Letter from Our President:

“One of the world’s most powerful typhoons ever recorded, code named Haiyan, hit the Visayas region on Friday, Nov. 8, with devastating effects and left untold damage across many central Philippine provinces.

Aside from catastrophic wind, deadly storm surges were reported along Haiyan’s path inundating many coastal cities and towns just like a tsunami. The provinces hardest by the storm’s wind field were: Samar, Leyte, Cebu, Iloilo, Aklan, Antique, Mindoro and Palawan, destroying homes, roadways, toppling power lines and communications towers, and even severely impacting evacuation centers and hospitals.

The Philippine national government, together with the International Red Cross and other United Nations relief agencies are fast tracking the delivery of emergency services to a wide area of affected cities and towns across the entire central part of the country.

The immediate efforts are concentrated on providing first response medical attention and engineering support to provide basic services where possible; distribution of relief goods – water, food, clothing, and temporary shelter, while also restoring basic calm and security and minimizing any security related threats which can easily arise in such desperate situations. Eventually, however, the more involved support will likely be devoted to rebuilding homes and communities, including the lives of affected families who may have suffered unfortunate casualties.

PTC is in the process of organizing emergency teams with satellite phones and will be dispatching them shortly to key cities in order to try and re-establish contact and assist in any way possible in coordination with the massive relief efforts now underway. While cellular and land based telephone lines are still unavailable, we intend to take advantage of any surviving radio stations to broadcast messages across the identified provinces, and hope to use the satellite phone system to link our head office with our teams. Where we can do so, we will try and arrange a link up to crewmembers currently onshore, as well as, a linkup for family members to crew deployed globally, as best and as fast as possible.

At this time of unprecedented destruction and loss of human lives, we humbly reach out to you to consider joining PTC in providing any form of assistance possible as we assemble basic necessities such as food, water, hygiene products, mats, mosquito nets and first aid medical supplies, which are all essential at this time. If you can consider any cash donations towards this effort, we will be most obliged and will consolidate all such assistance into an emergency fund to help fuel all the above mentioned activities.

We will keep you posted on the progress of the emergency assistance initiatives. Meanwhile, thank you again for your concern, thoughts and prayers for our affected countrymen, most especially to crewmembers and their families. Our deepest gratitude for any assistance that you may find appropriate and possible to provide at this time of great need.”

Gerardo Borromeo, InterManager President