Triumph in tragedy

Fourteen months after Super Typhoon Yolanda cut a large swath of destruction across the Visayas, the stories of Yolanda continue to be told, slowly emerging like new shoots from the ground laid waste, like the lives slowly being rebuilt from the debris of winds so strong concrete structures shook, of waves of water washing ashore, unmindful of anything and everything in its path.

On the first working day of the year I received from a friend at Benpres a copy of the book “Yolanda: Stories of Faith, Courage and Hope from the EDC Family.” Energy Development Corp. (EDC) is one of the world’s largest producers of geothermal energy. Its Leyte field, located west of Tacloban between the towns of Ormoc and Kananga, is the world’s largest wet steamfield and produces 37 percent of the power supply of the Visayas. This field was right smack in the path of Yolanda, and the book is a record of how the company responded to the unimaginable force of “the world’s strongest storm in recorded history.”

The book is anchored on a series of letters written by EDC president Ricky Tantoco to the employees – he addresses them as “My fellow EDC Kapamilyas” – and records the response before, during and after the monster storm hit. From the immediate concern of accounting for all of the 743 employees in the field – all of them survived – to the ensuing relief operations and on to longer term assessment and rehabilitation efforts, the company’s response  – including its post-Yolanda evaluation of where and how they could have done better – can be held up as a fine example of private sector effort.

The book includes what many of the affected employees did and said, how they, who were themselves victims of the disaster, responded. Security officer Victorino Gubalane was quoted as saying in Filipino, “We all have families and we don’t know what’s happening to them. But we need to stay here and act because for now, EDC has no one else to rely on but us.”

Company pilot  Edgar Allan Carreon said he was “ready to give all of what I can do. Fly people, fly relief.”

Javier Santos, then 10 and the son of an EDC officer, wrote a letter on lined pad paper to tell the typhoon victims he was praying for them, and that he was donating some of his “good toys and other things” to help those who had lost everything.

Photos and stories of courage and sacrifice and generosity and faith are juxtaposed with accounts of the destruction and despair and loss that Yolanda brought to millions of our countrymen. As the people of the Visayas slowly, slowly rebuild their lives – not just because of Yolanda but other storms that have since visited the area – tragedy has proven to be the ground from which triumph, especially the triumph of the human spirit, springs. 

The book quotes the 14th Dalai Lama sa saying: “It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and for others.”