In case you haven't heard, I'm in the process of identifying 28,000 victims of typhoon Ondoy who need assistance with food and some other items, such as bedding, toiletries and medicine. Sounds like it should be easy when you consider that the typhoon affected over 4 million people in the region of metro Manila.
So today we headed out again, this time to the City of Angono in the Municipality of Rizal. This city is also situated close to the Laguna de Bay that I spoke of yesterday. But here 56 people died in the flooding, 1 more has died as a result of disease because of the polluted water, which is still waist deep in the community, and over 300 are still recorded as missing.
Hundreds of houses remain under water and, like most other lagoon communities, it is anticipated that the water will not recede completely until the end of December, and that is only if the four typhoons forecast to hit the island of Luzon do not dump too much rain in the area.
Following discussions with the local government officials we have agreed that we should be able to meet the emergency needs of approximately 7,000 of the residents of these communities. So now I am almost up to 26,000 people identified.
Hopefully, as we speak, goods are being sorted and packed and on Tuesday the first (for this particular project) will begin to be distributed.
