80% of Carcar homes ‘badly damaged’ by ‘Odette’
by CHERRY ANN T. LIM
EIGHTY percent of homes in Carcar City, Cebu have been “badly damaged” by Typhoon Odette (Rai), the local government unit (LGU) said on Friday, December 24, 2021.
The announcement, made eight days after the storm, marked the LGU’s return to social media when it said the City was finally able to get a strong enough cell phone signal to post news on its situation.
The LGU said 99 percent of homes made of light materials had been wrecked or had just their posts or walls remaining.
Its initial assessment showed that the southern Cebu town also suffered large damage to government infrastructure, though it had yet to specify which structures had been damaged.
As of Christmas Eve, the city still had no electricity, and City Hall was making available a charging station for those needing to charge cellphones and flashlights.
The City Government was also seeking to bring water to waterless areas through the Bureau of Fire Protection, and tankers from the LGU and the private sector, it said.
The eye of Typhoon Odette hit Carcar at 10 p.m. on December 16, 2021, packing maximum sustained winds of 175 kilometers per hour (km/hr) near the center and gusts of up to 240 km/hr.
The strong winds toppled power lines, causing a province-wide blackout that has impacted the water supply and telecommunication services.
In a report to Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia last December 22, 2021, the Cebu Electric Cooperative (Cebeco) 1 said most of the LGUs it covered in southern Cebu, including Carcar, had been badly hit by Odette.
It said then that power had been restored only in parts of the towns of Ginatilan and Samboan, especially the highway. These two towns are located on the western seaboard close to the southernmost tip of Cebu.
Cebeco I said it was seeking to bring power to the highway from Boljoon to Oslob, this time on the eastern seaboard but also close to the southernmost tip of Cebu on December 22, according to Sugbo News, the official news platform of the Cebu Provincial Government.
Central and southern Cebu bore the brunt of Typhoon Odette.
