“Hagupit” means “whip” Super typhoon Hagupit is freight training into Leyte. I’ve lost contact with my wife, Glendelou. December 3, 2014 One year ago today I left Glendelou standing in the wreckage of Tacloban City airport in the Philippines. I didn’t know until yesterday that she was crying. The runways were open and military C-130 cargo aircraft from nations around the world were busy ferrying relief goods in and relieved survivors out, but super typhoon Yolanda had reduced the terminal building to shattered concrete and twisted rebar. Plastic tape closed off the more unsafe sections of the building and plastic sheets replaced demolished concrete walls, which did nothing to block the roar of turboprops and the screech of jet engines a few yards away. Rubble lay heaped in piles. Hopeful passengers filled the bent rows of steel airport terminal seating and hundreds more stood with their baggage. Customs officers and ticket agents worked from folding tables and amplified their announcements through hand held bullhorns. Soldiers armed with assault rifles protected relief workers and relief goods from bandits and looters. Every giant glass window in the adjacent control tower was gone, taken by Yolanda; a Philippine flag flew from the remnants of a roof antenna. All along the 16-mile highway from Dulag to Tacloban survivors flew Philippine and American flags over the wreckage - Philippine flags in pride and defiance, American flags in gratitude for the US Navy’s helicopters bringing hope and rice in the midst of desolation and fear. I’m pretty sure we passed more flags than mass graves along the highway. There was no place else to lay the 7,000 dead also taken by Yolanda; even the cemeteries were wrecked and blocked by fallen trees and power line poles, and the survivors had to get on with the grim business of survival. The identified dead got crosses and tombstones of salvaged wood, their names scrawled in paint. Can you imagine laying your child in a sodden trench with others beside the road, joining shocked and grieving neighbors to shovel mud on top of the bodies, spray painting your child’s name on a plywood marker? I’ve described Yolanda’s aftermath for magazine readers as an “urban apocalypse.” I have not exaggerated. The super typhoon’s 160mph winds were the most powerful ever recorded to make landfall. Landfall was dead center on our town of Dulag. On October 20, 1944 Dulag was the site of the US invasion of Leyte to retake the Philippines from the Japanese; every year on that day the town shuts down and everyone attends a memorial service at Hill 120 to celebrate Liberation Day. After Yolanda on November 9, 2013 the town looked literally as it did in those WWII photos after the 1944 naval bombardment: total destruction. Residential construction in Leyte is about 95 percent light post-and-beam with nipa (palm thatch) or tin roofing. Almost without exception, not a single such structure remained after Yolanda. Those that did remain were extensively damaged. Yolanda threw hundreds and hundreds of trees and power line poles across the few roads; they were impassable except on foot or by bicycles for days. Every grocery store and market – every one, without exception – was totally destroyed. After Yolanda passed I biked 16 miles round trip with two brothers-in-law between Dulag and Burauen to see if other family members were still alive. They were. Then I visited every shattered store to buy all the canned food I could while others carried their dead through the streets, slung in hammocks under bamboo poles. Can you believe the power of capitalism? With all the stores destroyed and roads completely blocked, with no more food coming in, every grocer was happy to sell me all the salvaged food I wanted. It wasn’t enough. Yolanda struck two days after we returned from our honeymoon, and Glendelou and I now had nine other family members living in our one bedroom rental. The house was flooded and damaged, but the concrete walls stood and the tin roof had stayed on. The sick grandfather got our bed and Glendelou and I slept on a pad on the living room floor, under a mosquito net tied to the dining room chairs. Finding more food was the first concern until we learned that convicts escaped from the damaged prison in Tacloban had raped and murdered a woman in the next town. Now defense became our first priority. I had the family gather up damaged roofing tin (it was scattered everywhere) to lay against the courtyard walls as a kind of burglar alarm. Nails driven up through boards and laid on the ground waited for anyone jumping over the walls or gate. I showed them how to slash at attackers’ feet under the doors with a sanzibar (machete); how to stab from below if an atttacker opened the door; to use a spray can of insecticide in place of pepper spray. Papa brought me a borrowed homemade shotgun; after cleaning it with coconut oil I doubted it would work, but I showed them how and when to use it anyway. Papa set up a neighborhood alarm system of shouts and flashlights. I slept with Glendelou on one side and a sanzibar on the other; every night breeze that rattled roofing tin shot me awake, heart hammering, ready to hack an intruder to death. There were no police at all – they were surviving with their own families, too. There was no