Volatility seems to color my own generational experience because, aside from trying with all my might to survive the pandemic every day, I also live in a region that is at the path of many typhoons. And last Sunday, the first of November, a typhoon took that path.
Bikolanos are supposed to be used to typhoons. Norman Owen, in his book, Prosperity Without Progress, mentions a saying attributed to “one native of Albay.” The quote says: “The land is so good, the people kind, the Almighty had to invent the typhoon to even things up.” We recognize that declaration of praise; it is a description that pushes with utmost cruelty that silly characteristic we ascribe to Filipinos—resilience. But the statement further mines in our culture a fatalism, the gratitude to a god who cannot be content to find a good land in a good Earth. It is a divinity that punishes us for our happiness and contentment.
That Almighty, for the first time in Bikol, came up with a wind reaching gustiness of 300-plus kph. It was called a super typhoon, with a modifier so flippant it is used for anything or anyone with an exaggerated might. It was also a cyclone that merited a Signal No. 5 upon its landfall.
Bikolanos who are used to storms never had any experience of one that had no comparison. In every Bikolano, there is always a typhoon that marks an important event in their lives. For my generation, it was Typhoon Sening in October of 1970.
We were living then on the second floor of an old house. The lower floor was partitioned to accommodate two more families. With empty lots around us, the wall of the house was aspirating with the wind that kept on blowing stronger each time. My father, an accountant who had carpentry skills, could not bear it any longer. He was afraid the whole second floor would be blown away, and with it, all of us. He started banging on the wall at the stairwell to caution the family on the ground floor that we would be “bothering” them. The wind was at its peak and there was no way for us to use the main door to transfer to the lower part of the house.
Up to this day, I do not remember how that family responded when somebody started to open the wall to their living room with a saw. By the time, a huge gaping hole was formed, we were being hoisted one by one into the home of another family.
For the communities in Albay, Typhoon Reming in November of 2006 was a marker of tragedy. The mud deposits on the sides of Mayon Volcano were washed off by strong rain and wind. Late at night, the people who survived that catastrophe spoke of roaring sound. They thought it was thunder. They were wrong. Raging down the homes of several barangays were the black flood and lahar and, with it, the huge stones, crushing anything that was standing in their way, burying houses and people.
Did the people of that town forget the dark event? Around the same area, Supertyphoon Rolly caused the lahar to flow again and flood the communities and kill the people in those sites in November of 2020.
Are we forgetful people?
Memories of disaster are important way of responding and coping with calamities. Nature is not vindictive; Nature follows a pattern. It is thus important to know which areas get flooded or where would surges rise and cover the land. For the lahar experts, they talk of paths that can be seen as “guiding” mudflows. Caution is therefore needed when the wind and the rains come again because the same event of stones and thick soil thundering down the slopes of a mountain becomes an accident waiting to happen again.
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Image credits: Jimbo Albano