TACLOBAN CITY- A book detailing the pain and suffering of the victims of the massive disaster that was supertyphoon Yolanda was recently launched. The book, “Typhoon Haiyan the Untold Story: A Story of Hope and Survival,” is written by Albert Veloso Mulles, who happens to be a native of the city. Parts of the proceeds of the book would be donated by the author to the victims of Yolanda, especially those rendered orphans.

“It’s a compelling work of non-fiction that recaptivates the drama and tragic loss of the survivors of typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda’s international name). I’d like to invite readers to join us in this epic survival story, a story of our people, and a far more greater story of our humanity,” Mullés, 30, said on what to expect from the book.
In writing the book firsthand, Mullés, who is also an English coach in one private college in Leyte, hoped that the readers and the public will have “a change of perspective” about what really happened on the ground during the storm.

“It will catch you in a moment of truth when you hadn’t even seen it coming.” The book, which is the first of its kind to have come out after Yolanda, also mentioned how the national government “apparently failed” in securing the lives of the victims and in giving them immediate relief after the storm. “The government was in a mess big time. It acted too little and too late. We don’t even enforce our climate change mitigation laws,” Mullés said in an interview.
Based on the report of the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (RDRRMC), there were more than 6,000 people died and thousands more remain missing, eight months after Yolanda unleashed her wrath.

A former top police official made an estimate that the death toll of Yolanda in the region, particularly Tacloban, the ground zero of Yolanda, reached to 10,000.
Mullés also mentioned how the political bickering that pitted the local government of Tacloban against the national government which said to have resulted to the delay of rehabilitation work.

“For many, it was a case of non-admittance. And in part, political analysts and ordinary citizens had seen the telltale signs of the political vindictiveness of the national leadership towards the city mayor of Tacloban, for a closer look at history would reveal that the Romualdez and the Aquino clan, both powerful political scions in the Philippines, have long been locked in a political feud that had been running for several decades already,” Mullés wrote. Incidentally, the book, barely forty days into its launch in the United States got its first major nomination from the prestigious International Book Awards Organization Reader’s Favorite held annually in Miami, Florida. (RONALD O. REYES)