Keith Bradsher, the Hong Kong bureau chief for The New York Times, has been reporting on the aftermath of the powerful typhoon that hit the Philippines on Nov. 8, mostly from Tacloban, the city that was flattened when the storm made landfall. Mr. Bradsher answered a selection of readers’ questions, submitted via Facebook and Twitter.
Working Conditions
Q: Molly Rosbach: How do you find the line between acting as a journalist — objective observer who needs to find the story — and as an empathetic human being, especially in moments where you might be able to help someone, or they might think you can help them?
A: You raise a difficult subject for journalists covering natural disasters. I regard my most important role here as providing an objective assessment of the needs together with analysis of the obstacles to meeting those needs. The New York Times is the leading media source of information for Washington and the United Nations, so we need to provide both the overview and the nuances of the relief effort here and the challenges it faces.
As it happens, people here tend to understand our role. The Philippines has an educated and sophisticated population, and they are eager for foreign help because they know that Typhoon Haiyan has inflicted too much harm for them to manage the recovery by themselves. Moreover, many people, after suffering through a terrible ordeal, have a desire and even a need to talk about it to someone. I am very conscious of the importance of empathy in such conversations, as the last thing I want is to make someone even more unhappy. I worry about how to ask questions and try to think after each interview about how I can do it better the next time.
We are not carrying around large quantities of food and water, nor are we trained medical personnel. We are journalists with notepads and cameras, and the public here is aware and even appreciative of our role. Above all, they do not want to be forgotten.
Q: Suzanne Troje: Thank you, Mr. Bradsher, for reporting from such difficult circumstances. I don’t know how you can do it. From what I have read it sounds like there is nothing really for reporters like you — no food, shelter, potable water, etc. Is that the case? If so, how do you manage?
A: This has been a tough story for logistics, starting with the Tacloban airport, which had been completely gutted by the storm surge. I slept outdoors next to a makeshift Filipino civil aviation command post on my first night here, lying in my clothes on a piece of plasterboard debris that I placed on the concrete slab. I was under a yardwide extended roof and chose the downwind side of the damaged concrete structure, which was fortunate as it rained very heavily that night, but I stayed dry. Security was a question mark, as hungry and thirsty refugees were milling around, even asking for paper from my notebook to write notes to missing loved ones, which I provided.
I had come in on a specially arranged commercial flight on Cebu Pacific Air for journalists. The U.S. and Filipino militaries were just starting their relief efforts and were allowing very few journalists on their flights at the time. The special flight was on a light-duty propeller plane with no checked baggage allowed and only a small carry-on bag that had to weigh less than 7 kilos, or a little over 15 pounds. So I brought only the essentials: my laptop, a satellite phone, various computer cables, a full water canteen, some beef jerky, four peanut butter sandwiches, a large waterproof jacket and a few other supplies. I reluctantly left my sleeping bag in Cebu, arranging for a colleague to bring it later; I knew that The Times was already organizing a large contingent to follow me to Tacloban with more supplies as quickly as possible. I came with a skilled photographer based in Manila, Jes Aznar, and a local journalist, Robert Gonzaga, both of whom also traveled very light.
Tyler Hicks, a Times photographer with 18 years of experience covering natural disasters and wars, arrived in midafternoon the following day on a flight from Cebu that curiously had no weight restrictions at all, probably an oversight by the airline. He managed to check two five-gallon jugs of drinking water and a roughly 2-cubic-foot plastic box stuffed with food. Those supplies proved essential over the following week. He also found someone fleeing the city on a relief flight who didn’t want to abandon his bare-bones compact sport utility vehicle at the airport and agreed to rent it to us instead.
We drove into town close to sunset, past rotting bodies and huge piles of debris that made the city look like a post-apocalyptic horror movie. An endless procession of hungry, thirsty, sometimes bandaged people carrying their few surviving possessions was walking out of the city, trying to reach the airport in the hope of obtaining relief aid there. The S.U.V. was practically out of gasoline at the start of the trip into town, and the piles of debris narrowed the road to a single lane in places, causing traffic congestion. We were concerned about breaking down and being stuck at night on the road, but still stopped for interviews and photos along the way. We reached a damaged hotel near City Hall as the last light faded. The hotel has no electricity, no running water and no food, but survived the typhoon relatively well because it is on a bluff and was not destroyed by the storm surge. Looting at the hotel had been minimal. I have been living here ever since.
The biggest problem until today has been electricity. I report by day and try to stop off at City Hall long enough to recharge my laptop, satellite phone and cellphones, using their large generator. Then I write by moonlight, sitting shirtless on a chair outdoors, because the heat is often considerable and there are of course no fans or air conditioners for lack of electricity. The absolutely dark hotel rooms have low ceilings and were designed for air conditioning in the often sweltering heat, so sitting outside is much more pleasant.
The waxing moon this week has been a big help. I turn the brightness on my screen way down so as to stretch the battery life as much as possible. Writing by night helps me see the screen even on low illumination.
