Southland Filipino Community Raising Money for Typhoon Haiyan Victims

The Southland's Filipino community has mobilized local efforts to send money, supplies and other assistance to the Philippines, which has been devastated by Typhoon Haiyan.

Those efforts included a 5K Charity Walk in Van Nuys Sunday morning that raised about $7,000 and collections at most Filipino churches.

The charity walk, which got underway at 6 a.m. at Woodley and Balboa Park with 300 participants, had been previously planned to help the Philippines continue to recover from a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that killed 222 people on Oct. 15.

"We were quite surprised by the number of people that participated, before the typhoon hit we thought we would get about half that," said Bing De la Vega, president of the Philippine Disaster Relief Organization, which helped organize the event alongside Renew Our Minds and Heart, also known as ROMAH.

An estimated 10,000 people are feared dead as a result of the typhoon, which  unleashed 200-plus-mile-an-hour winds and wreaked havoc in the central Philippines late Friday and early Saturday.

Experts say it is one of the most powerful storms ever recorded.

"I did see an overwhelming expression of support from our community, at least in Southern California," Hellen Barber De La Vega, consul general for the Philippines in Los Angeles told the Los Angeles Times. "In the last two days, with the images of what's happening in the Philippines, we have already received so many queries."

Actor George Clooney has been closely following the news and told reporters from CBS2 and KCAL9 Saturday night from the Brittannia Awards in Los Angeles that Hollywood celebrities will rally in support of those affected by this "terrible disaster" just as they did for earthquake-ravaged Haiti and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

More than 330,000 Filipinos live in the Los Angeles area, one of the largest such communities in the United States. Around 13.5 percent of Walnut's residents are Filipino, according to the Census-related 2012 American Community Survey. In Diamond Bar, Filipinos make up 6 percent of the city's residents.  The percentages are 10.3 in neighboring West Covina and 7.7 in Rowland Heights.

Monetary donations are also being coordinated by the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles with information being updated regularly at its website: www.philippineconsulatela.org.