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Tropical Storm Washi/Sendong Action Review

22-23 March 2012, Cagayan de Oro City, The Philippines

I. Background

Context:

Tropical Storm Washi, locally known as Sendong, made landfall on 16 December 2011 in Surigao del Sur province on the north-eastern coast of Mindanao. The tropical storm unleashed heavy rains, which caused flash floods and landslides across the region. The greatest impact was seen in the cities of Cagayan de Oro (CDO) and Iligan in Region X (Northern Mindanao), where the flash floods struck in the early hours of the morning, giving residents little warning and killing many people as they slept. The Government reported 1,470 people killed, 1,074 missing and 2,020 injured. An estimated 624,600 people were affected with still 283,000 persons displaced from their homes as of March 2012. Essential services including power, communications and transportation had been disrupted and extensive impact was also expected on local staple crops of rice and corn.

Three months after the disaster, the Government of the Philippines as well as national and international aid agencies continue to work together to respond to the needs of the affected people. (See Annexes 4 and 5 for a snapshot of the humanitarian situation and a timeline of key events.)

Rationale and Objectives:

The workshop aimed to provide the humanitarian actors with an opportunity to review the first three months of the humanitarian response, objectively and constructively, to facilitate learning and thereby improve the current response and inform future government planning at the national and regional level.

The objectives of the workshop were as follows:

• Identify best practices and challenges

• Formulate recommendations as inputs for policy development, advocacy, and response preparedness, in particular, the Government-led Lessons Learned and Contingency Planning workshop to be conducted later this year

• Contribute to the continuous enhancement of the humanitarian response in the Philippines

Methodology:

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) organized and facilitated the Washi/Sendong Action Review on 22 and 23 March in CDO. The Action Review involved more than 170 participants from the local, regional and national government, the civil society, national and international NGOs, UN agencies, international organizations and donors (see Annex 2 for a list of participants).

The two-day workshop was divided into plenary and cluster working group sessions that discussed the following themes (see Annex 3 for the programme):

• Preparedness
• Initial response, response and coordination
• Information management and assessments
• Appeals process and resource mobilisation
• Service delivery
• Reporting, communication and advocacy

During the working group sessions, the participants discussed the themes by cluster and summarised their findings in cluster matrices (see Annex 1). Key findings were presented at the plenary for discussion.

Whilst the review took place within 100 days of the crisis onset as per government practice, the majority of the first responders had already left the operations and did not participate. Efforts have been made to reflect the views of government counterparts at the national level, the UN Humanitarian/Resident Coordinator and partners who were absent from the exercise.