Haiyan aka Yolanda Hits Philippines
My family and relatives live in Samar and some in Leyte. The names probably ring a bell to you by now as international news agencies update us all on the havoc brought about by super typhoon Haiyan (Filipino name Yolanda) and how its angry winds that had blown upto 235 miles per hour (378 kilometers per hour) wreaked wrath upon its landfall on this mid-eastern part of the Philippines last November 8, 2013.I have yet to talk to my family directly since phonelines are still and have been down for almost 4 days now, but I have been informed by a close cousin via Facebook that everyone is safe and sound.
I grew up in Catbalogan City, the capital town of Western Samar, where my parents and older sister and her family currently live. It's no secret, at least not to us locals, that our beloved region is frequently visited by typhoons due to our geographic location. When I was in gradeschool, our rented apartment in barangay San Pablo would get flooded everytime there was a heavy rainfall and I mean around one meter of floodwater inside our house. So the entire family would evacuate our things to the second floor and return them once the rain stopped and the water subsided. When I started highschool, we moved to our a house in the mountain area and have not experienced flooding since, albeit the after-typhoon warnings became that of land erosion. Nonetheless, we managed to go through one typhoon to another just fine. It is safe to say I grew up experiencing typhoons, and in my young, carefree mind even rejoicing the suspension of classes before and after a particularly strong one. The most common downside being power outage, scarcity of water and the surge in prices of food and basic commodities for days and weeks. Back then, there was no Facebook and we didn't have internet at home yet.
A zero casualty was reported in my hometown of Catbalogan but the neighboring towns, especially Tacloban City, present a different story. Actual footage shows piles of various debris of destroyed buildings, roads and houses, uprooted trees, garbage and dead bodies that seemed to have been put inside a huge washing machine only to be laid out allover town randomly and carelessly. I grew up experiencing typhoons, alright, but I am honestly as shocked as anybody else by the extent of damages brought by super typhoon Haiyan. But to let you into a little secret, you want to know what didn't shock me at all? How we are responding to the crisis: disintegrated, unsystematic, uncoordinated, overwhelmingly chaotic. In other words: kanya-kanya.
Allow me to quote Rigoberto Tiglao in The Manila Times: "Another typhoon, this time a devastating super-typhoon that hit the country bulls-eye. Nothing new, including the absence of a comprehensive plan of action to deal with the curse of typhoons." And in those bold letters I intentionally highlighted, my friends, is exactly where my jadedness is coming from.
