Twelve Days Before Christmas

In which someone in the Philippines to research natural disasters ends up being caught in one. 

December 13, 2015: 10:00 AM

Sorsogon City, Sorsogon

It's Sunday morning in Sorsogon, my new home in the Philippines (how did I get here? Stay tuned for a long explanation in a future blog post!). The weather is typical for December in Bicol, the long, skinny peninsula hanging off of southeastern Luzon; pleasantly cool for the Philippines (80 degrees fahrenheit), and alternating between partly sunny and rainy and drizzling. The only sign that there's something wrong is the posts I see on Facebook warning of an approaching typhoon: Typhoon Melor, or Nona, as it's referred to here (the Philippines has its own typhoon naming system that it uses for storms that enter its area of responsibility). It was originally named "Nonoy", but that was quietly changed when it was realized it had an unfortunate resemblance to Noynoy, the nickname of the current president. I see more tongue-in-cheek posts on that than there are posts genuinely worried about the storm. 

Nona is currently a category 2 typhoon, and forecast to landfall here in Sorsogon at category 1, meaning winds of 75-94 miles per hour- nothing terribly out of the ordinary for a region that can get hit by 10 to 12 tropical cyclones in a year. 

(A note for confused American readers, before we proceed any further: typhoon, hurricane, and tropical storm are all names for tropical cyclones. Hurricanes are tropical cyclones that occur in the North Atlantic, East Pacific, and Central Pacific. "Typhoon" is the word in the Western Pacific, while in other oceans they're cyclones. Different names for the same scary storm.)

Now, it would be silly for me to be in Sorsogon doing research on vulnerability to natural hazards and ignore the natural hazard bearing down on me during my research. I contact a Facebook friend who works at the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) and ask him if I can stop in for a visit in order to observe the preparations. Of course, he says. I immediately grab my notebook and camera and head out for the office. The streets seem busier than a normal Sunday in this quiet little city. Perhaps it's people prepping for the storm. Or perhaps I'm imagining things. 

I arrive at the office, an industrial-looking concrete building a ways behind the much-grander main provincial government offices. Inside, it's a bustle of activity. Tracking maps of the storm are all over the walls, and office workers are rushing around with radios and hurriedly wolfing down their lunches. Surprisingly enough, I manage to meet the director of the PDRRMO, an energetic man in his 40s in shorts and sneakers. He takes me to the main office. Weather maps from just about every website I can imagine are displayed full-size on a myriad of different computer screens. All of them show a comma-shaped mass of clouds advancing inexorably towards the Philippines. 

Tracking map in the office. Sorsogon is the southeasternmost province in Luzon, not labeled in this map.

I speak with the director about the monitoring and preparation of the storm. They've been monitoring it since December 7, nearly a week ago. The bungled preparation for the catastrophic Typhoon Haiyan of 2013 (known in the Philippines as Yolanda), where multiple branches of government attempted to prepare the affected area, but failed to effectively coordinate between one another, leading to a greater loss of life and slower recovery than otherwise might have happened, angered the population and galvanized the government into action. They since created the OPLAN Listo mechanism, a  program that obligates local governments to coordinate with each other and conform to a minimum standard of disaster preparedness. It hasn't been implemented perfectly, but the Philippines hasn't seen a disaster like Yolanda since then either.  The job of the PDRRMO is to get the most up-to-date tracking and models of the storm and send it to the municipalities (the Philippine equivalent of counties), who in turn share it with local government units. These then report it back to the provincial and national disaster risk management departments, who hold mandatory preparation meetings with multiple agencies. It's a dizzying process, but it seems to be working out well so far. 

The director is very articulate and patient in answering my foolish questions, and details how each plan works and where resources are going to. The interview is interrupted several times while he answers a phone or radio. Each time it's from another disaster risk management officer or government official asking an important question. Or at least that's what I assume from my still-shaky understanding of Tagalog. The director mentions that, once the typhoon actually hits, all operations will have to be moved to another building, as the disaster risk management office is, ironically enough, not stormproof, and the ceiling leaks whenever there are strong rains. He invites me to the province-wide planning meeting that afternoon, which of course I later arrive late for and miss completely. 

