Philippine president visits typhoon survivors

President Benigno Aquino flew into the southern island of Mindanao which bore the brunt of Typhoon Bopha, to meet with bruised and grieving survivors who must now rebuild their lives.

Hundreds of thousands of survivors of a deadly Philippines typhoon crammed on Friday into overcrowded shelters, braving the stench of corpses as the government vowed action to prevent storm disasters.

Bopha, which smashed into the nation's south on Tuesday leaving at least 420 people dead and 383 missing, was the deadliest natural disaster this year in a country that is regularly hit with quakes, floods and volcanic
eruptions.

"We want to find out why this tragedy happened and how to keep these tragedies from happening again," Aquino told dazed crowds after arriving by helicopter in the town of New Bataan on Friday which was mostly obliterated by the storm.

As Aquino spoke, a yellow excavator?removed the rubble of a row of flattened houses a short distance away, allowing rescue workers to pull out the bodies of two more victims.

Among the 306,000 left homeless by the storm were 2,000 people huddled in a basketball gymnasium in New Bataan, one of only a few buildings left standing in the town which is a centre for the nation's banana and gold mining industries.

Overpowering stench

With the overpowering stench of decomposing corpses from the parking lot outside, farmer's wife Violy Saging, 38, tried to focus on the needs of her surviving children.

"It [the typhoon] snatched our life away. There is nothing left, but we are hoping our relatives or friends will take us in," she told AFP news agency.

Her eldest son's body was found wrapped around a coconut tree that he had climbed in a vain effort to flee the deluge.

The youngest of her three children who survived, a son aged aged three, has a high fever.

The concrete floor of the crowded gym was caked with mud, and part of its roof was blown away by the cyclone, exposing the newly homeless to heavy rain that began pouring again shortly after Aquino left.

Families took turns to sleep on benches around the walls, and the 2,000 occupants had to share the building's two toilet stalls.

Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Compstela Valley, said that Tuesday's storm has left most people fearing the slightest drops of rain.

"Any little shower has them really seeking shelter, worried that the storm might come back," she said.

Operations 'ill-equipped'

Our correspondent said?that rescue operations are "ill-equipped" and "undermanned".

"You've got the military and the police, as well as civilians actually helping out," she said.

"There are still places that they haven't got to?to that they are trying to get to despite the current weather conditions.

The government has appealed for immediate international aid for food, tents, water purification systems and medicine, and warned the homeless face months in evacuation centres before safe places can be found for new homes.

Mar Roxas, interior secretary, announced?during Aquino's visit that more rescue workers, equipment and canine units, capable of sniffing out any people still alive beneath the rubble, were being fielded in the worst-hit areas.

He said the government was also investigating why so many people were killed even when advance warnings were given ahead of the typhoon.

"They should not have built houses there," Roxas said, noting many of the mining areas which are a magnet for the nation's poor had been declared unsafe for habitation due to frequent deadly landslides.

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Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/12/201212774552608324.html

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