TYPHOON FRANK RELIEF OPERATIONS: An Extraordinary Display of "Service Above Self"

The recent super typhoon Frank caught the island of Panay off guard and has claimed hundreds of lives, left thousands homeless, and has placed most areas in severe disaster. While the country’s official weather bureau is reporting that the typhoon’s course will not hit land, strong wind and almost 24 hours of rainfall, flood and mud wrecked havoc to the provinces of Capiz, Iloilo and Aklan, with the latter two receiving the worst blow.

In Capiz, about 90% of houses in the coastal areas were destroyed, several municipalities were flooded including some barangays in the outskirts of the city. Electric power was gone for about 2 days in the city proper due to several fallen trees and electric posts.

The day after the typhoon, text messages were circulated by incoming service projects director Leah del Rosario and incoming secretary Raoul Bermejo coordinating on a possible relief operations and just before sunset, we found ourselves braving the knee-deep flood to barangay Punta Cogon, barangay Dumolog and Cogon bringing with us rice, noodles, sardines and bread. The next day, some 10 Rotarians went to distribute goods to barangay Barra and Libas, despite the hardly passable roads due to several fallen trees and light posts along the way.

Treasurer and incoming sec Raoul was a bit worried about our club’s finances at launching relief operations, but the Rotarians persisted by chipping in money just to give aid to those in need. On the first day of operations, we had a total of 16000 pesos cash including pledges and in a matter of two days, donations swelled to reach around 100,000 pesos excluding donations in kind.

The Rotary Club of Roxas also went to the island barangay of Olotayan where the destruction in terms of infrastructures were at its worst. Along with GMA Kapuso, and the Capiz Medical Society, we were able to distribute three bags of goods per family.

President Rod Solidum of RC Metro-Kalibo got in touch with the club asking for support since Aklan was heavily affected. We sent an initial help of 10 5-gallon drinking water, and in two days, a group of Rotarians, on board a firetruck, went to bring a truckload of potable drinking water to Numancia, the town of President Megs of RC Kalibo, and to Kalibo through President Rod Solidum. Last Monday, another group of Rotarians from RC Roxas brought another firetruck-load of drinking water and 300 bags of food stuff which were distributed through the local Rotary clubs in the area. It was a painful sight to see people from all walks of life getting in line to avail of free goods of what should have been their basic necessity – water and food.

“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage”, as the old adage goes. Typhoon Frank definitely has shown the extraordinary character of the members of the Rotary Club of Roxas… of selfless service and social responsibility.