It's not rainy the entire afternoon, coming in the usual short bursts of intense rain that are typical of December in Sorsogon. As the day goes on though, the bursts become longer, and the rain becomes stronger. I open my favorite typhoon tracking website, and see that Nona is still hundreds of kilometers from the coast, but now a Category 3, stronger than what the forecast had suggested. My sister Morgan is visiting, and we discuss the preparation for the storm. She has a flight out to return home to the States the next day, and I cross my fingers it won't be canceled. The forecast suggests she'll escape just in time. 

At 7;30 PM, we brave the rain to go and get dinner. It's a constant downpour now, though still nothing I haven't seen in the Philippines. We eat fast food to the sound of the rain, then return to my apartment to watch a movie and go to bed. Of all days, this is the one my drain picked to stop working, so Morgan has to stay in my room as hers flooded thanks to a long shower. My sister sleeps early, as she has to head to the airport at 4:30 the next morning, but I can't sleep for whatever reason. I fitfully continue checking the weather forecasts. The rain keeps coming, in occasional torrential blasts that pound the windows as if to break them. Around midnight, I see that Nona has been upgraded to a Category 4, with sustained winds of 130 miles per hour. Wasn't it supposed to peak at Category 2?

December 14, 2015: 4:30 AM

Sorsogon City, Sorsogon

Morgan and I wake up at 4:30 the next morning to get her to the airport. Outside, there are rivers of water coursing down the sides of the streets. Still nothing I haven't seen before. Unexpectedly for this hour, we meet a group of children and their mothers. We get the usual "What's your name" and "You're so tall" I hear every day as a foreigner. 

"Saan kayo pupunta?" asks one mother. Where are you going? 

"Pupunta siya sa Legazpi, meron flight sa Maynila." She's going to Legazpi; she has a flight to Manila. 

"Walang flights. May Typhoon Nona." There are no flights, there's a typhoon.

For whatever reason, I ignore the comment, and we continue on to get a tricycle to the van terminal. I realize that these are families that were just evacuated, and staying in the government office near my apartment. I drop my sister off, and return home. 

It's only then that my internet decides to come back on and I see the email from the airline that, yes, Morgan's flight is canceled. I run back to the van terminal as fast as I can, and catch her before her van leaves. The rain resumes again, stronger than ever. We make it back to my apartment, and discuss flight options. After lots of time left on hold, I manage to get my sister onto a flight to Manila two days later, the same one I'll be on. The airline she'll be taking to the USA is less than sympathetic, and we have to pay an exorbitant rescheduling fee, which I'll admit I expected. I fall back asleep for a couple of hours. 

9:30 AM

Despite the approaching storm, the rain isn't consistent this morning. The weather continuously switches between downpour and ominous but dry grey skies. I'm exchanging texts with Carmen, my friend in Casiguran, a municipality southeast of Sorsogon City. She tells me that her barangay (similar to a township) is proceeding with the evacuation and compiling relief goods. I call in a favor, and she gets me in touch with the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (MDRRMO) in Casiguran. It turns out they're more than happy to let me observe the disaster preparations for my research. I head out and buy some emergency supplies, such as candles and food for dinner. It's a given that power will soon go out, but thankfully my stove isn't electric. I fully expect to be back at my apartment that night. 

I leave the emergency supplies at my apartment. Morgan decides that she'd rather just stay back in the city and wait for me to return- how hard can it be to get back? It's just a 30 minute drive. It's still not raining consistently, though the wind does seem to be picking up a little. The eastern sky is turning a foreboding shade of grey. The typhoon has finally weakened to a Category 3. I cram myself into the jeepney, the only passenger not carrying a bag full of food, candles, or other supplies for the storm. I get some weird looks, but then again as a 6'6" foreigner I get weird looks all the time here. 

Casiguran may be only a fourth-class municipality (they're classified from 1-6 based on their total annual income), but it has infrastructure that would be respectable in the developed world. Roads are wide and well-paved, there's a huge public gymnasium in the middle of town, and right beside it the municipal office, a shining behemoth entirely covered in reflective glass windows. Inside, it's spacious and well-designed, with elaborate carved wooden staircases and modern facilities. The ordinarily clean main hall is now crowded with people busily assembling the relief goods for evacuated households. Some of those present I recognize as government employees, but many are just civilian volunteers. There's also a group of soldiers in the corner, lounging on rice bags and carrying machine guns.

