By TESSA JAMANDRE
WHEN storm “Ondoy” (“Ketsana”) struck on Sept. 26, the morning after was a picture of a devastated capital, a people in anguish and a nation at its weakest. The week after, another typhoon (“Pepeng” or “Parma”) made a landfall in Cagayan province and gave the country another scare.
While Pepeng battered Cagayan, other parts of Luzon had their share of downpour, doubling the misery of Ondoy’s victims who were still weary, hungry, sick or, worse, living a nightmare.
VERA Files visited Cainta, Rizal, one of the areas that Ondoy’s rains left severely flooded, and saw the long lines of residents waiting for relief goods and food rations. The local government had stopped the distribution as it braced for what typhoon Perma’s rains could still do to its already ravaged town.
But there was no stopping the military from reaching areas in Cainta, as well as Taytay, another town in Rizal, that have been isolated by Ondoy and saw relief for the first time in a week. Our video caught a village still under water, a flooded and cramped evacuation center, and faces of despair:
