Category: disasters

interesting times

obama stomping across asia — is this why china is rather quiet, even nice?  two popes elevated to sainthood in rome — ratcheting up prayer as opiate.  ukraine breaking apart; putin digging in.  hearts broken by the terrible loss of so many travellers in flight from malaysia and by ship in south korea.  and here at home, cedric lee arrested, hmm, where’s palparan.  and napoles sings to de lima, freaking out the palace and congress, incidentally just as obama’s due in manila…  almost like itinaon  ang listahan to distract from the anti-u.s. rallies…  argh, that would mean napoles is in on it, and that’s giving me a headache.

What is there

Posted by Daryll Delgado on Facebook
6 Dec 3:48 am

There is a man covered in mud from his bald head to his bare feet, walking towards and waving at my brother, Derek, unaware that he is unrecognizable. Until he and Derek arrive at the same house, A__’s house, then Derek realizes that this is A__’s father who had fought against, swum under, and finally just gave himself up to the muddy ocean that had engulfed his house, his neighborhood, his entire village.

There are two girls, who pass them by, walking barefoot but briskly, their faces streaked with dirty tears, their eyes scared, their bodies rigid. There are many others walking, walking, walking, and picking up pieces from the debris, and then walking some more. My sister, Aimee, and her husband are among them, as they try to get to her husband’s family in a subdivision close to the sea. There is a woman, they say, who is not walking, she is just standing, in the middle of the street, while people walk by her in a daze. She is wailing, damo’n patay, damo hin duro an patay! When they get to the subdivision, there are indeed bodies being moved from the streets to the small chapel. One of the casualties is our dear uncle, a cousin and very good friend to our dad.

There is a woman on the side of the street, but she is not wailing, not moving, not walking. She is lying on her back. She has extraordinarily thin arms and legs, and a very swollen belly. People cover their nose and mouth when they pass her, but they do not cover their eyes. This is one of the first sights we see, when my husband and I arrive in Tacloban City.

There is a child frozen in the act of crawling out of a shelf or a cabinet. His body is upside down, his head is twisted unnaturally to the side, and one hand is missing. There are dogs, many dogs, sniffing the rubble and debris for their masters, or for food, and one of them walks away with a child’s hand between his fangs.

There are men walking out of the mall, helping each other carry an exercise machine, a freezer, a 50-plus-inch led TV screen. There is a woman carrying a mannequin all by herself, and a family of three in Santa hats merrily walking down the street with a shopping cart full of nothing but canned baby formula milk. There are others who scavenge for clothes, my brother Dennis tells us, and they come out of the department store dressed as super heroes and villains, Spider Man, Super Man,and Penguin.

There is a rumor going around, said a friend of ours whose family is taking shelter in our house : Tacloban is gone. Strong winds had sucked out the entire bay and threw it all up very violently onto streets,houses, offices, churches, hospitals, schools, restaurants, hotels. There is another rumor: It will all happen again very soon, and the waves will be much higher, the current stronger and even more ferocious this time.

There are suddenly even more people on the streets, running as fast as they can to the hills, to the hills! By evening, there is a sight no one has ever seen – the mountains are illuminated from the foot to the peak with people’s flash lights, candles, torches.

There is still, for all intents and purposes, a house. There is no roof, no ceiling, no windows, no book shelves or books, but there is still a winding staircase with elaborate balusters and steps made from dark hard wood slabs on which the rainwater cascades like grand waterfalls when itrains. And there is a black granite floor that collects the water into many puddles the kids like to trample and splash on.

There is a room on the ground floor where the family used to congregate every night when the parents were still alive. It is now being slept in by strangers who have traveled from distant lands – Iran, Israel, America,Bolivia, South Africa – to clear the streets, feed the hungry, slowly revive the city.

There are two old trees that used to partly hide the house from the street with its thick foliage, birds’ nests, and intricate branches reaching into the balcony. They are now leafless and branchless, and nestless. The barks have been peeled off and, at night, under a bright moon, the trunks look like the ghosts of two pale, old men stranded between this world and another.

There are firelies all of a sudden, and crickets, but no birds, my sister-in-law, Debbie, notices.

There is a rumor about that other rumor, Dennis tells the strangers who have become friends and family to us now. The city mayor’s daughter, Chona May, had been washed away and her mother, the beautiful city councilor who used to be a movie starlet, had screamed and screamed: “Chona May! Chona May!” Her screams pierced the silence and absolute darkness of the evening, waking people in San Jose from their nightmares. “Chunami daw, chunami!” And that’s how everyone suddenly scrambled to their feet, fled out of the city and into the hills, in fear of a chunami or tsunami.

There is a truth and there is a lie, my brother says. The mayor’s daughter did not really perish, and he doesn’t even have a daughter named Chona May, but it is true that his beautiful wife is the city councilor and she did used to be a star.

There are people who do not like this joke, but some people laugh, for the first time, and a little of the old sparkle return briefly to their weary eyes.