I greet the head of the MDRRMO, who I've met previously. He assures me that I can stay and observe the 24-hour preparation and relief operations. I wasn't really planning to be here 24 hours, but I don't say that, and instead go to help putting together food supplies. The work is done assembly-line style, with groups of three or four people in charge of each task. My group is counting bags of instant coffee, putting three of them into each bag, and then passing it down the line. It's not exactly exciting work, but it's a good opportunity to chat with other people there and get to know them. Having a random foreigner there helping out is of course cause of a lot of interest, and I'm the subject of many selfies from the younger volunteers, while the older women ask me if I'm single or offer to adopt me. Everyone is joking around, but the mood is determined; nobody wants to waste too much time. 

The office on a better day. 

The view outside the office.

1:30 PM

After finishing bagging the coffee, my group switches to putting pieces of bread into individual bags. We eat a couple of the pieces ourselves, as none of us have had lunch yet. Power has gone out in the municipal office, and probably the rest of the area as well. Generators are soon switched on to power the essential monitoring. During a quiet moment, I stop into the main office and look at the storm tracking website up on the computer screen. The typhoon has restrengthened to a Category 4. Outside, the wind is picking up more, and the rain is constant. A few people rush by on the streets, covering themselves as well as they can from the downpour. Besides some government and military vehicles, the roads are empty. I start to worry about getting on my flight tomorrow- I have a mandatory appointment with the Bureau of Immigration, but if flights are canceled again, there's not much I can do about that. 

2:30 PM 

Food preparation seems to be wrapping up, with almost everything parceled up into bags for individual families. In the middle of the resulting mess, a secretary sits tallying up how many bags there are for each barangay compared to the families living there. The emergency responders, meanwhile, are gathering together their own supplies, such as rope, backboards, and helmets. Soldiers are now in full uniform, and playing nervously with their machine guns. Luis, the head of the MDRRMO, is at his desk speaking intently on the radio. The noise of the generator and the rain make it almost impossible to hear what the person on the other end of the radio is saying, but I finally figure out that it is a count of evacuated families in every barangay, compared to the total families living there. Each local government is required to keep track of how many families are in its area of jurisdiction, where they live, and if they include pregnant women, children, or persons with disabilities. These are statistics that are crucial for managing evacuations. 

Activity begins to pick up; emergency responders are putting on outdoor clothes, and soldiers are assembling. The mood is determined and tense. I pace around nervously, just hoping I won't be left behind when interesting things happened. I see the evacuation team putting on raincoats, and realize the only rain protection I brought was a flimsy umbrella. For someone researching disaster preparedness, I really suck at being prepared for disasters. Thankfully, someone offers me a new raincoat, which I put on. It seems that I'm about to join the forced evacuation team. Luis brings everyone together for last-minute instructions. It's in the local dialect that I don't yet speak well, but people are listening to him very, very closely. 

Luis speaking with our team.

Briefed and girded against the weather, we leave the building. My team and I pile into our truck- five soldiers, five emergency responders, Luis, and me, the random foreigner just along for the ride. The truck is a large open-backed vehicle commandeered from a local construction company. All of us except the drivers are riding in the back, exposed to the rain and holding on for dear life as the truck enters the bumpy backroads of Casiguran. I'm constantly ducking as we drive by low-hanging branches or power lines. 

The truck stops in a coastal neighborhood, right along the edge of Sorsogon Bay. We're walking parallel to the shore, and the wind is getting so strong it's difficult to walk against it. Other people walk in the opposite direction, carrying food and supplies they've salvaged rom their homes. Just past the houses, I can see the ocean. Sorsogon Bay is shallow, but the waves are already pounding against the breakwall. Amazingly, I still see men in the water, working to secure their fishing lines or boats. I guess when the ocean is your source of livelihood, you're willing to brave whatever it takes to make sure you'll have something to catch your food the next day.

