news news Aftermath of a 'super typhoon'

[renegade9999]

Last Updated: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 | 11:49 AM ET
By Anthony Germain CBC News

A Photo essay of Manila's agony

Here in Manila, it seems like tropical storm Parma just doesn't want to leave the Philippines alone.

Downgraded from typhoon status, Parma is now involved in what experts describe as a deadly dance with another Pacific "super typhoon" that goes by the name of Melor.

Parma is hanging around because of something called the Fujiwara effect — a term used to describe the interaction between cyclones, which causes them to appear to orbit each other. (Japanese meteorologist Sakuhei Fujiwara came up with the theory in the 1920s.)

But here in the emergency stations in the Manila suburbs, where thousands of people are living out in the open, I discovered that nobody is really talking about arcane weather theories.

There is a fair bit of buzz, however, about bad things coming in threes.

Parma, which had also been hyped as a super typhoon, died down at the last minute.

And, while it did lead to the deaths of a dozen or so people, its glancing blow off the northern tip of the Philippines was seen as an act of mercy.

The storm that preceded it a week earlier, however, is an entirely different story.

A young boy in an impromptu shantytown outside Manila rescues a Barbie doll from the flood detritus. (Anthony Germain/CBC)

On the heels of Ketsana

In the space of six hours, typhoon Ketsana dumped as much rain on Manila as the capital usually receives in a month.

In one suburb, Marikina City, I met a 40-year-old woman named Reisa Ramos who now lives under a sheet of plastic with her six children.

The squalor of the place — and the stench — is literally breathtaking. She lives in a field of filth and excrement amidst acres of destroyed furniture.

The flood washed away thousands of homes.

"The water flowed over the roof of our house and now there is nothing left but mud," she said with her 11-year old daughter, Claire, by her side.

Reisa Ramos and her daughter Claire, 11, in their shelter under an overpass. (Anthony Germain/CBC)

Reisa and her family are among at least two million people who no longer have a place to live.

The government here has declared the entire nation to be in a state of calamity.

But President Gloria Arroyo is now facing her own storm of criticism for both the slow response to the crisis as well as for failing to take appropriate precautions before the typhoons pounded the country.

When combined with the country's decrepit drainage systems, the rapid development of shantytowns around rivers and lakes — and near middle-class housing — ensured that almost any flooding would have disastrous consequences.

"There have been lapses and omissions in the proper gear shifts in urban planning," said Cerge Remonde, a spokesman for the president.

"That we have to admit."

Remonde also said the damage from the storms, which resulted in the worst flooding Manila has seen in 40 years, revealed some "disturbing facts" about the city's planning.

The statement does not amount to an apology but it comes pretty close and appears to reveal a political understanding that people here are outraged.

For Filipinas like Reisa Ramos — and at least two million others — there's not much comfort to learn the government now recognizes there have been "lapses and omissions."