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Typhoon Report
Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines Nov. 8, 2013. Rear Adm. Joyce Johnson, D.O., deployed to the Philippines shortly thereafter as a volunteer with Project HOPE.
Typhoon Haiyan, with winds approaching 200 mph, cut a wide path across the center of the Philippines, affecting many square miles, both urban and rural. More than 6,000 people are estimated to have died, most due to a coastal storm surge that reportedly approached 5 meters in places. The storm hit Tacloban City hardest. When I was there, the Tacloban airport was busy with U.S. military and other aircraft carrying food, water, and shelter.
I spent most of my visit on the remote Camotes Islands. About 40 miles southwest of Tacloban City, these rural farming and fishing communities (called barangays) were affected differently. Because there was no storm surge, amazingly, only one person died — a woman escaping from a dwelling was killed by a falling coconut tree. On a motorcycle ride through the islands, I observed that nearly every house was damaged or destroyed, trees were down, and destruction was everywhere.
We traveled to many barangays as Project HOPE medical volunteers. In one small, isolated barangay in the hills, we held a community clinic. One hundred children and about half as many adults came for checkups. The children were much healthier than I expected, with some respiratory disease but not even one case of diarrhea; the adults had chronic diseases (hypertension, arthritis, and untreated diabetes).
We met with the mayor of one of the smaller islands, who said his island had completed disaster drills a few months earlier. Immediately after the storm, they distributed stored food and water supplies, and the mayor traveled by boat to meet with the provincial government, which responded with food to the island the following day. Within a week, potable water was available in most places on the islands, either from chlorinated wells or distributed via truck.
“People do strange things when they are hungry,” the mayor said. “My people weren’t hungry.”
The positive spirit was remarkable in the face of widespread destruction. People were talking and laughing together as they stood in line to collect rice and cans of sardines. They were trying to return to a normal life. My patients told me about the horror of the storm itself and the damage to their homes. When I asked about life without electricity, one told me it didn’t matter much; all they had was a single light bulb, and now they have a candle.
The mayor’s longer-term concern is economic: The island’s income came primarily from coconut trees, nearly 80 percent of which were destroyed, and which take about five years to mature. There will be little money to repair people’s roofs and rebuild their homes. Unfortunately, blue plastic “emergency shelter” tarps will serve as roofing for a long time.
MO
— Rear Adm. Joyce Johnson, USPHS (Ret), D.O., M.A., is a health care consultant in Chevy Chase, Md. Find more health and wellness resources at
www.moaa.org/wellness. For submission information, see page 6.
read more: See “JTF-505 Reaches Haiyan Survivors” in Rapid Fire, page 25.
About Project HOPE
Established by Dr. William B. Walsh, a Navy physician who served on a destroyer during World War II, Project HOPE partners with DoD to deploy medical volunteers around the world. Visit
www.projecthope.org to learn more.
52 MILITARY OFFICER FEBRUARY 2014
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