We first go to the barangay hall for this neighborhood, a blue concrete building precariously close to the ocean. The emergency responders talk with the barangay captain, who tells them who has evacuated and which houses are still occupied. We rush back the way we came, and soon arrive to the first occupied house. There's a large family huddling inside, already in whatever rain gear they have; they were probably expecting us. The evacuation site is a ways away, and families with small children probably prefer being driven to trying to brave the storm on foot. Soldiers grab the children, tucking them under their raincoats and holding them to their chests to get them to the truck. We help grabbing some of the family's food, and then the truck leaves, carrying the first set of evacuees.

Heading to the barangay hall

The first family evacuated

The second house we evacuate is much the same- a family with young children who didn't want to walk all the way to the evacuation site. Some houses we pass have people still inside, but they're sturdier, with concrete walls and roofs, far less likely to be damaged or destroyed in the wind. In a perfect world they'd be evacuated too, but the storm is bearing down upon us, and there's not enough time to get anyone. 

We pile back into the truck and drive to the next neighborhood on the list. Forebodingly enough, it's just next to the municipal cemetery, and we park in the shelter of a large mausoleum. The wind is only getting stronger, of course. The emergency responders and a few soldiers rush off immediately towards the water, while the rest of us hang back a little while. A couple of the policemen are exchanging nervous glances as the howling wind drives the coconut palm in front of us ever closer to the ground. Eventually, we start wondering where the others are, and run in pursuit of them. We find the team in a neighborhood of bamboo houses within view of the ocean. The wind has grown strong enough that bits of trees are flying past our faces. Mostly it's just leaves, but there are branches in the air as well. 

The team is busy taking one family out of their house- again, they have small children, looking around with terrified eyes. They have no raincoats, just jackets and hats, and they hide their faces against their parents chests to protect them from the rain and wind. Even the people on the team are plastered against the walls of houses to avoid flying debris. The tree nearby us is bending over ominously. Luis, the team leader, is still shouting into his walkie-talkie, though I can't imagine it's of much use over the noise of the storm. We exchange glances in a calm-ish moment. 

"This is just the beginning" he says. "The storm is making landfall at 6 or 7 PM, it will only get stronger until then." 

It's 3 PM now. That means the storm has at least three hours to intensify. As a midwesterner, I'm having a really hard time imagining it getting any stronger than it is now. 

We continue down the road to a slightly nicer neighborhood, where houses have concrete houses, or at least roofs made of corrugated metal and not nipa (woven palm leaves). It's hard to guarantee that any roof won't blow away in a storm as big as this one, and metal roofs in particular are dangerous in that respect. However, they at least won't be punctured by falling trees or branches. Time is of the essence as the typhoon is stronger than expected, and we can only be outside for so long without being in even more danger. Many families we leave in their houses, as they seem relatively straight. Men in particular refuse to leave their homes, for fear of not being able to salvage important items if they are destroyed. Families to be evacuated comply with us quietly for the most part, while neighbors watch us from inside. Our priority is on the children and elderly, who are sometimes frail enough they have to be carried on our backs. One old man refuses flatly to be evacuated, and has to be grabbed by several men and hauled onto the truck. That's the only time I saw active resistance to evacuation. According to people who have done this far more than I have, stubborn old people are a fact of life in typhoons, and are usually the most likely to be casualties. 

Reinforcing his house before he leaves it.

Not everyone goes quietly.

The man who refused to evacuate.

4:30 PM

After wrestling the old man into a truck, the rest of us pile back into the vehicles and move to the next area. I know the streets well enough to see that we're heading to the pier of the village, and presumably the stilt houses lined up over the water near it. However, as we draw near to the shore, the van is forced to stop for a fallen tree over the road. We get out to walk, but are beaten back by the wind. It's so strong now that it's almost impossible to walk against it. Instead, we rush to a nearby garage. It's a large open structure with a strong roof, but no walls to speak of. The rain is coming in nearly horizontally at this point, so we're forced to huddle on the leeward side of the ambulance inside. 

We stay in the garage for over an hour. The storm is too strong for us to attempt driving. Some of the soldiers break out cigarettes, while others absentmindedly clean their guns in the rain. It would be easy to fall into boredom, but the intensifying typhoon all around us adds constant tension. Will the roof hold? How about that wall? Each time I think the wind can't get any worse, it does. The huge tree directly in front of us is tossed around like a weed in the strongest gusts, and we watch its foliage slowly disappearing, and the branches continue to fall off. 