electricity (and would be none for the next five months). Almost everyone was living in shelters built from salvaged storm debris. And it was still monsoon season. It was a grim and scary time. Piles of wet, burning debris smoldered in the streets, adding to the surreal, war-like scene. Our tiny radio picked up less-than-hopeful news broadcasts from far away Cebu; there was no radio station operating in Leyte at all. Then, perhaps a week after Yolanda we got our first sign of both help and normalcy: a US Navy helicopter flew overhead and landed in the elementary school grounds. Dulag’s mood changed from despair to hope in that instant. The succeeding helicopters and V-22 Ospreys couldn’t possibly bring enough to feed everyone, but the hope they brought was invaluable. That afternoon a sprinkling of American flags appeared around town, a thank you to the aircrews, the Navy and America. When the roads were cleared just enough to let vehicles pass, bandits robbed a neighbor of his motorcycle. I bought a seat on a flatbed truck to go look for food. All along the highway people lived in lean-tos and tiny shelters made from cobbled-together storm debris. They built right up to the white paint on the roadside because the raised highway bed was the only dry ground. Children stood with hands outstretched, begging for coins, as we drove past. We drove four hours over the mountains to the city of Maasin before finding success. The bank had an ATM and generator; the line was long. The grocery store had a generator and accepted my credit card; the lines were long. There was a cellphone signal and I was able to call my sister Laura and tell her we were alive. Over the next month I made four trips to Maasin to bring back more than 300 pounds of rice and many boxes of food to share with the extended family. Glendelou went with me as my interpreter until the truck broke down on the second trip back and a strange man came over to judge our vulnerability. A flatbed truck loaded with food is a tempting target in an apocalypse, but we had enough men to discourage banditry. I didn’t allow Glendelou to come along after that. Here is the value of food at that time: in the neighboring town of Tanuan an angry mob stabbed the mayor to death, suspecting he was hoarding relief food. When the Cebu radio station said that military C-130s were flying American survivors out of Tacloban airport, Glendelou said we should go see if it was true. I rode in the back of a small truck because if I rode up front bandits would see my “rich foreigner” white face and would target us (in the Philippines, all Americans are rich). So I rode in the back with a T-shirt wrapped around my face, sunglasses on and hat pulled down low; by the time any bandit would ID me, we would be past. Declaration of martial law did no good until armed soldiers actually made an appearance, and they mostly guarded truckloads and caches of relief food. And our town mayor. US Marines at the wrecked airport said I could fly out whenever I wanted. I elected to stay for a month, until my visa ran out and some semblance of normalcy and safety had hopefully returned. How could I leave my new wife in a situation like that? Other than defensive tactics, my biggest contribution was buying food. When I later reviewed my bank statements I found I’d spent more than $2,000 for food and other supplies during the apocalypse. But the withdrawal limit on my ATM card was only $300 per Maasin trip, and without internet I could not bank online to pay my escalating credit card debt. Papa’s house was totally destroyed; the grandfather’s roof was gone and the interior destroyed, though the concrete walls stood intact, and I wanted to rebuild them both. The town was still a wreck, but law enforcement had returned to work and food began to trickle in over cleared roads. After discussing it with Glendelou and the family, it was clear I could do far more good from the US than if I remained in Dulag any longer. Glendelou and I met online in early 2013 soon after Mom (Barbara Merrill) died; in August I flew to Leyte to meet her in person. We married October 24th in front of 50 invited guests and 40 wedding crashers. We fed them all, and as expected of a “rich foreigner” I dutifully impressed them with lechon (a whole roast pig) and curabao (water buffalo). There were so many uninvited guests that a brother-in-law and I had to make a beer run on a motorcycle during the reception; I don’t know if that was impressive or not. We honeymooned on the island of Palawan, sightseeing and scuba diving (me, anyway: Glendelou doesn’t know how to swim, so she waited on the dive boat). On December 3rd, a month after Yolanda decimated Leyte and killed thousands, I crammed everything I could into a carry-on bag and we drove back to the Tacloban airport. Just as we had done the day we first met back in August, Glendelou and I rode in the back seat of a cousin’s minivan, holding hands. Papa rode up front. Past the flags and the mass graves, past the begging children and ramshackle lean-tos, the blasted landscape and collapsed buildings, past the downed power lines now serving to dry clothing, past the signs reading “We shall survive” in Tagalog. At the airport the US Marine C-130s were already gone. Instead, after much haggling I was able to get on a