‘Yolanda’ 13 years after
Nov. 8 marks the 13th anniversary of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name Haiyan), killing at least 6,300 people in Central Visayas. (For pundits demanding exact dates, the supertyphoon formed on Nov. 3, 2013, and dissipated on Nov. 11.)
Faculty and students who were given refuge in University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman shared many stories, some of which, just listening to them, gave us a sense of the terror of the typhoon. I found out only while researching for this column that the typhoon made six landfalls. But the landfalls did not have to be gigantic ones. I listened several times to students, especially, who described feeling a tsunami-like wave coming in and landing, but most terrifying was how the waves would retreat back into the sea, taking with them people, especially older people and the young.
Despite its ferocity, it seems that memories have been dissipating as well, and I worry because together with lost memories are lessons learned. In various research methods classes I teach, I try to cite as many disaster accounts as possible, hoping that they will help people to be better prepared for similar disasters.
My column today will focus on how UP Diliman, several thousand miles away from Tacloban, the center of Yolanda, did generate many important narratives from survivors, as well as from UP Diliman, which hosted several thousand refugees and survivors, as well as many unsung heroes and heroines who challenged the stereotype of government inefficiency.
I was dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy at that time, one of the largest units in Diliman (sorry I don’t have the exact number, but our numbers definitely ran into the thousands), and from the time storm warnings were raised, we were getting advisories from UP officials at the system level about the need to tackle housing and (eventually) classes for students from Central Visayas, no questions asked about their entrance exam scores. (In the end, we had to retain many of these automatic transferees, much to their delight.)
There were so many stories around the lightning transfers, students with a minimum of baggage. The Philippine Air Force mobilized as many flights as it could, with little time for briefings. Many students presented themselves to media people as early as their landing at the airport and would introduce themselves with calls for rescue by relatives—many without full names—in Manila.
We have two UP campuses in Metro Manila—UP Manila and UP Diliman—and several dormitories that were already packed. Cafeterias overflowed with the new guests, and when I had to do meet-and-greet sessions—intentionally brief—I reminded the students of the biblical parable of the bread and fish that somehow provided for the crowds.
Our faculty and students serenaded the new students the first night they arrived and tried, as best as we could, to assure them that we would provide what we could. (A few weeks later, we also got appeals from many of the students to stay on in Manila into the new semester, which we accepted.)
Our student and faculty counselors encouraged students to keep diaries as a form of therapy, but I’m hoping these diaries, which would include stories of their first few days with Yolanda back in Tacloban, will be shared with UP and compiled into multimedia material, especially digital material, for generations to come.
I remember the Department of Science and Technology requesting various UP departments to identify science-related words in various Philippine languages and dialects. We realized after a few weeks that we could not find local words specifically meaning storm surge, even if a search through archives of periodicals from the Visayas did find several accounts of supertyphoons. Even the most terrifying of disasters, it seems, wipes out memories of disasters, including words for storm surges.
Most importantly, we organized tutorials and psychosocial counseling. (We didn’t have our canine counselors yet, but I am certain they would have made a difference, as they are doing now.) The psychosocial support included talk therapy, which actually generated many narratives that I hope will become part of the documentation to use for future disasters. Art therapy was also an important part of the psychosocial work.
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