NDRRMC apologizes for high agriculture damage figures from ”Ulysses”

November 26, 2020

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) corrected Thursday afternoon that the estimated damage to agriculture from Typhoon ''Ulysses'' from the earlier P540 billion to P 4.7 billion.

The NDRRMC made the correction after its executive director Ricardo Jalad announced during a public briefing that the damage to agriculture reached to more than 540 billion pesos.

"We apologize  for the mix-up. The reported figures received by the Operations Center were erroneously tagged as already at the billion count, when it was only at the milliions count. This has been rectified in the latest sitrep (situation report)," NDRRMC Deputy Spokesman Mark Timbal said.

In its corrected report, the NDRRMC said estimated damage to agriculture in the affected regions is at P4,721,378,946, most of which were recorded in Central Luzon with P1,378,921,103.00 followed by Cagayan Valley with P1,217,611,423.

Damage to infrastructure reached P10,796,881,776.28, with a total of 125,217 houses damaged.

Deaths from ''Ulysses'' remain at 73 with 83 injured and 19 missing.

The total estimated damage to agriculture and infrastructure because of ''Ulysses'' at P15.5 billion surpassed the  P11 billion pesos damaged brought by ''Ondoy''.

Like ''Ulysses'', ''Ondoy'' also caused massive flooding in different parts of the country, especially in Metro Manila, in 2009. Robina Asido/DMS