CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Jan. 2, 2011) – What awaits survivors of the deadly tropical storm Washi that left more 1,400 people dead in northern Mindanao?
This was the questions raised by many of those who survived the flash floods that devastated the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan.
“How could I celebrate the New Year when I lost three of my children in the floods?” asked Winnie Abalayan, a 30-year old villager in Macasandig Cagayan de Oro. Her entire community of 400 people was completely wiped out by raging floods after the storm struck on December 16.
Abalayan was one of the survivors assisted by the two-day relief and rehabilitation mission led by BALSA MINDANAO (Bulig Alang sa Mindanao/Help Mindanao), a network of concerned citizens, organizations, and disaster response institutions.
BALSA Mindanao hoped to express its solidarity with the people of Northern Mindanao before the coming of the New Year. On December 29-30, it held the Mindanao caravan to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan with 350 volunteers, mostly composed of religious and young people from General Santos, Davao, Bukidnon, Butuan, Pagadian, and Dipolog cities.
The relief operations served a total of 3,100 families in Macasandig ang Consolacion villages in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City.
The mission help fed thousands of people who benefited from distribution of relief packs, medical services, and psychosocial therapy and debriefing. It mobilized nearly 200 volunteers and served affected families. The relief operations was the second it conducted after it also distributed relief and food packs before Christmas in various affected communities.
Environment advocates, religious, and cause-oriented groups in Mindanao have organized BALSA Mindanao to broaden the initial humanitarian efforts pioneered by the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines-Northern Mindanao and Panday Bulig disaster-response group to give immediate relief for the survivors.
“The magnitude of the calamity and the response needs the concerted response of the people of Mindanao. We should act as their neighbors and as one people, and work in solidarity with them at this tragic hour,” said BALSA Mindanao convenor Sr. Anecita Oser, of the Missionary Sisters of Mary, based in Butuan City.
Oser added that Washi “is a painful testimony to a history of environmental plunder by plantations, mining operations, logging, and other extractive industries by transnational corporations and local big business.”
BALSA envisions its missions to “involve and empower community leaders and residents such that they are not merely beneficiaries but are people overcoming this adversity through their own capacities and efforts”.
Mission participants and support groups converged in Isla Delta riverbank in the two cities on December 29 and lighted candles in a symbolic “national hour of mourning and solidarity for the victims of Washi.” Hundreds of candles floated along the rivers in remembrance of those who have perished and remain missing to this day.
Simultaneous candle-lighting activities were held in Davao, Butuan, and Quezon City.
As the candles floated from the river to meet the sea, mission participants were reminded of Winnie Abalayan’s wish for the New Year: “I long to be reunited with my missing children, hopefully before my body wounds can even heal. I hope the relocation areas the government will provide will be surely safe for our families and children.”
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