Wazzup Pilipinas!
William "Bill" Shaw writes about the typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) tragedy but is focused more on the stories of the survivors from Tacloban. I attended his Book Launch a few days ago on the 18th of February at Nuvo Bar, Greenbelt 3 in Makati city.
The book is entitled "Yolanda: The Roaring, The Waves, The Waiting" about the typhoon that happened two years ago but brought a lot of despair throughout the Philippines striking Tacloban as among the worst to be hit by the disaster.
There were several lives and properties lost during that day when the sudden flash floods hit and the worst is for the ones left behind, the survivors, who were left without the presence of their loved ones anymore. The hardest part was the times when they were looking for their families when they got separated during the typhoon and hoping they survived. The saddest is when realizing they are gone, and even more devastating is not finding them at all. There were around 6, 300 recorded dead and maybe more since it is difficult to accurately get the numbers especially for provinces like Tacloban.
I am a victim also of a typhoon but it was Ondoy that struck us here in Metro Manila. I was in Pasig that day when the floods engulfed our business establishment where we run a computer rental business. It was a weekend so our children were with us that day and you can't imagine the fear we had when we couldn't even guess when the storm will stop and how high the waters will get. We were actually on the rooftop waiting to be saved but the authorities would only reach us the following day and would not even make efforts to rescue us as most of our areas were 10 feet or more under flood water. So were left there on the roof waiting for the waters to subside.