Disaster Strikes

Heaven and earth are not humane: they treat the ten thousand things like (sacrificial) straw dogs.

— Lao Tzu (The Tao Te Ching)

Before we move to Montevista, we hear warnings of a super typhoon hitting Mindanao. Only 11 months previously, in the year before I moved to the Philippines, Compostela Valley, including Elsa's neighborhood in Montevista were hit by the Category 5 super typhoon Pablo. With winds up to 175 miles per hour, it was the strongest tropical cyclone to ever hit the southern island of Mindanao. Pablo destroyed houses, disrupted communications and caused power outages, flooding and uprooted trees throughout the area. Over three quarters of the banana plantations were destroyed. Landslides made roads impassable. Raging waters and mud from the mountains swept through the area leaving more than a thousand people dead and thousands more homeless.

Elsa awoke early in the morning on December 4, 2012 to howling winds and torrential rains beating down her door and roof. Shortly, the street became a river and the rice fields a lake. The rice crops were destroyed and houses near the fields a quarter mile down the road were underwater. The typhoon blew sheets of galvanized metal from Elsa's roof and it was severely damaged. Entire roofs flew away from many neighbors homes and were replaced with tarpaulin. Coconut trees fell all around. A couple near Elsa's yard were bowed by the wind and she feared they would fall on the house. Fortunately, it was spared. Others were not so fortunate and many homes in the neighborhood were completely destroyed. During the first couple of nights, a dozen people made homeless by Pablo slept on Elsa's veranda. Relief workers brought in rice and canned goods and Elsa's home became a distribution center. A few days later, after the waters subsided, house owners near the rice fields returned to find their homes infested with snakes. And, after Pablo left the area, many people, including Elsa and her family had no electricity or free flowing water for over a month.

Banana trees flattened by Typhoon Pablo. Image courtesy of AFP.

So news of another super typhoon hitting the area terrifies Elsa's daughter Ibig and she comes to stay with us in Cacacho, bringing with her Chan Chan, her four-year-old niece and our granddaughter. Ibig is Chan Chan's surrogate mother. Her actual mother, Bernadine has been working as a domestic overseas in Dubai for the last two years. Leaving children behind while working overseas is a common practice in the Philippines where it is difficult to find work and those who do find work are underemployed and poorly paid. Almost 40% of Filipinos live on less than $3 a day, so not surprisingly, some 2.5 million Filipinos work overseas.

Ibig arrives and we await the storm. This time the typhoon strikes north of Compostela Valley, hitting Tacloban in the Eastern Visayas on November 8^th and cutting a swath west across the Philippines. The typhoon hits with sustained wind speeds of 195 miles per hour which sometimes reach 235 mile per hour. Named Typhoon Yolanda, it is even more powerful and deadly than Pablo. In it's wake, entire cities are washed away. Some 10,000 lose their lives and many thousands more are missing. Some 11 million people are affected with almost two million left homeless and six million displaced.

Some journalists reporting from the area describe the devastation as apocalyptic. The L.A. Times says that Typhoon Yolanda made hurricanes Sandy and Katrina look like weak cousins. The storm quickly sweeps across the central part of the Philippines (unlike Pablo which circled the area for five days). Relief efforts are soon underway, but have difficulty reaching many areas. I appeal to friends in the U.S. to send donations and support. Ibig and Elsa are grateful that this time their town was spared, but we all feel overwhelmed and deeply saddened by the devastation so many face.

Victim of Typhoon Yolanda holds placard asking for food. Image courtesy of Reuters.

A month later, we visit New Bataan, the town hardest hit by Typhoon Pablo the previous year. The National Highway turns away from Montevista and winds east five miles through the town of Compostela and on for another ten miles into New Bataan. The last mile or so is lined with upright logs cut from coconut trees toppled during Pablo and topped with face-like coconut sculptures. We continue on up a hill and toward the mountains. Soon we reach Barangay Andap, center of Pablo's devastation. We park next to a chapel. Teenagers and other young people stream from a tourist bus parked just ahead of us. Many of them climb a circular steel stair structure, a memorial overlooking the rock fields.

San Roque Chapel was the only building left standing in the barangay after the typhoon hit; it survived a debris flow from a flash flood that swept away houses, schools, trees and everything else that stood in its path. At the height of the typhoon, people sought shelter in the barangay's two story health center, but it collapsed and they, too, were swept away. All are buried under a huge debris field of rocks and boulders. A marker above the rock field lists the names of the 430 killed and 320 still missing.

Casualties of  Typhoon Pablo.. Image courtesy of ABS/CBN. 

The government has promised to rebuild homes destroyed by Pablo (and presumably will do so for the victims of Yolanda), but thus far, hasn't delivered. A cynic would say the new pabahay (housing) will be completed just in time for the next election – a practice common in the Philippines as is government hoarding of relief goods for political gain. 
Meanwhile, the victims of these two Super Typhoons continue to suffer from hunger and homelessness. Lao Tsu was right; heaven and earth are not humane.