Beyond remittances: How Filipinos from overseas contributed to climate resilience and recovery in post-Haiyan Tacloban

On the eve of 8 November 2013, before super typhoon Haiyan – locally known as Yolanda – hit the Philippines, Nancy Go was in a hospital in Singapore where she was working as a nurse. News coverage of Haiyan made her aware that this was different from all the previous typhoons her hometown of Tacloban City in the eastern Philippines had ever experienced.  

“I contacted my mother at midnight. She told me that it felt like nothing and it was just quiet,” she recalled. 

When the landfall happened, she could no longer contact her family back home. “I have friends from Tacloban who were also based overseas. All of us were anxious since no one could contact their families. There was no news.”  

She decided to drop everything and fly back to Tacloban the very next day.   

“When I got off the plane, I could still see dead bodies hanging from everywhere. I was walking towards our house, careful with my steps because the corpses were still there,” Nancy reminisced as she fought back tears. Her family’s house was a two-hour walk away from the airport.  

Her immediate goal was to move her family to Manila as Tacloban recovered from the damage. With the money she saved while working overseas over the last four years, Nancy stayed in the Philippines for the time being to look after her family.  

Nancy’s family is one of many residents whose lives were upturned by Haiyan. However, it was families like theirs with social ties overseas that found swifter recovery through remittances and material aid. Ten years later, Tacloban residents continue to bear witness to the lasting impact of assistance received from Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).

Ground zero 

When Haiyan struck, Nancy’s family home became a sanctuary for themselves and their neighbours, whose houses were destroyed by intense winds and heavy rains. Nancy’s house, on the other hand, was made of cement and situated on higher ground near the mountains. 

According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, the super typhoon affected more than 16 million people, killing at least 6,300. More than 1.1 million families were left with damaged homes, with around 11 million displaced. Tacloban City was considered “ground zero, one of the hardest-hit areas during the Haiyan’s peak.” 

Ildebrando Bernadas, Tacloban City’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Officer, said that nothing could have prepared them for Haiyan’s destruction.  

“Tacloban started organizing the Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office in 2012,” said Mr Bernadas, who was serving then as the City Mayor’s Chief Political Officer. “But we were caught off-guard by Haiyan at the time we were complying with new legislation to establish the country's DRR and management.” 

Enacted into law in 2010, RA 10121, or the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act, established a multisectoral, inter-agency, and community-based national framework for disaster response and risk management.

Mr Bernadas explained that information dissemination was done through handheld radios, public addresses, and television and radio announcements spearheaded by the City Mayor himself. Pre-emptive evacuations were also conducted, with residents filling evacuation centres to the brim. Unfortunately, these measures were not enough, because “the problem was the true sense of communication,” he said.  

“[Tacloban] lost more than 3,000 lives to Haiyan, among which 500 were children,” Mr Bernadas said. “Even though we had so much preparation, we could only do as much as we could afford because Haiyan was a new experience.”  

The first wave of relief and aid arrived in Tacloban City’s airport a few days after and came from various governments, foreign agencies and local organizations.  

After moving her family to Manila, Nancy stayed behind to help Tacloban’s recovery through a local organization. Leaving her work as a nurse in Singapore, she eventually started a poultry business that helps feed families and supply businesses in the region. 

"If it weren’t for OFWs, we wouldn’t recover"

For Filipino migrant workers who were not in the Philippines when Haiyan hit, it was the media’s extensive coverage of the aftermath that encouraged them to send assistance.   

“We heard of them in the news. We have heard stories of help coming from siblings or cousins overseas,” Mr. Bernadas said. “Tacloban had no electric power or signal. We waited for three or four weeks before banking system started to get back in normal function in Tacloban.”     

After Haiyan, remittance centres and banks waived transfer fees to encourage donations to affected residents.  

Boots Palconite-Buena, who was a Tacloban-based news broadcaster for a television network when Haiyan hit, connected with her university’s alumni associations overseas. She explained that alumni from various parts of the world initiated fundraising and donation campaigns to support the communities affected by Haiyan.    

“All alumni associations across the world. They were the ones who helped us,” Boots said. “They were there during every step of the recovery, providing us with money, food and all kinds of relief. Had it not for them, we wouldn’t have recovered.”    

Aside from her networks of overseas Filipino workers, Boots also has a sister who worked in Canada who helped them fly to Cebu as soon as possible. “My sister sent us flight tickets,” Boots said. “Moving was easy on our end because we had a source from my sister. But for families without OFWs, it was much more difficult.”  

Rosario Bactol, who was serving as a Barangay Chairperson in Anibong when Haiyan wreaked havoc to the city, experienced the same. While her house was in the coastal area, it was also made of cement, which provided refuge for residents in her community who were unable to evacuate early.

Years later,  Rosario was relocated to St. Francis Village, a government housing project 13 kilometres away from downtown Tacloban.  

With the help of her son who was working as an engineer in Saudi Arabia, she was able to renovate her house in the relocation site alongside her children’s houses.    

“In the old house, we didn’t construct anymore since we were near the coast,” Rosario said. “Here in the relocation site, the house was bare when it was turned over to us. But when we renovated it, we poured cement to make it sturdier with the help of remittances from my son.” 

From migrants to recovery  

The 2018 National Migration Survey, conducted by the University of the Philippines Population Institute and the Philippine Statistics Authority, revealed that Eastern Visayas received the most remittances in that year and suggested that remittances are higher for more economically disadvantaged regions.  

As their cement-laden houses served as evacuation centres for their community against Haiyan’s strength, Rosario, Boots and Nancy also serve as living proof of how migrant networks and remittances can help in post-disaster recovery and climate resilience. For Rosario, it was improving her house in the relocation site to withstand future typhoons. Similarly, Boots built a sturdier house on much safer and elevated ground far from the coast. Meanwhile, Nancy reintegrated and reinvested her savings, using her skills to help bolster Tacloban's economy. 

Boots and Rosario both considered the assistance from Filipino migrant workers as an important aspect in their recovery after Haiyan. Nancy hopes, “Hopefully, Filipinos overseas won’t get tired of helping their fellow Filipinos. It has a huge impact. Because, coming from my own experience, it made me feel hopeful. Even though I was at my lowest, there would still be help.”  

Migrant workers have shown that their help can be mobilized for post-disaster recovery and climate resilient development. However, with climate change bringing in stronger typhoons in the Philippines, there is a need to translate this support from individual households with migrant ties towards community-level development. 

In navigating the challenges and risks posed by climate change, harnessing the invaluable help of diaspora communities in disaster recovery and climate resilience can be a next step in building a more sustainable future for the Philippines.   

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Buboy Figueroa is an intern under the Global Migration Media Academy of the International Organization for Migration. He is currently taking up BA Communication Research at the University of the Philippines Diliman.