The Saavedras waited for death as Typhoon Haiyan tore at their roof,
knocked down walls and unleashed torrents of seawater below them. All
they could do was pray, say “I love you” one last time and take a
picture.
David Saavedra raised his cellphone in the chaos to snap a group
selfie to record their final moments. He took it for his eldest sister
in Manila, hoping to show that at the end, her family was together —
even serene.
That explains his smile, incongruous against the wind-ripped scene
and the terror-stricken faces of his younger sister, Veronica, and their
mother.
The picture was intended to go on top of David’s coffin, but instead
it is a reminder of the family’s immense luck, and of the obligation
they feel to help neighbors who weren’t nearly as fortunate when the
massive typhoon hit Nov. 8, 2013.
More than 7,300 people died or went missing when Haiyan slammed the
central Philippines, including the Saavedras’ laidback farming town of
Tanauan, as one of the most ferocious typhoons ever to hit land. The
monster storm displaced about 4 million people and turned a large swath
of densely populated regions into a wasteland.
“I said ‘I love you’ to my parents because I felt at that time that
it was our last day alive,” Veronica Saavedra said in an interview in
the family’s old house, now partially cleaned up and repaired. “I was so
afraid I was trembling and I said, ‘Lord, if this is my last day,
forgive me for everything.’”
The 21-year-old college student said even while praying, she was
terrified by the loud hissing of the wind, and memories of the rising
water hounded her sleep for months.
The Saavedras — David, Veronica, their brother JR, their mother and
their father — all survived. Three other siblings were in Manila, and
one was in Kuwait.
Many other families had much different fates. In a nearby village,
all but two members of a 45-member clan are buried in a mass grave.
When the rain and wind finally subsided hours after the storm hit,
David, a 26-year-old accountant, left the cramped hallway on the second
floor of the wood-and-concrete home where he and his family were huddled
while hell broke loose. He saw bodies floating on the street outside.
The next-door neighbors were drenched and shuddering on the second floor
of their house, its walls gone. One paraplegic neighbor was clinging to
a post near the roof of his house. Others were crying, many in shock.
“In just one click, everything can be snatched from you,” David said,
tears welling in his eyes. “But the feeling that you are still alive
after that is really overwhelming.”
For four days the family lived on 2 kilograms (4 pounds) of fish and
pork that they found inside their refrigerator that floated in the
flood; its door luckily remained shut. A stack of soda in their mother’s
small store quenched their thirst.
At the same time, David and Veronica’s sister Sarah Songalia was in
anguish in Manila, where she owns an accounting firm. There was no news
from her hometown for three days, with telephone and power lines down
and roads blocked by debris.
“I said, ‘Lord, just keep them all alive. I will do everything so our
town can rise again,’” said Songalia, the eldest of the family’s seven
children.
With no news coming their way, Songalia and her officemates put up a
Facebook community page in hopes that people from her hometown could
send updates. They and other volunteers gathered relief supplies,
turning Songalia’s office in the heart of the Makati financial district
into a relief operations center.
Her family was able to board a bus and reach Manila five days after
the typhoon. They have since relocated closer to Songalia, and have
helped her with the relief effort. Only Veronica is still living in
their home province of Leyte — she’s staying with relatives in Tacloban,
the provincial capital — but their parents plan to move back when the
father retires in two years.
The nonprofit group Songalia founded, Burublig Para Ha Tanauan, has
started projects to help villagers recover, powered by volunteers.
The projects include distributing boats to fishermen who lost their
vessels and training women to sew hospital scrubs and school uniforms.
Drivers who lost vehicles known as tricycles — actually bicycles with
canopied sidecars — have been given replacements.
Residents are organized into cooperatives. They get the equipment
they need on an operate-to-own basis, paying back the cost in
installments.
One of the new boat owners is Gerardo Barcilla, who now can earn 400
pesos to 1,000 pesos ($9-$22) a day from his catch of fish and crabs.
The 47-year-old fisherman lost his home, his boat and his 19-year-old
son, one of five children, to Haiyan.
He and his son had taken shelter in a school, but the storm surge
swamped the building. The pair clung to a beam. Barcilla held on as
another wave pounded over him, but when he surfaced, his son was gone.
He remains missing, and his father still holds out hope that he might be
alive.
Barcilla said the boat has given him hope: “I was able to start again through this.”
“I think I will pull through, but I will never forget the past,” he said, wiping away tears from his sunburnt face.