One part of typhoons I'd never thought about was the noise. Being outside in the middle of a category 4 typhoon sounds like being surrounded on all sides by freight trains. It's a constant roar that's impossible to escape. If it were possible for nature to be genuinely angry (and I'm not convinced that it's not), this is what it would look and sound like. Nothing makes you feel quite so small as sitting underneath a flimsy roof, knowing that all around you is a storm that not only could kill you, but just might want to. Perhaps one of the reasons we give cyclones names is because, when you're in the middle of them, they seem to take on their own personality, malevolent and fickle. Nona was not a kind mistress. 

Our refuge for 2 hours.

Night falls, and the storm doesn't seem to be weakening. All of us are sorely missing a dry place- or at least somewhere to sit. Finally, the soldiers climb the wall and manage to break into the building next door to us, an abandoned police station. They open the door for the rest of us, and we rush over the wall and inside as fast as we can, nobody wanting to be exposed to the wind for longer than necessary. Inside the building, it's dark except for the light of our cell phones. The windows on the windward side of the building have been blown in already, so that entire side is flooded and covered in broken glass. We huddle around the stairwell and the interrogation room, the only semi-dry parts. Some people take off their wet clothes, but I don't have anything else with me. I realize that I'm cold- perhaps the second time I've been cold since getting to the Philippines. 

We spend another two hours hiding in the police station. It's dark and cold, and no-one brought any food. I check my email and text messages occasionally, but my phone battery is already running out, and service is sporadic. One of the major phone networks stops working entirely around 7; the others are surprised it's lasted this long. Luis is staying by the window, looking out at the storm in the faltering light. 

"Have the other teams gone back?" I ask him. 

"Mostly. One is near the coast helping with some injuries." 

"Will we go back once the storm passes?" I'm less than enthusiastic about spending the night here. 

"Yes, when--" we both jump back from the window as a particularly strong gust blows leaves and twigs into our faces. "When we can get on the road." 

It's another hour before anyone tries to brave going outside. To me the wind seems as strong as ever, but apparently it's lightened enough that we can go outside. Most of the team rushes out towards our truck, now sandwiched between two fallen trees. Luis and I head up the back. We make it was far as the gate before a sheet of metal the size of a table flies in front of us at around chest height. If we'd been just a little bit ahead, it might have injured or killed one of us. We hide in the house again for a few more minutes, until a long lull in the wind makes it possible to escape. I couldn't have imagined it an hour ago, but the storm is finally getting weaker as it makes its way westwards and away from us. 

The truck is still hemmed in by fallen trees, so we stand to the side of the road as the driver works to maneuver it out. Power lines are hanging in front of our faces, dangerously close to the road. If there's a live wire going into a puddle, we're in deep trouble. Miraculously, the truck is freed, and we pile on as quickly as we can. Nona spent hours building up to peak strength, but it's amazing how quickly she seems to pass. 

We arrive back in the gymnasium; the wind is still strong enough that we have to sprint from the truck to get inside. I had imagined hundreds of families inside the gym, probably the largest indoor space in town. Instead, everyone is huddled inside a single back room. I quickly see why- almost the entire roof has been torn off in the wind, and the main floor is flooded and exposed to the rain. There are a few families left in the back room- all that can fit, probably- but most have gone to other places. During a lull in the storm, I cross over into the municipal office. It looked impressive before the storm, but it's much less so with what seems like half its windows blown in. The floor is covered in an inch or so of water, and lots of broken glass. 

8:30 PM

There's still an active command center inside the disaster risk management office, even though the only light is a flashlight pointed up at the ceiling. Luis is back at his desk, still on the walkie talkie. Finally, food is brought out and we begin to eat our long-awaited dinner. Rice and meat never tasted this good. The other relief workers and I talk about the damages we've seen; it's bad here in town, but even worse in other coastal areas. One emergency responder mentions that there were two casualties in a different barangay, though she's not sure what the cause was. I later find out that it was a woman and her granddaughter who were waiting outside their house when a tree fell on them- the only two fatalities in Casiguran. Meanwhile, two of the soldiers who returned to the municipal hall before I did were sleeping in a room where the windows shattered, and suffered some lacerations from the broken glass. Ironic that the only relief workers injured were the ones who weren't caught outside in the middle of the storm. 

