Over 52,000 families homeless this Christmas due to 'Odette'
More than 52,000 families were rendered homeless this Christmas after their houses were totally damaged during the onslaught of typhoon "Odette".
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) also reported that a total of 83,363 more houses were partially damaged, either due to strong winds or flash flood spawned by the weather disturbance.
While the NDRRMC reported that 52,736 houses were destroyed, the realities in the ground is that in some cases there are more than one family staying in one house.
Based on the NDRRMC data, Eastern Visayas has the most number of damaged houses with 29,475; followed by Central Visayas with 20,625. The rest are from CARAGA region, Western Visayas, Northern Mindanao and Region 4A.
The six regions also have the most number of partially-damaged houses.
The NDRRMC also reported that the damage to agriculture is now at P1.2 billion while P2.5 billion in infrastructure. The figures, however, are still expected to go up.
On other hand, the power supply in 144 of the 269 towns and cities were restored while 348 areas are still experiencing communication problems.
And based on the NDRRMC data, there are 258 reported deaths due to "Odette", only 11 of them are confirmed to be typhoon-related.
The Philippine National Police, however, reported on Tuesday that there were 375 reported deaths based on the reports of various police stations in the affected areas. But the PNP stopped sharing data on casualties on Wednesday, apparently due to the big difference between the police and the NDRRMC data.