commercial flight to Manila, where my sister Laura had booked me a hotel room and a flight online from California. Glendelou and I sat on the bent metal air terminal seats, holding hands, not saying much. The aircraft roared and screeched, ticket agents bullhorned, soldiers paced with their rifles, we waited. Dulag’s electricity came back on in March, 2014. When her internet signal is good enough Glendelou and I now communicate by text chat on Viber twice daily, she using her smartphone. The Philippines is 15 hours ahead of Arizona; my “this morning” is her “tonight.” Yesterday morning we chatted about the last day we saw each other in that shattered airport. “I dont want you to leave me that time but its a right decision,” she said. Her English is excellent but not perfect. She speaks it better than she texts it, like everyone. I decided to share her texts with you verbatim, without corrections. “It was a very difficult decision to make, but I have done much more for you and the family by being here,” I said. “I will never forget that Sweetie while i am still breathing,” she said. “I want to cry that time. But i controlled my emotion. Thats the reason also why when you are entering in departure area i dont want to look back. Just to control my emotion.” “It was very difficult for me, too,” I said, “trying to control my emotions and constantly asking myself if this was the right thing to do.” “And papa told me, you looked on us before you entered there but i did not looked at you. Because i have tears on my eyes already...but i know its a right decision....you made so much on us. And tomorrow is 1 year separation.” It was the right decision. I have been able to work and send thousands of dollars to rebuild both houses, to pay for maintenance medicines for Mama and the grandfather, to support Glendelou and to provide for their single luxury, a two-burner propane stove I bought for Mama before the typhoon. But that leaves no money to fly back to Tacloban to see Glendelou while we slog through the US Immigration process. Yolanda caused so much destruction to infrastructure and government offices that we couldn’t get a copy of our marriage certificate until June, 2014 – and it took a bribe to get it that quickly. I had already prepared all the documents and paperwork for the spouse visa process, and I filed her application as soon as I had the marriage certificate in hand. In November, one year and two weeks after Yolanda, US Customs and Immigration Service finally approved the application. Now we have to do it all over again, and much more, for the National Visa Center. It continues to be a lengthy and expensive, fee-laden process. And it continues to keep us separated. Odd, isn’t it? To have survived the utmost savagery of nature, and then to have survived human predators and the loss of civilized norms in a frightening urban apocalypse, to have overcome so much adversity at the very beginning of our marriage (not the least of which was being newlyweds sleeping in the same room with nine in-laws), only to be endlessly separated by the inertia and inefficiency of a faceless and uncaring government bureaucracy. Today super typhoon Hagupit is bearing down on Leyte. “Hagupit” is a Tagalog word that means “whip.” Hagupit is forecast to smash into Leyte on Saturday, my Friday. Here in Prescott, Arizona it is an unusual rainy, cold morning; somehow it amplifies my fears for Glendelou and the family. I have already experienced what a super typhoon will do to Dulag. I can control my dread; controlling my sense of helplessness is another matter. And I know that I will not be able to communicate with Glendelou for days after Hagupit lashes Dulag, to know whether she survived. My worst fears are not for Glendelou surviving the lashing of Hagupit which, as frightening and deadly as it is, will pass in a few hours. The worst comes afterward in a country that lacks the resources and deep pockets of “rich Americans.” And perhaps worst of all, without electricity or communications of any kind, I will not know anything at all: who survived and who did not; whether there is any food; how serious the predators. Update December 5 Glendelou was able to rent a room at the concrete bed & breakfast eight miles inland, away from the storm surge, where we sat out the super typhoon last November. During Yolanda we rented a room on the third, the highest floor, until the roof started flying off and the interior walls began collapsing; we spent the rest of the storm in a second-floor room with another family, barricading the window with furniture and trying to stem flooding from the wrecked third floor with towels. This time Glendelou has rented the last available room, on the ground floor; one bedroom, three beds, 11 family members. Her entire barangay (neighborhood or ward) of Catmonan in Dulag has evacuated. We chatted last night, her Friday morning, for a few minutes when she suddenly texted, “Sweetie, no electricity now.” “OK, shut off your phones.” “OK...I will talk to you later.” “Mahal na mahal kita, asawa ko” (I love you very much, my spouse). “Mahal na mahal kita, Arthur.” And that is all, for however long. Art Merrill Prescott, AZ
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 17:07:34 +0000
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