Remembering Sendong, Pablo and Yolanda

I arrived in Davao City for my new assignment on the first week of June 2011. At the arrival area of Francisco Bangoy International Airport in Davao City, I saw a billboard welcoming visitors to the city and announcing that Mindanao is a typhoon free zone. Six months later, on December 16, 2011, typhoon Sendong (international name Washi), made landfall in northern Mindanao, the Visayas and Palawan. The billboard which I saw at the airport flashed back in my mind, and then I thought to myself that Mindanao is not anymore a typhoon free zone. According to a news article which I read, “Washi hit a portion of the Philippines that does not see tropical storms and typhoons very often. Mindanao is thus hit only about once every twelve years by a significant tropical storm or typhoon.” Cagayan de Oro City and Iligan City had the most number of casualties due to flash floods caused by illegal logging.

Immediately a few days after the tragedy, the officers of our Lay Dominicans Provincial Council initiated a fund raising campaign to the entire Dominican Family in the Philippines. From Manila, they communicated to us in Davao City and requested if we can bring the cash donations to Cagayan de Oro City. Through the help of the internet, I was able to get in touch with the priest who was the head of the Social Action Center of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro. On the first week of January 2012, I travelled for about four hours to Cagayan de Oro City, with two of my friends from Davao City. We saw Isla de Oro, the place where so many people perished. Only one house was left standing by the bank of the river. We heard so many first hand stories from the survivors – children we met on Isla de Oro, the evacuees at the Social Action Center and the security guard at the pension inn where we stayed for a night. A month after the tragedy, the trauma of their near death experience still haunted them.

On December 3, 2012, Typhoon Pablo (international name Bopha) made landfall in Mindanao and initially hit Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley. The night before Typhoon Pablo made landfall, I was communicating with a Dominican Sister who was assigned in Hinatuan, Surigao del Sur. It was from the news that I learned that the typhoon was several hundred kilometers away from Hinatuan. When it finally made landfall in Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental, we cannot believe the images that we saw from news reports on the television. Members of Filii Sancti Dominici, a group of former Dominican priests and seminarians from Davao City immediately organized a relief operation and sent two water tank trucks and several sacks of rice to St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish in Monkayo, Compostela Valley. The parish priest of the place was also a former Dominican seminarian who is now a member of the clergy of the Diocese of Tagum. A few days before Christmas, the Dominican Family in Mindanao, spearheaded by the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, organized a relief operation to San Antonio de Padua Parish in New Bataan, Compostela Valley. Together with the military personnel from Sarangani Province, and members of the Dominican Family in Mindanao, we travelled from Gen. Santos City to New Bataan, with at least six military trucks loaded with relief goods.

A few months before Typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan) made landfall on Guiuan, Samar, I read about this small town from a book entitled “The Rough Guide to the Philippines.” It is the access point to the island of Calicoan, which the book described as having an untouched natural beauty, with at least a dozen white sand beaches. Typhoon Yolanda, the strongest tropical typhoon ever recorded, made landfall on Eastern Samar on November 8, 2013. According to Rappler.com, “The last leg of Super Typhoon Yolanda’s (Haiyan’s) destructive journey was in Busuanga, Palawan. There, the typhoon made its 6th and last landfall Friday night, November 8, before it left the country in the afternoon of Saturday, November 9”.

It was in Coron town on Busuanga Island where I had countless enjoyable summer vacations, because my mother had a cousin who lived there. It was also in Coron where I took up my scuba diving certification course. And so, as a way of giving back to the town where I enjoyed most spending my summer vacations, I launched a fund raising project to help the survivors of Coron. I sold t-shirts and raised funds which I used to buy solar panels, batteries and solar lights. On the last week of December 2013, I sailed on a ferry ship from Manila to Coron with three volunteers and donated ten solar sets to remote island barangays of Coron.