Rehabilitation & Reform: Rebuilding the Visayas, Rebuilding the Nation
Introduction:
Building Back Better – How?
Yolanda’s wrath devastated the whole of Visayas and parts of Southern Luzon and Northern Mindanao. The National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), in the rehabilitation document Reconstruction Assistance on Yolanda (RAY), reported the following staggering figures on the immediate human impact of Yolanda as of December 2013:
- 6,000 dead,
- 2,000 missing,
- 4.4 million (930,000 families) displaced,
- 12.2 million (2.6 million families) affected,
- 1.2 million houses damaged (with 600,000 houses more than 50 per cent destroyed), and
- 400,000 housed in evacuation centers.
On the infrastructure and economic impact of Yolanda, NEDA estimated the damages to reach a whopping amount of P571.1 billion or US$12.9 billion. The breakdown is as follows: