Yolanda can never put the Filipinos down for good

November 2013

       Days before the horrendous landfall, typhoon Haiyan, locally named Yolanda, was slowly gathering strength in the Pacific ocean. Like many others before, it had been duly assessed and visually identified via satellite by meteorological agencies across the globe. But one notable thing that was constantly mentioned whenever its name was coming up was that of its size: It was enormously colossal -considered to be one of the largest typhoons in recorded history to ever hit land. Worse, news arrived that it was heading straight into the heart of central Philippines.

    

      We, Filipinos, are generally used with typhoons. With no less than 20 cyclones coming and going each year, we learned to acknowledge each occurrence as a natural atmospheric event that wickedly takes a few lives and leaves the country a day or two after beating with typical storm effects -visuals of uprooted trees, tattered roofs, fallen electrical posts and floods. Despite that, our spirits were never down. Our people stood up, licked the wounds, brushed aside the pain and moved on -heads maybe bruised and bloody but still, like Invictus, it is unbowed. 

   

       Everything changed in the morning, November 8. As communication lines to and fro Leyte and Samar islands consequently snapped out, we never anticipated something so catastrophic that would eventually change the lives of the victims and the people of the Philippines as a whole. Some recorded clips from major broadcast channels were able to be transmitted showing us the initial common effects of the coming storm: strong winds and heavy rains.


       Even a correspondent from a news organization was seen reporting in the streets amidst the torrential downpour only to surrender against the blows of both water and wind thereby deciding to abandon his potential exclusive footage. Roughly half an hour later, the same reporter was again delivering another report from inside a building's second floor but with camera focusing to his exact previous location in the street of Tacloban City which was by then a good six feet under the water.
    
       That, perhaps, was the last actual video of typhoon Haiyan entering the eastern seaboard. Nobody may have thought that it was just the beginning as the succeeding episodes were never recorded. Only those who survived the cataclysmic event two days later were able to tell the horrifying tale. And it was until television reports brought our eyes to the tragedy we never imagined to be even possible to a country already habituated with typhoons that we finally understood what had happened entirely. 
    First seen was the actual devastation to properties. Houses were demolished, practically smashed into unimaginable bits and pieces. Vehicles were either turned upside down, whacked or stacked with each other. Debris from all over were scattered, shambled from coast to coast. Trees were uprooted and thrown meters away. But the most agonising sights were human bodies torn and dead strayed in sporadic locations lying along the roads, under or on top of rubbles. Who would not feel the pain of a mother seeing his son dead beside her wrecked home? Or of a man finding his wife and daughters already cold and stiff near where their removed shanty was just standing a day before. A good number of corpse were still lying everywhere. Many are still missing. These aren't numbered around ten or twenty or thirty -not even in hundreds... but of thousands. Later reports projected that casualties could even reach 10,000. It was like a purging scene in the days of Niro or the holocaust by the Nazis only that it was nature who was administering the toll and water is its medium. All these on top of all the other catastrophes the Philippines absorbed within the last 50 days: From the war in the Southernmost part of the country to the killer earthquake in Bohol and the other devastating typhoon which hit Central Luzon only last month.
    

       We can only wonder now how all these will end, or realize how severe it really is when everything is fully accounted for. How will the Philippines recover from such an annihilation? We still may not know yet. For now, what we can do is to lend a hand with each other coupled with prayers and faith to our God. This could be the biggest ever typhoon to challenge the people of our country but it is not the end. No Yolanda can keep the Filipino spirit down forever in oblivion. Like a marathon runner who stumbled and fell, we will rise up anew reaching the outstretched hand of our fellow Filipinos, to continue the race and cross the finish line of the future. We may be bruised and bloody, yes, but we will stand up and face the dawning of a new day.