Tales of kindness aplenty despite Cosme’s fury

STA CRUZ, Zambales — “Sana mamatay na ako para hindi ko na haharapin ang problema bukas dahil sa bagyong ito (I wish I’d die before the sun rises so I won’t have to face the problems the storm brought),” says a young mother, recalling her thoughts the day typhoon Cosme hit her community in Barangay Guisguis in this town.

She and her husband and three children had to wade through waist-deep floodwaters to reach their barangay’s daycare center. The small structure sheltered five families at the height of Cosme’s onslaught.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://pcij.org/blog/wp-galleries/cosme.swf” height=”300″ width=”450″ /]

The following morning, like everyone in her barangay, she began clearing her yard of debris.

Boboy, an entrepreneur, lost his farm house and 16,000 two-week old chickens just hours after Cosme’s landfall. He watched as the two structures housing the poultry crashed. Even the steel posts and beams of his farmhouse were uprooted. He and his wife have just begun to pay the money they borrowed for the farm, which took them five years to build.

With no one in his family hurt, he remains hopeful and determined. “This is just money. With the help of friends, we can rebuild,” he says.

Cosme lashed at this small Zambales town bordering Pangasinan last Saturday afternoon and throughout the night. Sleep was scarce, as the howling wind uprooted mango trees and made even sturdy houses quake.

“Parang galit ang hangin. Parang ipo-ipo (It was as if the wind was furious, like a tornado),” says a waitress in a local hotel. She and other staff hid in a bathroom, which they thought was the safest place among the hotel’s bamboo and nipa structures.

There were tales of miraculous escapes, too. A family in Barangay Sabang, a coastal community, left their nipa hut in the middle of Cosme’s fury to ride out the storm in a neighbor’s house. Minutes after they left, their house was leveled by the wind. The house where they sought shelter also lost half its roof, sparing the one over where the two families spent the night.

Though Cosme’s winds and rain dominated the night, acts of kindness, of “pakikipagkapwa” shone through and saved lives. Rich and poor alike kept their doors open to whoever knocked.

After watching his farmhouse blown to bits by the wind, Boboy recalls spending hours in a nipa hut when the storm became too fierce for him to walk home. He was offered coffee and a dry shirt. “It was humbling, receiving kindness like that,” he says.

And that’s probably why, despite Cosme’s fury, the loss was limited to property. No lives were lost in their small community of Guisguis.

Rebuilding will not be easy, though. Over ninety percent of houses in the town were either badly damaged or totally destroyed. Schools, set to open in weeks, were also badly damaged.

Sta. Cruz is considered the rice granary of Zambales and nearby provinces. Farmers stockpiled most of their harvest last March to wait for better prices. Most of their stocks are now gone, soaked in rainwater when Cosme’s winds peeled roofings off of warehouses. Farmers lost the income they expect which will be used for the planting season next month.

Mangoes, also a major product, were uprooted, even those much valued by locals for being over a century old. “Limang taon na naman kaming maghihintay ng bunga kahit makapagtanim kami, (It will take five years before we can harvest mangoes again).”

Sta. Cruz is now waiting for kindness, too.