(With reports from Dennis, Derek, Aimee, Dandee, Debbie, William, and random friends and strangers in Tacloban)

day 22: still, unmitigated grief

Why is the Filipino flag not flying at half mast? Instead of fudging the death toll figures, why hasn’t the President declared a period of national mourning? We should be allowed to grieve for the mothers, fathers, daughters and sons who perished in the storm. We need to perform the rituals and prayers for the dead, the way it has always been done in our culture, as a means for the living to come together and start healing.

that was direk butch perez’s facebook status on the 13th day after the sudden deaths, the disastrous drowning, of thousands upon thousands of our kababayans, their lives wiped out, snuffed out, by superstorm yolanda.  only then did i realize that the 9th day, traditionally the culmination of nine days of mourning and remembering and praying for the dead, had passed us by unmarked, except perhaps in sunday masses that 17th of november.  and i have since been trying to figure out why…

why has the president not declared a period of national mourning?  it is the right, the appropriate, the humane, thing to do in the face of these grievous mass deaths, with the deepest sympathy for bereaved families and orphans, friends and communities, who need to go through the process of grieving and healing if they are to find their way to acceptance and closure.

it is also the honorable thing to do.

today in honor of bonifacio, let us spare a thought, nay, many thoughts, for the dead of yolanda.  there was something heroic, too, about husbands and fathers and sons who felt strong and brave enough to stay behind, look after their shacks and boats and scanty possessions, so that their wives and children would have something to come home to, but who lost their lives.  there was something heroic, too, about whole families leaving everything behind, fleeing to evacuation centers, trusting they would be safe in the hands of government, but who lost their lives anyway.  there was something heroic, too, about survivors searching for loved ones and sleeping beside their dead mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sons, daughters, as they waited, prayed, despaired, for help.

today in honoring bonifacio, the president paid tribute to soldiers and policemen, doctors and nurses, students and professionals, volunteers and fund-raisers, young and old, rich and poor, far and near, everyone who pitched in, and continues to help, in relief and rehab.

but still no words for the dead, no words of comfort for the bereaved.

*

Yolanda in grim numbers
Corpses still scattered across parts of Tacloban 
Tacloban and body bags
Mirror neurons
PNoy: ‘Yolanda’ responders just as heroic as Bonifacio 

the president asks, “what else could we have done?”

as one who trained in psychology, i cannot but be dismayed by the president’s question because it reveals, at best, sincere cluelessness, at worst, a rather cold heart.

at least in tacloban, where national government was present, there was a lot else that could have been done — kahit pa walang koryente, tubig, phone signals — had the president and his people been more flexible and creative and caring, with a sense of urgency, about meeting people’s needs in a horribly hellish time, instead of fixed and unyielding on the implementation of pre-yolanda disaster policies and strategies that were simply unimplementable and unresponsive to immediate needs.

what pained me most in those critical first three days were news reports on tv and first-person accounts and video via social media of dazed victims wandering the streets looking for food and water, many having walked miles, hoping to find provisions for families back home… this while the dswd repacked goods in some warehouse, but, no, not for distribution to these hungry and thirsty people walking the streets, rather, meant for distribution in barangay centers where they would be properly distributed to registered residents, so the precious bags were loaded in trucks, and then natl government waited for information on where these barangays were, are, located, and waited some more for the roads to be cleared.

asked why, sec almendras said something to the effect that they could not simply distribute the precious bags to people in the streets because what if some of them had received relief goods already; another report had the same official (or maybe another one) asking who these people were ba, were they all from tacloban?  hello.

what i’ve gleaned from first person accounts is that private relief efforts then were very few and small and far between; government itself had hardly distributed any substantial amount (correct me if i’m wrong).  and really, so what, if one or two out of a hundred had received something already?  surely it wasn’t much.  surely what should have mattered were the many more who had not received any.  and so what if some of them were not from tacloban, maybe visitors from manila or nearby provinces — they were hungry and thirsty and in shock, too.  in a time like post-yolanda, it is best to err on the side of compassion, rather than on the side of caution.

i’ve been trying to wrap my head around this, and hindi ko maarok, matarok, where these government officials were coming from, being so swapang with relief goods, coldly withholding sustenance and support from victims immediately around them.  paano, bakit, nila natiis ang mga kaharap nilang kapwa na nagugutom, nauuhaw, nasugatan, namatayan…

not wishing to think politics, i can only suppose that there was a fear of running out of relief goods for the distant barangays?  if so, i suppose it can be called a kind of foresight, looking ahead and all that.  but their foresight pre-yolanda had failed them, why trust in foresight now.  in fact, what those first hours, those first days, called for was a zen (a la alan watts) kind of seeing and acting, meeting the needs of the here-and-now, the needs of the moment, without being daunted, nay, paralyzed, by the lack of communication signals and electricity, and without losing sight of the needs of tomorrow.

it was a time for improvisation, thinking out-of-the-box.  limited pa ang relief goods?  on the one hand, dswd could have given out small packs muna, paisa-isang bote ng tubig muna, at konting biskwit, sabay communicate with, talk to, the people, heto muna, pantawid sa gutom at uhaw, meron pang darating, huwag kayo mag-alala, in the process acknowedging, rather than ignoring, the victims and their suffering.

walang koryente, so walang public address system, at wala ring megaphone?  they could have talked to small groups of people at a time, assuring them that help is coming, confessing that government was caught by surprise too by the ferocity of yolanda, and asking for patience, and help in spreading the word to other taclobanons…

and on the other hand, while urgently appealing to country and the world for relief goods and medicines and doctors and psycho-social workers, the ground commander could have at once called in the troops for urgent rescue operations, sabay clear the roads para madaanan for distribution of relief goods.  that there were no rescue ops to speak of is reprehensible, unconscionable, disgraceful.  lives could have been saved, pain alleviated, misery abated, kahit kaunti.

beginnings are crucial, setting the tone and pattern of events in the new cycle unfolding.  warmth, caring, kindness, no matter if extended only to a relatively limited few at that most crucial time, would have gone a long way toward inspiring confidence in the national government.  sana makabawi pa sila.