Ailments hound Taal evacuees
Credit to Author: Franz Lewin Embudo| Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2020 16:22:07 +0000
A week after thousands of families fled the wrath of Taal Volcano, the situation at evacuation centers sheltering them has begun to deteriorate because of overcrowding.
Evacuees on Monday said children were getting sick and water was getting scarce.
Forty-year-old Luz Mendoza, from Barangay Laguile, Taal, Batangas, worried about her two-month-old baby who has had a cold since Tuesday, a day after they arrived at the evacuation center.
“’Yung pangalawang araw lang sinipon; [ang] mabuti may mga doktor naman diyan (On the second day, he caught a cold; good thing there are doctors there),” she said.
“Gusto na nga po namin umuwi (We want to go home),” Mendoza said when asked about her plan for the next days.
Department of Health local official Kennelyn Erodias said among the evacuees’ health problems are skin diseases, diarrhea, fever, headache, cough and cold.
Lito Castro, head of the Batangas Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said on Monday there was an urgent need to decongest the centers, which are actually schools that had been designated as evacuee camps.
“Last night (Sunday night), we transferred some evacuees from Batangas City to the municipality of Taysan that will continue the decongestion,” he added.
By the Batangas Provincial Disaster Office’s count, there are 34,939 families or 134,631 persons staying at the province’s evacuation centers.
Castro said another serious problem was the lack of toilets.
Henidina Onal, 53, who is camping out at the Bauan Technical High School in Bauan, Batangas, said there was not enough water in the toilets and she feared for the health of the children.
“Ang problema po namin dito, ang tubig sa CR (comfort room) minsan nawawala.
Nagkakasakit ng ubo at lagnat ang mga bata (Our problem here is that sometimes our comfort rooms have no water. Children are getting sick),” she said.
Close to 6,400 families or 23,000 people are staying at Bauan Technical High School, which is the town’s designated evacuation center.
Onal narrated to The Manila Times her experience when Taal erupted: “Hindi po ako makatulog, lindol nang lindol. Nag-crack nga po ang aming kusina at mga kwarto. Ang aming kusina ay walang bubong kaya ay punong puno po ng abo (I could not sleep because of the earthquakes. There were cracks in our kitchen and bedroom. Our kitchen was filled with ash because it has no roof).”
Onal could consider herself lucky. Mylene Encarnacion, 28, had to sleep on the ground outside the Batangas Provincial Sports Complex after a series of earthquakes rattled the area Sunday night.
“Sa labas [ng gymnasium] po kami natulog lahat kagabi. Ang lakas po ng lindol (We slept outside the gymnasium last night. There was a really strong eathquake),” she said.
Phivolcs recorded the strongest tremor at magnitude 4.6 at 8:59 p.m. on Sunday in the town of Mabini. It was followed by magnitude-4.0 earthquake at 10:02 p.m. in the same area.
The Batangas Provincial Sports Complex is sheltering 548 families or 2290 individuals.
The Polytechnic University of the Philippines’ campus in Sto. Tomas has taken in 773 evacuees.
Two weeks after Taal belched steam and ash, authorities have kept the Alert Level at 4, which means a major eruption could happen within days.
The threat from the volcano remains because magma beneath it continues to “recharge,” Director Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said on Monday.
He added that the volcanic earthquakes signify that the groundwater beneath the volcano island is “being oiled” and its steam is moving up.
“The threat is there and the fact is [that] Taal Volcano can have various explosions,” Solidum said in a news conference at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City with National Disaster Council officials.
One bright note is that electricity has been restored in some areas affected by the volcano’s explosion. In a message on Monday, Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said all the power distributor’s main lines and circuits had been restored.
Portions of Cavite, Laguna and Batangas experienced interruptions in the past week because of ash spewed by Taal damaged Meralco’s lines.
About 180,000 Meralco customers were affected, said Zaldarriaga.
WITH JORDEENE B. LAGARE