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Life has changed in year since Typhoon Haiyan

Lives, homes and livelihoods were lost on Philippines coast

The Columbian
Published: November 9, 2014, 12:00am

TACLOBAN, Philippines — Four months after she lost her husband and home to Typhoon Haiyan’s fury, Agnes Bacsal gave birth to their sixth child — a boy — whose company has eased the family’s pain.

Other survivors, like fisherman Ben Pedrero, still struggle. His wife and son perished in the monster storm and more than 40 relatives are still missing.

“In just a blink of an eye, they were all gone. I’ll only overcome this tragedy when I die myself,” said Pedrero, 61, wiping tears with his shirt as he helped relatives roast a pig for the disaster’s anniversary.

On Saturday, as church bells pealed and sirens wailed across this central Philippine city to commemorate the moment on Nov. 8, 2013, when Haiyan barreled inland from the Pacific, Bacsal and Pedrero would light candles and offer prayers at separate mass graves in Tacloban.

Leyte province’s Roman Catholic Bishop John Du led prayers at a site where close to 2,300 people are buried. Some lit candles and wrote names of their family members on newly planted white crosses in the vast field on the outskirts of the city. At a City Hall commemoration, 1,000 white balloons were released to signify acceptance of the human loss.

Typhoon Haiyan leveled villages with ferocious winds and tsunami-like waves, leaving more than 7,300 people dead or missing.

Funeral parlors were overwhelmed, forcing survivors to bury their dead near where they were found — on church grounds, roadsides and beaches, as well as in front yards and backyards.

The worst-hit city of Tacloban and outlying regions have crawled back from the rubble. Shopping malls, hotels and offices have reopened; cars, taxis and motorcycles clog downtown — the same spots where debris and bodies lay scattered weeks after Haiyan blew away. Human scars are harder to overcome.

The 21-foot-high waves took Pedrero’s house with all its precious mementos and his fishing boat, his only source of income.

Like him, Bacsal still relies on dole-outs, mostly from relatives and friends. Without her husband, tricycle driver Jonathan, and her house, she now lives with her six children in a shack built from storm debris.

Daughter Maria Jean, 14, beamed with optimism. “I’ll be the best businesswoman in Asia and bring them out of here someday,” she said when asked about her plans.

With help from relatives and friends, Bacsal was able to send Maria Jean to high school. They scrimp on groceries recently donated by a city official and sold extra food to neighbors.

They skip meals.

The typhoon demolished about a million houses. Many residents hammered back shacks in the same coastal villages — officially declared “no-build zones.”

About 3,000 people still live in tents in Tacloban, though the city government has pledged to move them to permanent housing by the end of the year.

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