FAMILIES WORRY
LOCALS LOSE RELATIVES IN TYPHOON
When Ramil Pesa’s 42 family members learned Typhoon Haiyan was on its way to the Philippines, they fled their compound near Tacloban City and sought shelter at the home of the family matriarch.
They believed they would be safe in the woman’s large concrete house, which had withstood many typhoons and storms in years past. But when the stormwaters suddenly surged, only one family member survived.
Grace Pesa, Ramil’s wife, said her husband is still trying to process the news.
“He was in shock and he didn’t want to believe,” the Calgary woman said Tuesday, five days after the Philippines experienced one of its worst natural disasters.
“Initially, the loss was reported 20plus and counting. So Ramil phoned Manila and talked personally to his cousin, who was planning to go to Tacloban. He couldn’t get a straight sentence because his cousin was sobbing, ‘They’re all gone, they’re all gone.’”
Grace, who is also from Tacloban, one of the hardest hit areas in the Philippines, said her cousin’s wife and daughter also died in the disaster. The official death toll rose to 1,774 Tuesday, though authorities say it’s expected to rise further amid fear that originally reported numbers of 10,000 dead are accurate.
While the Pesa couple mourns the devastating losses in their family, they are also still nervously waiting for news of their many loved ones who still live in the region, including Grace’s parents and two brothers, and Ramil’s siblings.
Communication has been sporadic at best, and the Pesas have been relying on updates through Facebook and from friends and relatives in other parts of the world for information.
Grace said she and her husband had been planning to go to Tacloban at the end of November to mark the first year anniversary of Ramil’s mother’s death, a Catholic tradition in the Philippines.
The trip will now be focused on relief efforts, she said, adding she hopes to bring at least 20 bottles of Advil or Motrin to donate to a health centre in Tacloban.
The Pesas are among the numerous Filipino-Calgarians who are trying to do everything they can to help family and friends back home, as survivors plead for food, water and medicine. “We are both from that affected area,” Grace said. “We just want to see and hug our family.”
Malou Reyes considers herself among the lucky ones. The Calgary woman’s father, Vicente Ramirez Jr., was caught in the typhoon but survived. Reyes said her parents live in Manila, and her father had travelled to Tacloban to attend her cousin’s wedding. At first she wasn’t too concerned to learn a typhoon was headed in that direction because they were common occurrences when she was growing up in Tacloban.
But when she started seeing news footage of destroyed houses in her childhood neighbourhood, and was unable to reach her father, she started to worry for his safety.
“Part of me was losing hope but I stood by my faith that my dad was still OK,” Reyes said.
Finally, on Saturday evening, she heard from her nephew that her father was safe and had made his way home to Manila.
“When my nephew messaged me on Facebook, I immediately called my parents,” Reyes said. “I was on the verge of having a breakdown when I heard his voice. He told me to stop crying, saying ‘I’m here, I’m alive.’ ”
Reyes said she learned her father, cousin, and uncle were asleep when they awoke to find water seeping into the bungalow.
When they tried to get out, they were unable to push the door open as the currents and winds were so strong. They ended up breaking windows to escape.
As water levels rose, they scrambled up a tree and stayed there for two hours, waiting out the storm.
Reyes said at some point, debris flew by and knocked her father in the head, nearly causing him to lose his grip.
“It’s a good thing he was still able to hang on, otherwise that would have cost his life,” Reyes said.
Once the winds subsided, her father, uncle and cousin walked in search of food. She said because her 69-year-old father is a senior citizen, he managed to get a flight out of Tacloban.
But to get to the helicopter, he had to walk about 20 kilometres barefoot, passing bodies strewn on the streets.
Reyes said her father is still walking with a bit of a limp, but he’s doing well otherwise.
Like the Pesa family, Reyes is planning to send money to help her many family and friends living in the hardest hit areas in the Philippines.
She said she’s thankful for federal funding of $5 million toward disaster relief, as well as the federal government’s pledge to match every dollar donated by Canadians to a registered charity until Dec. 8.
“I just cry because I know a lot of people there. I know how it looks like before, and now it’s just full of debris,” Reyes said. “It’s unimaginable what happened there.”