Warehouses set-up at Loakan, Wallace and Laoag airports for relief operations in Cordi

BAGUIO CITY -- Weeks after Typhoon Pepeng swept through Northern Luzon and caused severe damages to several areas in the Cordillera, the Department of Social Welfare and Development-Cordillera Administrative Region continues with its relief operations in areas that have not been totally served.

About 90,000 or 34% of the total number of families in the Cordillera were affected by the typhoon.

Of this figure, only 80 percent or about 71,000 families have so far been served.

Per assessment of the DSWD-CAR, there are still about 18,000 or 20% of affected families that are yet to be provided relief assistance.

With this, mobile storage units were set-up at the Loakan Airport here, Wallace Airport in La Union and Laoag Airport in Ilocos Norte, in coordination with the Cordillera Regional Disaster Coordinating Council and United Nations to serve as temporary depot of relief goods that will be flown to priority areas in the region.

The warehouses, which were set up as early as last Sunday, November 8, contain goods that came from the National Relief Operations Center in Manila, family kits from UNICEF and donations from the Korean government.

Among these include bedsheets, clothing, tents, sleeping bags, towels, kitchen utensils, sacks of rice, assorted food items, DSWD family packs, and UN family kits,.

The kits contain mats, blankets, water jugs, a cooking pot, soaps, towels and canned goods while the packs contain rice, sardines and noodles.

The office has been coordinating with the RDCC for the setting up of said warehouses and for the schedule of relief delivery using UN helicopters since November 10, Tuesday,

To date, a total of 16,944 family packs have been airlifted, to include 1,500 for Atok, 1,505 for Kapangan, and 1,200 for Kibungan in Benguet, 3,000 for Tadian, Mt. Province, and 9,739 for the province of Apayao.

Last Monday, a team consisting of ambassadors and representatives of consular offices, together with UN Resident Coordinator Jacqui Badcock, World Food Program Country Director Stephen Anderson, and DSWD Assistant Secretary Bong Lucentales conducted aerial survey to assess the extent of damage by the typhoon in order to identify and asses priority areas for relief distribution. To date, some barangays in the provinces of Apayao, Benguet, Kalinga and Mt. Provinces remain isolated /inaccessible.

And as victims slowly recover and start rebuilding their lives, government agencies in CAR have begun talks on rehabilitation to address their needs among which include food and livelihood assistance, financial /emergency shelter assistance, and debriefing.

Pepeng’s havoc in the region damaged 1,164 houses and resulted to the death of 317 individuals.

As donations continue to pour in, the extent of assistance released to the affected families has reached more than P24 million. This includes various forms of assistance extended by local government units (LGUs), national line agencies including DSWD, non-government-organizations and other private sector groups. This is aside from the more than P5 million worth of rice from the World Food Program that were distributed to the provinces of Abra, Apayao, Benguet, Kalinga, Mt. Province and Baguio City.--- Hiyas Bardillas Zambrano,/ DSWD-CAR