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Built to Last
By Edwin Estioko in the Philippines
May 29, 2008
Compassion and Habitat for Humanity rebuild lives and homes after Typhoon Durian
"I thought it was the end of the world. The flood rose so high, so fast. We jumped from roof to roof until we reached the Evangel Seminary where we stayed for refuge."
Cynthia Llona wipes away tears as she recounts the darkness that clouded her family on Nov. 30, 2006. Typhoon Durian slammed rain, wind and crushing mudslides into the Philippines, leaving 425 people dead, hundreds injured and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
Survivors awoke to a muddy graveyard. Stunned, they picked through mounds of rubble to salvage soggy clothes and whatever else they could find. "I never thought it would happen here," says Lyn Fatima Opena, a Compassion-assisted child development center director in the Philippines.
"I can still see in my mind the bloated bodies of men, women and children who had drowned in the floodwaters, all lined up waiting to be identified by grieving family members … I felt helpless and weak, but I gathered my strength and decided to volunteer with the relief efforts."
Compassion immediately provided Compassion-assisted children and their families trauma counseling, canned food, rice, blankets, clothing, medicine and tented shelters. Compassion also partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build 397 new homes and repair 832 owned by Compassion-assisted children's families. Compassion provided more than U.S.$1 million in donor funds for all relief efforts and is coordinating the project.
Habitat is building and repairing the homes. "We need Habitat's expertise and technology in building homes," says Noel Pabiona, Compassion's Country Director in the Philippines. "The partnership was meant to be. Habitat constructs the homes; we build our children's lives."
In March 2007 Habitat was ready to rebuild, but members of the local government who promised to provide land did not follow through. Worse, negotiations stopped when local elections started.
While they waited, families moved into crowded evacuation centers, relatives' unstable and uncomfortable homes, or rebuilt their old homes on dangerously shifting mud and debris.
Cynthia and her husband, Andy, a motorcycle-taxi driver, dug out wood planks and tin sheets from their buried house to build a makeshift home for their five children, including their son, 13-year-old Aljon, a Compassion-assisted child.
"We were also able to dig our motorcycle from the mud four days after the tragedy," says Cynthia. "Andy worked on it and was able to make it run again after a month of tinkering."
From April to August Habitat repaired 500 homes. Finally in August 2007, just as Compassion made an unprecedented decision to purchase land in the Philippines, and after nine months of waiting, the newly elected mayor of Legazpi City offered land for 131 homes in the town of Anislag.
Habitat started rebuilding there immediately. Cynthia's family and others receiving new homes were required to work 400 hours per family at the building site. This involvement gave each family a sense of ownership in their home and community.
"When I remember what my family went through," says Cynthia, "it's a small price to pay." Habitat is constructing two types of modest homes, each capable of withstanding 160-mph winds. The first type is a one-story steel-frame duplex made with poured concrete walls. The second type is a one-story single-family home made with interlocking concrete blocks.
The first 53 homes were finished in December 2007, and on Dec. 30, Cynthia and her family finally moved into their new home. "For the first months after the disaster my children kept asking me, 'What will happen to us?'" Cynthia says. "But now that we're moved into our new home, our lives have begun to take shape again."
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