Deluge at Christmas

It has been raining nonstop since last night. The metro wasn't really in the path of the typhoon (Odette/Rai) that whipped through the country and ravaged several provinces in the Visayas and Mindanao. But there is a northeast monsoon affecting our part of the country, thus the rains.

Hopefully, it will letup later, although the still-gloomy skies make it difficult to believe it will, even when rays of sunshine peek now and again. My alarm went off the usual time set for weekdays but it was difficult to wrap my head around the time because it was so dark when usually there would be a glimpse of the sun in the horizon.

Going through my news feed and reading about the destruction left in the trail of Odette dampens the spirit. The island of Siargao, in the province of Surigao del Norte, raved about by residents and tourists as paradise, looks to be one area that suffered the brunt of the storm. Its mayor said 99 percent of Siargao's 180,000 population was affected by the typhoon.

Wiped out

Another town in Leyte province, Sogod, saw 4,000 homes totally damaged by a 5-meter storm surge. While the number of fatalities isn't in the thousands, like previous killer typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013, one death is still one too many.

In the aftermath, and once assessment of damage is completed, loss to properties, livelihood, and agriculture will likely be in the billions. But more than this, it is the thousands of families who will be left without homes and their possessions that is heartbreaking.

While we have been fortunate never to have experienced such destruction and loss, even when strong typhoons make their way in our area, I have seen my share of what a powerful typhoon or extreme flooding can do and leave behind. And it is not through pictures or the Internet, but in real life.

Heart wrenching

The years of newspaper coverage gave me much of my first-hand experience in witnessing typhoon aftermaths. Even when you're not actually on scene as it happens, seeing what it leaves behind - despair, fear, hopelessness - can cut through you.

It can be very emotional having to listen to survivors tell their tales, imagining the horrors they faced as waters seeped through their homes, rising or gushing in as the case may be, watching their possessions get washed away yet having only to think of clutching at a branch or some door jamb to prevent being swept into nothingness.

Only someone without a heart will not be moved by such experiences delivered in raw and breaking voices, the fear still visible in the eyes of victims while recounting their ordeal.

Why Christmas?

But even more heartbreaking is that all this destruction happens around Christmas time. Especially at this time when people have become more hopeful that things were starting to improve and they could slowly pick up the pieces of their lives already shredded by a pandemic.

My most recent witnessing was in December 2019 in Tacloban City and Samar. Christmas was bleak for the residents there. Typhoon Ursula paid them an unwelcome visit on Christmas Day.

Can you imagine having to panic the night before and on the actual day because you had to secure your belongings, to keep them dry in case your home gets flooded, or to have to think if you can still get out should waters rise, or if you can clamber to the rooftop and be rescued? Power was cut off, water, too, in some areas, and worse, no telecom signals so you're cut off from the rest of the world!

Meanwhile, across an ocean, families are getting ready with some feast they will partake of, or dressing up, and exchanging gifts.

The airport was jampacked when we got there on the 26th, because several flights had been previously cancelled but everyone who had been planning to fly on Dec 24 and 25 were determined to still head home. It was nearly a 2-hour wait just to check-in and by the time we were in the departure lounge, it wasn't very long before boarding time.

When we landed in Tacloban City, grateful for cousins who came to pick up all eight of us, most of the storm debris around the airport had been cleared to allow the unhampered entry and exit of vehicles.

Vestiges of the Ursula were still around on our drive to downtown where our accommodations awaited us. Fallen trees, pieces of wood, galvanized sheets, leaves and branches littered the streets but had been swept aside to clear the roads.

Our supposed venue for the family get-together, an open space in my cousins' farm, was no longer an option. Aside from threats of rain, the grounds were wet and muddy, and there was some slight damage to the houses.

Traumatic devastation

Moving to an enclosed venue was easy. And we managed to hold that much-anticipated clan reunion, amid stories of how the folks there were shaking in their booties as Ursula pummeled through town, triggering trauma and memories of Yolanda.

It was, however, our drive through Samar (just across the long-spanning San Juanico Bridge) to get to the town of Balangiga, when we did actually see what the typhoon left behind that was deflating.

There was this stretch of highway where we passed by homes, many of them flattened, roofless, or structures mostly gone, that we saw people milling around, trying to go about their day, with their furniture wet and ripped lying in what must've been their living room, their kitchen exposed to strangers passing by, beds, cabinets broken and personal belongings strewn on the ground.

Seeing all this as the van quickly drove past made you swallow hard thinking of the misery that those people had to endure on a day that was supposed to be merry.

Okay, those who live in that part of the country, even our relatives, are aware they will always be in the path of typhoons. But in the last decade or so, these tropical cyclones have become stronger, more vicious, and usually enter and make landfall the week of, or close to Christmas Day.

Since Yolanda and their harrowing experience, they've learned to prepare to protect their homes and to stay safe, but are still never ready for how it will make them feel or behave once the typhoon actually hits and their memories are triggered.

Tacloban City was not directly hit by Odette, but it still caused damaged. Power was out, and telecom signals were weak. But a day or two after, these were slowly being restored. Damage wasn't very extensive there. But my cousins and aunts still could not brush off their anxiety and worries.

How much more the people in Siargao, in Sogod, Matalom, also in Leyte, Bohol, Cebu, Bubod in Lanao del Sur, and other parts of the country that did not escape Odette's fury? Without homes to return to, their possessions gone, what will Christmas mean to them?

I pray that in the near future, our country and my countrymen will be spared from Mother Nature's wrath around this time of the year. For the folks, especially those living in vulnerable areas, to get to celebrate the holiday season free from worries about having a roof over their heads, food on the table, and clothes on their back. The money and opportunities will come. But hope, that things are good or will be better, should never not be taken away from them.

Lead image from the FB page of MDRRMO-Bubong, Lanao del Sur