Bilar ‘earthquake survivors’ want neighbors helped too

BY: REY ANTHONY H. CHIU

TAGBILARAN CITY BOHOL, March 16 (PIA) – Neighbors are neighbors, in good times and in bad. 

This fairly describes Dagohoy Bilar settlement, where current evacuation camp dwellers ask helping groups to include in their beneficiaries those who are not in camp anymore.

Here, nestled in a valley ringed with tall limestone hills, near the rotting foundations of an old abandoned school, lie a crude temporary settlement of people from the sitios of barangay Dagohoy and Bonifacio, in Bilar. 

Here in a place where at the base of the hills are wide ricefields, people build their sparsely spaced houses near their farms. Sometimes you won’t see them in the tall shrubbery until you’re much closer. 

Here was paradise, until the earthquake of October 15 shook the hills and rolled tons upon tons of boulders from the hilltops into the valley. Some flattened homes. People died here.  

Not too far away, a house was literally flattened, posts turned into brittle toothpick, when a three ton boulder perched some 100 meters above, smothered the house where a mother, an infant, an aunt and a grandmother were resting after breakfast. 

Now, the traces of the tremor are the scarred hillsides, yellow contrasts in the green vegetation that crowns the hills. 

Here too, huge boulders remained untouched, some roads partially blocked by some of them.

Somewhere in a hill-ringed valley at the heart of Barangay Dagohoy, earthquake survivors pitched crude camps, almost inaccessible by 4 wheeled vehicles.

In this crude encampment used to dwell 17 families, striving on their own, without the help of donors until late December.

The bitter cold pushed some dwellers who think no help was coming, to go back to their ruined houses if only to be sheltered from the cold nights and scorching days at the tents. 

Now, with only 7 families in the camps, international humanitarian organizations have promised them at least alternative transitory shelters (ATS), as long as a lot can be acquired for these 7 families. 

ATS, according to Christie Joy Bacal is a shelter assistance comprising of a whole house with an attached communal service facilities. In fact, several shelter units from donors have in them complete toilet facilities, reiterates Bacal who works as communications specialist of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

  

Now, with assistance in line, some dwellers who have returned to their homes, asked if they could be included among the 7 beneficiaries.  

“We used to be together here, and as good neighbors, we bring to you their request,” pleaded Angelita Oblena, camp Manager at Eskwelahan Daan Camp site.

As neighbors, we can’t afford to live in better shelters away from the risk of boulders, when we knew they live, in areas which should have been totally evacuated, the camp manager said in Cebuano during the Pulong-Pulong sa Komunidad with Philippine Information Agency and IOM on March 12. 

As to donor agencies, informants said as long as these people in risk areas are within the list of beneficiaries, they can be assisted to their new shelters which the government could purchase. 

Barangay Kagawad Bienvenido Tapao shared that pending the acquisition of a resettlement lot by the local government, the evacuees have arranged for a 1.1 hectare lot for temporary resettlement not too far from the camp site. 

International shelter assistance groups have assured quake victims whose houses were totally wrecked and those who have been advised to relocate, core shelters and ATS until they could return to normal lives, echoed IOM’s Bacal. 

IOM, a group into shelter assistance is also helping communities manage the camps as well as coordinate information assistance to settlers. 

Along with shelter aids, including repair kits to houses which the quake partially ruined, other organizations are helping communities put up water and sanitation kits including hygiene tips, health and medical services, livelihood assistance through cash for work schemes and long term alternative livelihood that would allow settlers to live decent lives. 

He also asked international donors present at the forum, if they could be helped in bringing water to the new site. 

UNICEF’s Cogie Vidad also assured her group would talk with local officials and her cluster member organizations to share costs in tapping communal tap-stands and putting in a reservoir at the new resettlement.  

On this, although a quick settlement of their situation is still bleak, faces of evacuation center settlers here appear a bit lighter after the forum, knowing that they may be relocated to a new site, they would be bringing still their neighbors. 

With the neighbors working together to solve problems, life won't be tough, after all, councilor Omac said. (mbcn/rahc/PIA7-Bohol)