As the Canadian Red Cross team is busy making arrangements to set up its field hospital (ERU) in Tacloban, Philippines to provide health care for people affected by the typhoon, we wanted to share this update from Jose Garcia-Lozano, a Canadian Red Cross staff member who is currently in the Philippines with Conrad Sauvé, the Secretary General of the Canadian Red Cross.
The Canadian Red Cross ERU/ field hospital equipment has landed in Cebu, Philippines. The Red Cross aims to set up the hospital in Tacloban.
Conrad and I have had a good and long day today. We drove up north, and visited a few affected communities in northern Cebu Island.
The further north we went, the devastation became quite clear: entire homes destroyed, large quantities of trees torn or up-rooted, piles of rubble, and people along the road, especially children, stretching their hands for anything to cars going by. We learned later that families in the interior who lost everything would go to the road, the artery to life, to seek assistance.
We stopped in a few places to talk to people, or visit distribution centres. We found people with a tremendous capacity to support each other, to smile, to show optimism and strength to carry on. Lots of activity clearing rubble, re-building shacks and shelters out of nothing. People were warm with us and took us around to see where their homes had stood, and to show us the improvised spaces where their intimacies now were so exposed to the view.
In the rural communities we visited you can see that solidarity and hope are perhaps easier because of the space around. I can imagine how different things may be in Tacloban, the hardest hit city where the Canadian Red Cross field hospital was deployed today, but where we did not manage to go.
It seems that what people need most, in the communities we visited, is materials to rebuild their homes, and some form of livelihoods support. At least that is what we heard from women and those we spoke to. But again, those were all rural communities that are perhaps more bonded together and provide each other with immense support. I was amazed to see how many people were smiling and seemed positive and not crushed by the ruins their lives had become.
We traveled with Anders and Birgitte, from the Danish Red Cross, who were kind enough to bring us along in their field visit. I was very impressed with Canadian Red Crosser Sebastien Jouffroy and how he seemed to be working so hard and with such clarity of purpose to get the Red Cross hospital boxes shipped to Tacloban.
Along the way we found a health post set up by the Manila University of San Carlos, providing first aid, food distribution, clothing distribution and non food items that they had received from local donors in response to the emergency. I had the feeling that a lot was going on at the community level that started immediately after the cyclone ended its destructive path.
Off to bed now!
Jose
The Canadian Red Cross is inviting Canadians to donate to the Typhoon Haiyan fund to support relief efforts in the Philippines. Donations made by individual Canadians between November 8 and December 9, 2013 will be matched by the Government of Canada.