I mention that I'm frustrated that I have to leave the next day for Manila for some mandatory meetings.

"If the typhoon had come a week ago, that would have been perfect."

One of the other men laughs at me.

"Yes, if only nature worked according to our schedules."

I realize how incredibly privileged I am that the only thing the typhoon is ruining is my schedule. 

Eventually, everyone starts looking for places to sleep; there's little we can do while the wind is still blowing, power is off, and it's dark. The floor is too wet to lie on, so people look for different arrangements for sleeping. Some arrange chairs in a row, others just lean against the wall and fall asleep like that. I have a hard time falling asleep on a mattress, let alone a hard chair, so it's a little more difficult for me. I settle in a long bench, the only place I can fully lie down. I have no blankets or padding of course, and only my not-very-soft camera bag for a pillow. It's one of my less-comfortable night's sleeps, but somehow I actually do manage to fall asleep, though it's fitful and interrupted, filled with dreams of trying to figure out why random parts of my body ache so much. 

5:30 AM

I wake up before dawn, to see that everyone else is already up, of course. Relief goods are being piled up in the great hall again, and teams are going out to start the damage assessment and any medical evacuations that are necessary. I go out with a group of other young men to try and find food and look at the aftermath. The sky is cloudy but dry, and getting light enough I can see all of the damages. The municipal gymnasium looks like it's been peeled like a banana, street stalls are tipped over, and trees are mostly either fallen, missing branches, or nearly leafless. Most houses are damaged at least a little bit, with many missing roofs or just totally destroyed. My friend Carmen texts me to tell me that the roof of her house is completely gone. It looks... more or less what I would imagine the aftermath of a huge typhoon to be. 

Banana trees are always the worst affected in the storm- they're basically big, brittle grasses that make typhoons look like lawnmowers.

A smaller typhoon survivor.

My new friends leave for the rapid needs assessment. There's nothing I'd like more than to go with them, but I need to return to my home in Sorsogon in order to pick up my sister and catch our flight at noon in a city far away from us. Miraculously, it hasn't been canceled yet. There are no jeepneys, of course; jeep drivers probably have other things to worry about. Finally, I find a tricycle driver who's willing to take me back to Sorsogon for 250 pesos (about 5 dollars). It's more than I'd ordinarily pay, but it's a bit of an emergency, so I accept and hop in with him. Along the way, I have a spectacular view of the carnage wrought by Nona. It's worse in the countryside, where there are fewer buildings to break the wind, and what buildings there are are usually weaker material. It's a tribute to the expert disaster preparedness in the province that there haven't been more casualties.

Sorsogon City itself looks to be in far better shape than Casiguran; the strongest part of the typhoon passed further south, and the buildings here are far less vulnerable. There are still some downed trees and torn-up roofs, but overall it looks almost normal. I return, however, to a very wet apartment; the wind was so strong it actually pushed water underneath the door. Most of my clothes and electronics have been saved by a quick-thinking sister, but my mattress is soaked. It's a foam mattress, which in this case just makes it a very large sponge. Even now, a week later, it's still wet. Chalk up another $100 in typhoon damages.

As of writing, the official fatality count is 41 throughout the Philippines, though even that I know for a fact is outdated and will have to be revised upward. The fact that it's at that, rather than the 1,000-plus casualties from past typhoons, means that the country is learning many, many lessons in disaster preparedness. What they can't do much about, of course, are the millions of dollars in destroyed houses and crops that will leave farmers going hungry on Christmas. There's an almost criminal lack of attention to the storm on national and international media- how many of you even knew it happened before reading this? Perhaps because it hit poorer provinces and avoided major cities, and doesn't have the headline-grabbing fatalities of storms like Haiyan/Yolanda. That doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't families going hungry, or facing the loss of their houses, assets, or livelihoods with very little aid being given. 

I'll come out soon with a sequel to this blog entry describing the damage and recovery. Until then, keep following my facebook for more information on what is needed and how to help.