Lessons on the ground

“Ate, I was one of the looters” said the young church member.

The confession was unsolicited and made to a pastor’s wife. Caught between guilt and duty, the young church worker was very matter of fact about her actions. When asked why she did it, the lady said: “I have a 6-week old niece who needed milk. There was nowhere to buy the milk and when I chanced upon the looters, I did what I needed to do. I went to get the milk.”

What begins to become clear is that after 2 days without clean drinking water, reason and law was no longer on the agenda. People can go without food for many days even weeks, but no one maintains their sanity once you stop drinking water. It was not simple greed or lawlessness that drove people to loot; it was generally dehydration and desperation.

Yes there were real thieves in the crowd who stole big screen TVs, some even ripped off light switches from the wall in spite of the fact that there was no electricity, but as we all know there are also thieves in government and Congress.

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Many people assumed that all the people walking like zombies in Tacloban were traumatized or shell-shocked people who had lost their wits. But I learned that many of them were desperately seeking out relatives, hoping against hope that a child, a spouse, family members had survived the wind and waves. For many, finding family was such a driving force that they forgot about creature comforts, time or personal needs. They were all looking for familiar faces in a sea of debris and destruction.

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During a late night fuel stop at one of the Petron stations that was operating around Tacloban City, I quickly noticed that the people manning the pumps and managing the stations were not “locals.” In fact they were all “replacement management” from out of the region and Manila.

I soon learned that the dealer-owner of the station had evacuated to Cebu after their traumatic experience during Typhoon Yolanda. Petron Management immediately stepped in by forming teams that would take turns in managing the stations on rotation basis. This was not simple as it seemed because the people who agreed to be posted were actually at risk of being mobbed, robbed or even attacked by desperate customers or looters.

That evening I met Gedi Leonares and Jon Cleofas at the Fourcourt Petron station along with Anselmo Soletario, Glenmar Lagwaan, Irene Heyrosa and Bonen Borres. All day they pumped gas and at night slept very light and uncomfortable, all in the spirit of service.

Similarly I met Joven Lila and his team who worked hard off loading baggage from a PAL Express plane at the Tacloban Airport. They too were from Manila on three-day shifts. No complaints, just pure hard work. As the advertisement goes: “ San Miguel - Iba ang may pinag samahan.” My heartfelt thanks to SMC president Ramon Ang, Jane Llañes, Eya Prospero, and Charmaine Canillas who helped in my deployment in Tacloban as well as hooking me up with the guys at Petron.

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While everybody has heard of the dramatic escape of Mayor Alfred Romualdez as well as that of his wife Councilwoman Kring-Kring Gonzales Romualdez and their two kids, not many have heard about their German shepherd “Blitz” who managed to escape from his cage. As the dog swam to safety, a Kusinera grabbed hold of the dog, which brought her safely to shore.

Speaking of “dogs,” the leader of the cadaver retrieval team, Dr. Boobi Arce quipped that he was now part-dog as he used his nose to smell out the location of cadavers trapped under the ruins in Tacloban. When I led him to a location were there were 2 bodies pinned under so much rubble, he actually got down on his knees and literally started sniffing out the exact area where the bodies were!

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While distributing relief goods, some members of the Land Rover Club of the Philippines thought it would be a good idea to give away candies to the kids to cheer them up. Justine Gamez, a pretty young lady visiting from the US, went about giving away bags of sweets which immediately had kids running up to her. But not everyone fell for her sugary treats. Some kids stood still and outright refused to accept the candies. They told Justin: “No. Candies are bad for your teeth!” Score one for dental hygiene in the middle of a disaster.

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At one distribution area we only had 120 bags of relief goods to give away but had more people in the line. I told people the only thing we had left were empty sacks used to stuff the bags in. NEVER did I imagine that people would grab at plastic sacks as if we were giving away signature bags. With everything washed away, sacks have become the travelling bags of refugees.

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No one could quite explain why, but for some reason there were so many mosquitoes in Tacloban City and the outskirts. I even had a chance to photograph the legs of a foreign lady that was “tadtad,” or full of mosquito bites that the red spots looked like measles! So if you want to help the people here, or if you’re planning to come and help, I suggest you bring over a lot of mosquito nets. We bought half a dozen of those pop-up mosquito nets that sell for under P500 at Ace Hardware or HyperMart and I would gladly endorse them as the most useful equipment we brought.

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Ask and it shall be given to you….When I asked for 4 tires for the tow truck of Tacloban City, My friend and ally Ron Castro, managing director of Goodyear Philippines, went as far as calling a dealer in Ormoc City – EBR Goodyear Servitek to deliver the tires within 24 hours! That was just one of many sets of tires that Goodyear Philippines sent out to responders to the Typhoon Yolanda disaster.

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