Agaton- Who Leave my Hometown Devastated and Took Many Lives

I thought these incidents could only be seen on the news, but I didn't expect them to occur in one of the locales where we were. It's heartbreaking to know how many lives were lost.

Hello everyone! It’s been a long time since I posted an article here. I am busy and focused on my face-to-face internship last week. And by the way, I will gonna post an article about the first week of my f2f internship. But for now, this article is about the tropical storm Agaton which leave my hometown devastated and took many lives.

This is the first time that I’ve experienced this such calamity, even though we always hit by typhoon but not in this situation. I thought that my hometown is safe to this kind of calamity because ever since I was born, there is less impact or result when there is a typhoon. I never expect that this will happened to my hometown. Despite the fact that we were hit by the strong typhoons such as Yolanda and Odette, but no lives were lost and less property was damaged during those times in my hometown.

April 11, 2022 at 4 pm, the tropical storm Agaton landfall and my hometown is in signal number 1 then 2, meaning minimal to a minor threat to life and property.

But the rain started pouring on April 5 nonstop until weekends. Which led to flooding on April 10 in many places of my hometown. In our place, the flood is at knee level, wherein in some places, it is above knee level. As for me, I'm not concerned about things like floods, landslides, or storm surges because the wind isn't very strong, our location isn't known for flooding, and there haven't been any landslides in prior storms, so I believe we'll be fine.

But you know, expect the unexpected things that will happen. The water gradually rises and rivers overflow that’s why the flood is high in some places. That is when the time that I realize that this is not usual anymore. On April 10 at night, a landslide in one barangay in my hometown happened where many people died. When I hear the news, I immediately contact my classmate who resides in that barangay temporarily since she was assigned there for the internship. I am glad that she was safe and far from the incident.

On the morning, of April 11, another landslide happened in another barangay in which 80-90 % was covered by a landslide. And other barangays have landslides as well and there are deaths also. In my neighboring hometown, there is a huge landslide happened where it took many lives as well. (For more information, please do search it on a reliable website because I don’t want to elaborate on more information cause I’m not that very knowledgeable of the situation)

It is very heartbreaking scrolling through my social media all the sorrow of the survivors and the family who lost their loved ones. I am very thankful and lucky that it didn’t happen to me and my family, relatives, and friends. My hometown indeed needed help and support from the government and from anyone who has a good heart and is willing to help and donate. The evacuees need food, water, medicine, clothes, and the fact that they don’t have a home anymore.

I also want to share my rant here about the fact that many Filipinos are unaware of the situation that we are facing right now. I don’t know if I am safe to say that there is no wide media coverage of what happening to us, even on social media platforms. And there are even people who mocked our situation and talk ill about us Bisaya people. I don’t want to say bad things to those people but I can’t help myself but feel annoyed by their actions. I just want to say to those people that what you say will reflect on you. Don’t say things that you didn’t want to happen to you. I do believe in karma, ingon sila ang gaba dili magsaba. So, be aware of your actions.

And I am proud of being a Bisaya because we don't blame the disaster on the government but we work together to recover.

What I realize and learn from this situation is that always be vigilant, even if there is no sign of danger but we must consider the what-ifs. We never know what will happen next but we can prevent and avoid such situations.

Thank you everyone,

spread love and positivity!