The Times sent a vanload of supplies from Cebu that reached us early Saturday afternoon local time, including a portable generator as well as water and food, leaving us better equipped henceforth. It arrived in the nick of time, as we were drinking the water from our last canned peas and cans of vienna sausages. The five-gallon bottles that Tyler brought finally ran out Friday evening.
Relief Efforts and Evacuation
Q: @carsinogenic: Why so slow with aid? Why not use military aircraft from U.S.A., U.K., Israel, etc. to drop food/water/meds everywhere first thing?
A: The United States and other foreign countries see their role as bringing in goods, but the actual distribution tends to be done by the Philippines government. They know where people live, and as gasoline and diesel start becoming available again, they are starting to make more deliveries.
Airdropping supplies would not work. Much of the city consists of huge piles of debris with lots of sharp surfaces, and it would be inadvisable to give people an incentive to climb into that debris to reach food or other materials that might land there. Landing at an airport allows the delivery of larger volumes of goods with greater speed and efficiency.
Q: Don Servillas: How is the situation on the recovery of dead bodies?
A: Smaller communities moved quickly to gather roadside bodies and began digging mass graves as soon as last Sunday. The corpse recovery process has been much slower in Tacloban, partly because of the temporary breakdown of law and order and partly because the city government appears less organized. The city’s first mass grave did not open until Thursday.
Recovering bodies buried under debris is much harder. Lining practically every road are piles up to 15 feet high of boards with protruding nails, corrugated-steel sheets with sharp edges, broken pieces of plastic and other remains of homes and vehicles. Many of these piles have bodies inside that have begun to rot and become pungent, to the distress of residents who have not fled. Yet clearing these piles cannot be done easily. It requires bulldozers and claw-mounted heavy equipment, as it is not safe for anyone to try to pull apart the debris by hand.
Pulling apart the debris to find bodies inside is particularly tricky and does not appear to be done on a broad basis. The debris clearance process has just begun in the last two days, and appears to consist of pushing the debris into bigger and bigger piles and then grabbing and lifting those piles into dump trucks for disposal.
Nobody expects to find any survivors inside by now, particularly given that many of these areas were under water for an hour or two during the storm surge. But it is disconcerting that very little effort has been made to look for survivors in the rubble.
Q: Marissa Soto: Are there means for residents to evacuate?
A: It was very tough for residents to flee at first, but is now becoming much easier. Mayor Alfred S. Romualdez of Tacloban urged residents to flee on Wednesday if they had the means to do so, saying that many had relatives in Manila or Cebu and could take refuge with them. He estimated on Friday that a third of the city’s population had left, making it easier to provide food and potable water to those who remain.
Q: Pam Allyn: Are there many children trying to survive on their own? Is there any special immediate effort to take care of them if they are now without their families?
A: That is an excellent question. I have not seen any children yet who appear to be surviving on their own, although there must be some. The Philippines has a fairly high birthrate and a tradition of large, close-knit families, so as long as one of the adults in the extended family survives, the children may have a caregiver.
If both parents perished, the children are more likely to have died as well. Again and again, I come across families who say that they took turns holding the children’s heads above water as they struggled to cope with the storm surge, like the Canales family, whom I interviewed yesterday in Tanauan, a coastal town south of Tacloban, and wrote about for Saturday’s paper.
The Political Situation
Q: Ms. Rosbach: Is the bungled relief effort a result of simple lack of preparation for a disaster of this magnitude, or is there some form of corruption or at least willful incompetence within the Filipino government? Are foreign relief organizations making it better, or is it a case of too many cooks in the kitchen?
A: I have not seen any sign of deliberate incompetence on the part of the Filipino authorities. Harder to discern is whether corruption is a factor in the general slowness and lethargy of the response here. The Philippines has had a series of major disasters in the last few years, including a fairly severe earthquake here in the middle of the country just a month ago.
Part of the problem is that the government seems to have responded to this crisis with what looks like a standard blueprint disaster response, sending 1,000 soldiers and a few supplies. That might work for a less violent typhoon or one that did not produce such a huge storm surge. But it has proved woefully inadequate here. The national government has been devoting more resources lately, but still not enough.
Having initially underestimated the scope of the problem, the national government and the Tacloban government have been very reluctant to acknowledge the scale of the death toll.
International Actors
Q: @sealizis: Why is China giving so little aid when they are physically closer and have more $?
A: Andrew Jacobs wrote about this issue two days ago. China has a touchy, even confrontational relationship with the Philippines, as China has more vigorously expressed its claims to islands and huge areas of the South China Sea almost to the shores of Borneo. The Philippines has long regarded many of these islands as its territory.
Helping
Q: @annefschaeffer: What charities were among the first to arrive and what ones, that you’ve seen, are doing the most good thus far?
A: I have been impressed by the Red Cross here. They have the formidable infrastructure in terms of trucks, supplies and so forth needed to operate in a place as completely devastated as Tacloban. Aid groups that do not have the ability to bring their own food, water, fuel and so forth here are less able to make a contribution, because the Filipino authorities are overwhelmed and barely able to help them even reach the places where they want to deploy their tents.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/world/asia/keith-bradsher-answers-readers-questions-on-the-philippines.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/B/Bradsher,%20Keith?ref=keithbradsher&pagewanted=print