#AnimatED: Life, interrupted

Schools, shelters, churches, multi-purpose halls, tents and caves are where more than 900,000 evacuees  have found temporary succor. These are spread out in the provinces affected by Typhoon Ruby (Hagupit) which made its first landfall Saturday night, December 6. 

The strongest typhoon, so far, to hit us this year is expected to depart the Philippine Area of Responsibility Wednesday, December 10. 

Living a life on hold, where the future is hazy and the past that the evacuees hope to return to is gone, or has left fragments behind, is a horrifying, even traumatic, experience. Several of them had lived through the wrath of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) and have slowly gathered their bearings when, here again is a seeming re-run of November 8, 2013.

Generally, most of those evacuated live in vulnerable areas like coastal villages and low-lying land easily swallowed by storm surges. They are poor and have little to hang on to, except their threadbare lives. 

Take Dolores, Eastern Samar, where Typhoon Ruby first hit land.

It is classified as a 3rd-class municipality, meaning the average annual income is P35 million and up but less than P45 million and this comes mainly from fishing and farming. 

While in limbo, many evacuees get adequate care, with government-issued food packages and private donations of clothes and basic necessities. In some evacuation centers, a volunteer organization brings light, providing emergency power. 

The ultimate test, however, in rehabilitating the evacuees is in enabling them to return to new normal, to eke out a living in familiar environs, in places they have called home. And, in so doing, they embed in their minds an awareness of and preparedness for these huge weather-disturbance systems that come at us, seemingly choosing places at random, disrupting our lives, including those among us who barely scrape along. – Rappler.com