Disasters happen
Well, the whole Philippines, the whole world seems to be focused on the disaster caused by typhoon Yolanda, also called typhoon Haiyan. And indeed, living in The Philippines and not so far from Tacloban and surroundings where the typhoon seems to have hit hardest and turned the area into a disaster zone, of course I am also disturbed with what I see what has happened there. But it also reminds me of my personal troubles, my personal disaster that’s still going on and, more important, it reminds me of the disaster that struck my own city, Cagayan de Oro City two years ago. And I wanted to do things at the time as it was so close by and visiting a disaster zone like that is really unimaginable if you’ve never experienced something like that. And believe me, visiting such a site, especially if you know, or actually knew, the site from before is not an experience to be taken lightly. The first experience I had like that was with the Enschede fireworks disaster. And while looking it up in Wikipedia for the link makes cold trembles go over my back and makes my cry right now.
Being there
Those types of disaster are not to be taken lightly and you can only know that if you have been somehow closely related to such an area. And in the Enschede disaster I wasn’t even there when it happened. But the impact of such a site, such a thing is indeed unimaginable. I didn’t think about it for a long time, but I’m getting completely confused and emotional right now. Even after such a long time somehow something makes me know it’s a big thing, something never to forget.
I remember seeing the images on TV. It was just ‘another disaster’ as you see so many on TV. And yes, somehow it was different as most of the family of my partner at that time lived in that area, actually quite close. And it was kind of scary, but not that much. Just some houses burning. And yes, houses that I kind of knew, but still, just houses burning.
And I don’t remember when we actually went there. It must have been a few days after. But it was unimaginable, the destruction, unimaginable. i had never ever seen or experienced anything like that. Just a whole village completely wiped out. Completely. And it was a village I knew. It was a village where I had visited fellow students when I was a student there. And that specific house I have in mind was just gone, completely gone, as it was very near the location where the explosion happened. But the most impact made the vast area that was affected. Something like two kilometers from the explosion windows were broken, houses were damaged. And that was what mainly hit me. The enormous scale of what had happened.
Cagayan de Oro City 2011
A second experience was two years ago, here in my own city, when a typhoon hit and somehow cause a flood in the river, also wiping out complete subdivisions, complete villages. Just check the photo page on the site Cagayan de Oro disaster for more images.
Cagayan de Oro disaster 2011
That disaster had a similar impact on me being on ‘ground zero’, although this time I thought I knew what to expect. But also this time I wasn’t prepared. As this was my own city and I only found out about what had been going on a few days after. Because the electricity had been disrupted for two days or so and i hadn’t really been to the city. And actually I had been only annoyed those two days as I couldn’t do so much as there was not electricity. And yes, I had been to the city to do some shopping and somehow I felt ‘something was going on’, but at that time I didn’t get the full picture.
So slowly I found out a bit, people telling me and when the electricity came back also on the internet and TV. But again, most of the city was pretty normal and I only realized what had happened when my partner, some friends and I visited one of the villages that had been wiped out, the village where the photo was taken you find in this paragraph. So when going there I realized this was a similar thing to the Enschede fireworks disaster. And this time it was my own city. And I hadn’t even been aware, that was the weird thing. But it was terrible, seeing so many people having lost everything. And meeting people, taxi drivers, etc. telling they had also lost their homes or somtehing, even months after.
Life went on
And life went on, that was the weirdest thing. News is just news… And I did my best with my website Cagayan de Oro disaster, but nothing really came out of it, nobody seemed interested and I had enough problems of my own. So that project died, at least until now.
So what i know now is that most disasters are local, often more local than it appears on TV or in the newspapers. But they are real and really affect people, affect people very badly. And they tend to become forgotten.
So yes, I still have my own problems. But there must still be people having lost a lot or virtually everything in 2011 in Cagayan de Oro City. And as I also found out at the time is that often governments and institutions like the Red Cross or churches will provide in the daily needs for the short term. But the long term is now, after the news crews have left, after the governments have become busy with other priorities, after the Red Cross has moved to another disaster.
Should we help?
And I’m starting to see more and more i can’t do it alone. So i need your help, your support, not only financial, but also moral. But if I get some message, some signal, some signal from The Universe, I promise I will see if I can do something for those people who were affected in 2011 in Cagayan de Oro City and have still not (fully) recovered and could use some help.
So please help, please inspire me.