We went for a motorcycle ride yesterday... Jane and I on one bike and Don Piper and Rocel on another. We went from the North end of the path of the eye of supertyphoon Yolanda to the South near Tabango, to visit Dan and Jenifer Rinner and their family. The Rinner family had little damage and no injuries. Jenifers parents, however had extensive damage and their home was almost totally destroyed. Luckily their son-in-law is supportive and repairs will not be long in coming. Electricity will not be available for several months so generators are coming online as available. The lucky ones have a large enough generator to have refrigeration and/or air conditioning. Its common to plug in a neighbor or two, sometimes for a small fee to help with the cost of fuel. The real story here is the heavily damaged areas (other than Tacloban) which did not experience storm surges since the eye passed at low tide, but had EXTREME wind so strong that most homes made of wood were smashed and many concrete homes have their roofs damaged or blown off. Some of the poor trees are uprooted and toppled. Others are snapped off partway up from the trunk. Mostly they are standing there naked of foliage and the palms are dropping what few nuts they have left, which is a continuing danger to the population so they all must be climbed and pruned. Being an island, there is this macabre beauty in the enhanced water and territorial views with vegetation flattened everywhere you look. It will take months for the jungle to reclaim its share of the sky and years for the landscape of coconut palms to once again produce their profitable nuts. On our tour we saw trucks loaded with relief food supplies distributing to remote communities, which, while being a welcome site, has adverse side effects in that the people will become dependent on these gifts and the farmers will be unable to market their goods competitively. Also, as in any developing economy, many of the well intended donations will be misappropriated by unscrupulous politicians in their effort to profit from others demise. On the brighter side, our lumber order arrived late last week and repairs of the roof damage to our house begin today. The financial cost of every aspect of life has increased due to the shortages and extra logistics involved in times of catastrophe. The workers have damaged homes as well and we are lucky to be able to pay them extra so they too can afford repairs. The poorest, who had homes of bamboo are gathering wind strewn debris to use in rebuilding their humble squatter shanties. Their usual standard building material, bamboo, has been splintered by Yolanda and is no longer available and it will take many years for the shattered stands of this favored wood to return to any structural sized integrity. Luckily for us we had just purchased new bamboo furniture. Unluckily, we had ordered new bamboo slats for our beach cottage (which was destroyed) but they had not cut our order before the monster storm so our order will not arrive. Our beach cottage was our favorite place to hang and chill and was the center of all our parties. It will be a while before replacing that becomes a spending and time priority. Dan Rinner has a brilliant plan to support his family in building a portable saw mill so they may make use of the windfalls (in the literal sense of the term) while providing structural lumber in the recovery effort. The designer of the mill generously donated his plans in a show of support of the project. Way to go Dan! In the meantime, life goes on here and we could have it a lot worse.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 02:52:35 +0000
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