Living with the storms in the Philippines

Living with the storms in the Philippines

by Iris C. Gonzales

Typhoons hit the Philippines about 12 times a year. This is Super Typhoon Utar from August. (NASA Goddard under a Creative Commons Licence)

My country is the Philippines. There is always something strange when strong winds blow this way.

The worrying begins long before the strong winds and the grey skies. Weather forecasters always know first. And if they see something bad on the satellite pictures, the worries grow as quickly as the storm.

‘It will come in a few hours,’ the weather office warns everyone in the storm’s path. But we can see the signs everywhere. We just need to look at the dark skies, the moving leaves and the falling coconuts. Almost everyone knows. Dogs make a noise in the middle of the night. New babies cry and nothing can help them. The birds disappear. Grandmothers with Alzheimer’s ask for blankets to keep them safe and warm. They too know about the coming storm. And they know it well.

These are the signs of things to come.

About 12 typhoons visit the Philippines every year and they are always cruel. It is impossible to be ready when the water rises and the winds start.

Very early on Friday 8 November a typhoon named Haiyan – the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines – came. It hit the south of the country. The province of Leyte was hit the hardest. People call it a cruel monster. And it is.

As I write this, we know 151 people are dead but we are afraid that the real number will be thousands. Reports are still not clear. Cell phone towers are down and an airport is gone except for the runway. Shopping malls are closed, homes have been washed away, and electricity lines are down.

The house helper has been crying since last night. No words can help her. She could not contact her family in Leyte. Phone lines are down and all flights have been cancelled. She has not heard from any of her family for more than 24 hours now, including her 12-year-old son. She wonders where they all are. Her house is built only from pieces of wood and she is certain that the house in the middle of a rice field is gone. The pigs in the backyard are probably dead, she says; and the cows and the goats, too.

When a typhoon comes, there’s no way to know how many people will survive. The water rises and washes away everything and every man, woman or child in its way. There’s no way to stop sudden floods filled with soot and trash from cutting through people’s lives. And there is no warning. Death comes in seconds, even in a second.

When the floods are gone, everything is gone.

On Christmas Day, two years ago, in Cagayan de Oro in the south, this is what I saw after a typhoon named Sendong hit the place:

We can smell death before we actually step onto Burgos Street, a place where two rivers meet, one of thousands of places destroyed here in the province.

''The terrible smell of dead bodies; of dead cats and dogs; of men, women and children, fills the air. I am standing in the middle of a long narrow road alongside Cagayan de Oro River. If pain had a smell, this would be its smell.

Both sides of the road have houses destroyed by the typhoon that came in the middle of the night. The roofs are gone, the windows broken. The doors are open. The street is filled with garbage from the storm.

Everything is covered with very thick mud, mixed with soot and garbage: the heaps of clothes, bags, television sets, electric fans, tables, chairs, beds, curtains, pillows, and what the house owners have left.''

The typhoon Sendong, which came in the middle of the night, left as quickly as it came. It killed more than 1,500 men, women and children and left many more homeless.

And in an island a few hours away, this is what happened:

In the sky there is just another drop of rain, perhaps a little more than on the day before. But the rains are a terrible thing for people and their loved ones. A terrible, mad, cruel thing.

And we see it everywhere here in Bayug Island: destroyed houses, coconut trees; broken windowpanes, pieces of concrete, broken roofs; clothes; wooden dressers; sofas; refrigerators; photographs; mattresses.

The island we always think is the first settlement in Iligan has now become an empty land that died on that sad Friday night when angry waves came and destroyed hectares and hectares of Bayug’s villages.

The island is at the mouth of the Mandulog River and has about 300 hectares of land and is a home for about 400 families in eight small villages.

Now, large parts of the coastal village are empty. There are only simple altars made of pieces of wood for candles and flowers for the dead.''

Every typhoon is different and every survivor has his story to tell. A typhoon’s violence is now a part of the daily life of people here. Farmers lose their harvests; fishermen lose their boats and their fish and even their families, too. Students’ schools are rescue centres for months and months. Every man, woman or child is affected by the typhoon.

It is perhaps like the hot weather in Death Valley where the temperature was once 54 degrees Celsius or the cold winter nights of Europe in December and January.

But maybe it’s harder here because we never know when the winds will come - in the middle of the night or on dry mornings, on birthdays or on Christmas Day.

It simply tells us, the end is always so near.

As this article has been simplified, the words, text structure and quotes may have been changed. For the original, please see http://newint.org/blog/majority/2013/11/11/philippines-typhoon/