Cagayan de Oro City, December 3, 2012 (10.30 am) - On
December 16, 2011, typhoon Sendong hit the northern part of Mindanao
devastating Iligan and Cagayan de Oro City causing a massive landslides and
flash floods that killed more than a thousand of people. Intense rain for
several hours resulted to flash floods that swept barangays near Cagayan de Oro
River and Mandulog River in Iligan City at midnight where people were asleep
after resting early brought by cold rainy night and untimely brown out earlier
that day.
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| Photo taken as water subsides after 3 hours of flash flood. |
Our home was not sparred by the flood. It came in the morning as I was awakened by Emily after the wall of our subdivision was breached and ravaging murky water was filling up the streets. Flood water had submerged our home up to waist-deep leaving some of our home appliances, clothes, and furniture drenched in mud.
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| Our share of Sendong |
Cagayan de Oro City was left without potable water for a
month after local water utility facilities were destroyed. Power was only
restored after 3 days and dust subsided after months of cleaning.
Typhoon Sendong sustained
winds were at 90 kilometers per hour (kph) or 55 miles per hour and
it unleashed more than 200mm (7.9 in) of rain causing the watershed and rivers
to overflow. It was the worst storm that hit Philippines in 12 years. Because
of the enormous damage and high death toll brought by Sendong, Philippine Atmospheric,
Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) had retired the
name Sendong in its typhoon naming list.
Today, less than a year after, another storm is brewing in
the Pacific Ocean and slowly creeping the same path as typhoon Sendong, this
time, it is named Pablo (international code name Bhopa). PAGASA forecasted that
typhoon Pablo has maximum sustained winds of 175 kph near the center and
gustiness of up to 210 kph and will landfall tomorrow morning. As signal
no. 2 was raised in my home province, Surigao del Sur, we are now preparing our
contingency plan and had done packing our important documents. We had already charged
our cellphones and radio and constantly monitoring typhoon updates from PAGASA
though its website www.noah.dost.gov.ph.
Real time information such as satellite images, typhoon track, rainfall and
other data are provided by the website. Unfortunately, their Hinatuan Doppler
Radar is currently under maintenance servicing thus it cannot provide rain
intensity images but weather stations scattered all over Mindanao could compensate
such setback.
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| Track of Sendong on December 15 - 19, 2011 |
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| Forecast track of Typhoon Pablo |
We already accepted the fact that it will hit us; it is just
a matter of how hard it will hit us. We are not afraid of the strong winds but of
the rain the typhoon will bring. Cagayan de Oro and Iponan rivers are still
clogged up by siltation caused by illegal mining. We are used to typhoon in
Surigao del Sur. It is a regular thing for us, and accepted as an act of
nature. What scare us are the flash floods. It is a consequence from the acts
of man driven by greed, stupidity and foolishness.
