The Wrath of Typhoon Frank

“Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.” - - - Galileo Galilei


The rainy day on Friday, June 20 went by just like any ordinary wet season. PAGASA issued a storm signal in response to typhoon Frank threatening the Philippines, but the foul weather did not hinder the daily rituals of the people in Iloilo City, particularly the dedicated employees of PhilHealth Regional Office VI. As the cold weather cast a sleeping spell that brought deep slumber, no one has the inkling that fate wasbrewing disaster the whole night.

Dexter Altillo of Benefits Administration Section woke up early the next day in their home at Taft North Mandurriao and got ready to go to the office for a scheduled overtime work. With the heavy rain and strong winds, there were only three of them (with Adonis Fallarco & Catherine Gayamat) who made it to the office. It was later announced that the overtime work is cancelled. He dropped by the grocery for a cup of noodles and went home. After gulping the noodles for late breakfast, he crawled back to bed and went to sleep.

At around 1 p.m., he was awakened by the knocks at the door by his sister informing him that the floodwater is almost knee high. He ignored his sister’s report being used to the perennial problem of city floods. But as fast as how he prepared and consumed his instant noodles, the flood water risen to neck level. Caught by surprise, his family had no time to flee or to salvage anything except the clothes they wore and hurried up to the roof of their house. “We stayed up the roof top for several hours, wet and cold,” Dexter recalled. When it was turning dark and no help was at hand, we took courage to wade through the flood water towards the second storey of our neighbor’s house to take refuge for the night.”

France Gosi of Collection Section was alone in their house in Pavia when typhoon Frank battered Iloilo. “As early as 8:30 a.m., the flood water started to rose in an unexpected fast rate that I had no time to save any of our appliances and other things on the ground floor”, France said showing the images of their house submerged in the flood captured by her cell phone camera.

It happened almost without warning. Typhoon Frank, leki Fengsen himself, stomped on Western Visayas with strong winds and torrential rain that day of June 21. (Fengsen is the international name of typhoon Frank and the Mandarin Chinese name for the god of wind). His wrath wrecked havoc to two cities and 42 towns in Iloilo and Western Visayas provinces, including those that did not experience flooding before.

Like Dexter and France, there are thousands of residents who were affected by the storm, many of whom perched on trees and rooftops after waking up early Saturday morning with water already inside their homes. Heavy rains flooded the entire villages, sweeping houses. Strong winds knocked down trees, electric and telephone posts. Many roads were impassable, blocked by fallen trees and landslides. Thousands barely had ample time to scramble to their rooftops, the only safe place they could find in the land that turned into inland sea.

The flood waters had started to recede by early morning Sunday. The noisy, frenzied pandemonium of Typhoon Frank had surrendered to a still and quiet confusion, a hushed disbelief that suspended a person caught somewhere between life before the typhoon and life after it. Almost every square inch of real estate—houses, roads, parks, schools, municipal buildings, store shops—was covered by slimy mud. More than a hundred of lives were lost.

Typhoon Frank will be forever synonymous with catastrophe, as once again, it subjected humanity to a test. But just like any unexpected events in life, lessons were learned to make one wiser and stronger. For every person grieving for their irreplaceable loss, there are hundreds returning with humor and hope to recover. The presence of imperfection, confusion, misunderstanding, and fear cannot be denied. But what is important is that in the midst of it all, human kindness and faith in God perpetually stand.

These are the lessons that would keep the people of Western Visayas prepared for the future, as poet Horace quoted, “Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque revenit. (You may drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will nevertheless come back.)”

The story will never end!