By | Dec. 05, 2014 at 12:01am
SURVIVORS of last year’s typhoon Yolanda went panic buying Thursday, then scampered for safety as typhoon Ruby, now classified by the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center as a super typhoon, threatened to make landfall in Eastern Visayas.
In a briefing presided by President Benigno Aquino III at the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) in Camp Aguinaldo, Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla, a former governor of Leyte, said people there were panicky, buying substantial amounts of food and supplies in preparation for Ruby (international name Hagupit).
supplies from a grocery store in Tacloban City ahead of
the landfall of typhoon Ruby, clearing out its shelves
in no time.
“We’ve received reports that people are on panic buying. Commercial establishments including groceries and stores have already closed down,” Petilla said.
In Tacloban City, Amadeo Alvero, social communication director in the Yolanda-ravaged archdiocese of Palo in Leyte went on the radio to ask everyone to prepare and pray as Ruby approached.
“We are asking everyone to not only prepare themselves but also to pray harder,” Alvero said.
John Paul Cosa, 31, a security guard from Catbalogan, Samar, who was unable to catch a ride out of Tacloban, rushed to a computer cafe to log onto his Facebook account, posting updates and keeping in touch with his family and relatives in Samar.
“All I want to say to my family back home is to pray, and continue to pray. I pray this storm will pass with no great harm to our place,” Cosa said, adding he is thankful he was still having a time to contact his loved ones before telecommunications and power lines do down because of the storm.
Rolando Claro, 47, a city worker in Tacloban, said he is “getting more afraid now as hours are nearing for the landfall of the typhoon.”
Claro was just one of the hundreds of the city workers in Tacloban who are manning their post as part of a skeletal force after most work and all schools were suspended in the city and throughout the region Wednesday afternoon.
Ruby Figueroa, a single mother who remains in a tent house in the coastal village of San Jose in Tacloban, is also packing whatever remains in her tent to leave for the northern part in the city.
updates on the government’s preparations
for the typhoon.
AFP and Malacañang Photo Bureau
“We survived Yolanda, I am praying again that we will survive this typhoon,” she said.
Armen Cabanatan, 47, from Dulag, Leyte, said she is back to “panic mode” again upon monitoring the strength and the path of the typhoon.
“I know fear is always there, but I have to control this by prayer. I need to pray to have a peace of mind, and for my nine children,” she said.
Other residents have resorted to chain messages over cell phones and Internet asking friends and loved ones to pray.
Ildebrando Bernadas, chief of the city disaster risk reduction management council in Tacloban, said that as of Thursday morning a preemptive evacuation is already in place which will be followed by forced evacuation in all residents in coastal and landslide prone areas.
A liquor ban is set on Thursday evening until the storm leaves the region.
The city has already identified evacuation centers and informed the residents beforehand.
Nonilon Lim, engineering supervisor working in the Sto. Nino Church repair in Tacloban, also hoped that Tacloban will be spared from the destruction said it has not yet recovered fully from last year’s super typhoon Yolanda which killed over 8,000 mostly from Tacloban.
http://manilastandardtoday.com/2014/12/05/panicked-yolanda-victims-raid-stores/