I Will Never Forget November 8, 2013: Haiyan (Yolanda)

I stumbled across the web and found this...


Megastorm: Worlds Biggest Typhoon by limukohou

I felt scared, sad and even angry at the same time. It also brings back a lot of memories....

I'm only watching this to understand the science behind this monstrous storm.

I quote from this video "An eerie calm before the storm."

'Twas true.

I remember saying "Kadangga ura ura! (It's very hot hot!)," and asking "Waray man dampog? Guin hihigop gud ada san bagyo (Where are the clouds? Maybe the storm is sucking it all up)." I haven't heard any patrol car or whatnot asking for people to evacuate. Rather, those people who live very near the sea (or any bodies of water) were asked to evacuate a few days before the storm came. Those who thought their house could withstand the storm did not evacuate. Even those people who did evacuate to prescribed shelters were not saved. Many of them drowned to death. Families. Many children even. They were trapped inside schools that were used as evacuation centers...

REALLY.

It was a Tuesday when I shared the news to my partner that there's a coming typhoon and that I have a bad feeling about it. He's nonchalant about it like many people at that time. I said many foreigners are telling us to evacuate! I've seen it on the international news (CNN, BBC, and so on). I was a bit disappointed with his reaction. I can't drag him along with me to wherever I want to go. "Mapakain man ngayan kita (Where would we even go to)? he piqued when I asked him the nth time. When I searched the internet and saw the storm's image I said to myself, "Kadako man sine nga bagyo (This storm is really huge)."

I had nightmares about 2 weeks before it happened. I kept on telling Eric I want to go home... I miss my family. It's weird because the last time I've been so homesick is when I was still a freshman in college. Maybe it's my instinct telling me to flee right away. But, I can't just ride a van and go home that time. I was thinking "Sayang ang kikitain (I'll be wasting a possible income...)," or "Sa susunod na lang kapag may extra money na (I'll go home if I already have enough money)."

In the end, we were very fortunate that none of us died or got hurt. But it breaks my heart (and even flipped my stomach!) when I saw a lot of dead people. There were many of them... there were also human body parts scattered on the streets. Dead people under the rubble.

I hope a lot of us will learn from this tragedy. Don't ever joke about a category 5 storm!

..and I miss Tacloban City. :-(

But we must move on.

Storms will continue to come and go. So everyone must always be ready... and help one another.

(I want to write more but I can't handle the pain of recalling how it all happened. Other survivors' stories are much more disheartening. I just hope the help to Haiyan inflicted areas won't stop until the areas are truly rehabilitated. I still think that the truly evil and corrupt Filipino government officials are the ones that should have been swept by the storm surge/meteotsunami. Whatever it was.)


*This is toffeemerry and this is probably my third life.
I, Eric and our 9-month-old then Cynthia survived Haiyan.