulnerable. People in Tacloban City were also unfamiliar with some disaster terms such as “storm surge,” thus, they didn’t know what to prepare for and avoid (Rojas, 2019). Due to the lack of education on disaster risk, tropical storms, and adaptive capacity, Tacloban City should reinforce their education to teach individuals about these as that is one thing they lack (Rojas, 2019).

Having the title of being one of the country’s poorest regions, structures that should be fixed couldn’t be fixed, and structures that should be replaced into better materials did not happen. That is why many houses in Tacloban city use makeshift corrugated sheet metal and wood. These houses should not be on marginal lands prone to flooding. Some people were even evicted from the land they built their houses on due to it having no ownership title. This caused them to move out to more rural vicinities and make a ‘house’ from lighter and cheaper materials as they don’t have enough money (Stockholm Environment Institute, 2019). This can also show how people in Tacloban City lack cooperation and mutual assistance.

Unfortunately, it was mentioned by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal that approximately 30% of Leyte Island is highly vulnerable to rain-induced landslides (RIL). At the same time, approximately 20% are classified as moderate and low vulnerable areas (United Nations, 2011). This makes the citizens, as well as the agriculture of Tacloban City prone to dangers coming from typhoons.

For Tacloban City, one way of responding to typhoons is by specifically evacuating the women and young children to storm shelters while men and older boys remain and guard their houses and possessions. This idea of response is not a good way as this means that many of the men and older boys may get injured and lose their lives which is something that must be prevented. Additionally, before the typhoon strikes the city, barangay captains and the local government must be tasked to assist individuals to go to the evacuation centers or higher ground locations (Eadie, Atienza & Tan-Mullins, 2020).

MOST VULNERABLE BARANGAYS

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PLAN

SAFETY TIPS AND HOTLINES