Two towns in Antique will have to wait for a week before power can be restored after Typhoon Odette caused a total blackout in the province from the evening of Dec. 16 until the late afternoon of the following day.
“Our ANTECO technicians were only able to restore the power in San Jose de Buenavista and the rest of the municipalities except in Anini-y and Tobias Fornier, Friday afternoon,” said Ruth Ann Fadrigo, Antique Electric Cooperative (ANTECO) information officer, on Saturday.
Antique has 18 municipalities.
Fadrigo said residents of Anini-y and Tobias Fornier still have to wait for three days or a week, at the most, for their electric supply to be back.
“There is a major damage on the mainline of the sub-station in Tobias Fornier, that it could not be easily repaired by our technicians,” she said.
Residents are advised to use their generator set, if they have, and conserve the battery charge of their mobile phones.
“I still do not know the number of electric posts that were toppled because of the strong winds,” Fadrigo said.
She said the transmission lines of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) from Nabas, Aklan to Culasi, Antique and San Jose de Buenavista to Bugasong in Antique shutdown due “Odette’s” strong winds and rain.
Meanwhile, Antique Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Officer Broderick Train said signals of the telecommunication companies are intermittent or very weak.
“We have difficulty gathering the damage report because of the very weak signal of Globe and Smart including even the landline of the Philippine Long Distance Telecommunications (PLDT) that had been affected by the typhoon,” he said.
He added that based on the initial report gathered by the Antique Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office, there were 142 barangays out of 150 in the 18 municipalities that had been affected by the typhoon.
“There were 9,464 families composed of 35,405 persons affected,” he said.
Some 132 evacuation centers sheltered 4,112 families or 12,167 persons on December 14.
“As of now, there are only 3,203 families composed of 8,662 persons at the evacuation centers with the others having gone home after the typhoon,” Train said.
The official estimated 50 houses to be either partially or totally damaged in Anini-y and 30 in Tobias Fornier, which are the coastal towns in the southern tip of the province.
Train said Governor Rhodora Cadiao with the Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office chief had distributed 236 family food packs in Anini-y and 200 food packs in Tobias Fornier.
Source: Philippines News Agency
