Nearly a week after she lost contact with her father in Philippines, Jacki Collyer has reason to believe he survived Typhoon Haiyan, but could still be desperately short of food and clean drinking water.
Collyer's father, Jean-Marc Samycia, was vacationing in the Philippines when the storm devastated the island late last week. For days, Collyer and her siblings didn't hear from their father, but on Tuesday they got word through a relative of the family he was visiting that the group weathered the typhoon in the community of Degami, about 30 kilometres from the city of Tachloban.
"The message was they were starving and thirsty and trying to fill the pain in their bellies by drinking dirty water and coconut water," Collyer said Wednesday, noting much of the international relief efforts have focused on Tachloban given the large number of people in that city who were displaced due to the storm.
She's worried that the lack of clean water in Degami could lead to illness that could make the dehydration situation her father and others face even worse.
Samycia is visiting a friend who had recently married a Filipino woman. One of that woman's cousins who lives in Thailand was able to fly to the Philippines this week and get to Degami via motorcycle. He reported back that the group was safe, but didn't specifically give an update on Samycia's condition.
"It's a little bit of a relief but at the same time we don't know for sure he's OK," Collyer said. "It's extremely mixed emotions."
Collyer would like the federal government to do more to help her father. She said she has provided his location to the Department of Foreign Affairs, but was told they couldn't help him unless he made his way to Manila.
"They said you have to make your own way to the embassy to get help," Collyer said. "That's crap. That's not OK."
A spokesman for Foreign Affairs said officials in the Philippines are "working around the clock" to determine how the storm affected Canadians in the path of Haiyan.
"Canadian consular officials are attempting to contact Canadians in the affected areas by all available means including telephone, SMS and email," he said in an email. "Once communications capabilities in the Philippines resume, our capacity to reach out to affected persons will increase."
Collyer doesn't think having the government simply try to call her father in a country where the communications infrastructure has been decimated is enough. She would like to see Canadian efforts made to get food and water to Degami or to help her father get out to safety.
"It blows me away that they don't have a plan," she said.
Collyer also pointed out that all the helicopters, trucks and other vehicles media outlets are using to broadcast the relief efforts could be redeployed for relief efforts in outlying areas like Degami.
Collyer is now hoping to get word to her father through his friend's relative that her father should try to make his way to Manila. She suspected he's stayed in the devastated area for now because he likely feels a responsibility to ensure the safety of others.
"It's his personality to try to help," she said.
