Recovering from Ketsana
on Sarah G in Cambodia (Cambodia), 06/Oct/2009 00:42, 34 days ago
One of the district towns in Ratanakiri.On Tuesday 29th October, Cambodia was hit by Typhoon Ketsana; reported in the media as“the most ferocious storm to lash the kingdom in living memory”.On Tuesday we decided to leave the office shortly after a huge tree fell down just outside, thankfully my colleague George drove with me home from work as there were a few moments I nearly got blown off my bike. Tanya a fellow VSO and I choose to camp out at our friend Kylies house, although we were all locked in (and without power) it was obvious the winds were reaching pretty high levels, but it was the amount of rain that was to do the most damage.Two major rivers, the Sesan and Srae Pok run through from Vietnam into Ratanakiri province and hundreds of wooden houses scattered the river banks. Over Tuesday night and Wednesday, the both rivers burst their banks and rose to devastating levels, in some areas increasing by 12 meters. Thousands of villagers were forced to flee their homes. Rice, livestock, houses and belongings were destroyed or washed away. Over 20,000 people were effected as massive areas of land flooded.The river levels have now dropped and many people have returned to their homes. Schools and other public building are housing the homeless. In the provincial capital of Ratanakiri, Ban Lung the local and international NGO’s and the governments Disaster Management Committee have been meeting almost daily to co-ordinate the relief effort. Four wheel drives carrying rice, plastic sheeting, fuel, cooking oil and other essential supplies have been travelling to the district throughout the weekend.On Sunday 4th October, I travelled out to Andong Meas district with one of the relief trucks delivering rice, fuel, water filters, cooking oil.Loading up the rice supplies:Loading the supplies into the boat to take up river:The first thing that stuck me is that everywhere you look clothes are hanging out to dry, everything would have been soaked and I suppose covered in mud and whatever else the river washed in:A materess out to dry in the sun:I took a walk up to the school as I had been told the day before by the head of the Provincial Office of Education that many schools had lost all books including text books and some have lost everything. The textbooks have been put out to dry but I am not sure they will be salvageable:The school is on a little ridge but on the side of the building its clear where water level rose to:For the villages one of the hardest things to recover from will be the number of homes lost, there was a house here you can see the post that it stood on:Maybe this used to be their house:The food and essential supplies will hopefully reach those who need it most in the short term, although the media are reporting that some areas are still inaccessable. In the longer term, people whose food sources were already fragile, will become increasing insecure. People in the village will be very concerned about their ongoing food security; so much rice and existing stock have been lost. Although there has been wide spread devastation across Asia over the past weeks in many areas people may have savings in the bank or insurance to fall back on. In Rantanakiri villages people have little alternatives to their farms and animals.More information:http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2009100528742/National-news/storm-leaves-kingdom-on-verge-of-crisis.html