I'm not sure how to start this blog since I'm writing this with a heavy heart and full of anxiety from what's going on around. During the weekend, we're still happy together as a family. Right after I went back to the city, unfortunately, typhoon strikes and all I could get from the news are nothing good. Truly heartbreaking, two typhoons strucked within a week and a year worth of hardwork have vanished completely. Now, we're back to square one to begin from scratch.
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scenes I captured outside our gate during Typhoon Tino
Anyway, damage has been done and the only thing we can do to recover and move forward, but even that thing is quite hard. For few days, there's no network signal, no electricity and on some parts of the city, there's no water, too.
Public schools and public offices were suspended, but for private sectors, work is work. We're just thankful that our company cares for their employees. We're not forced to work. Before thr landfall, we were actually asked if we still want to report or not because if we won't, the management could plot a planned voluntary timeout at the day the typhoon lands. We refused since my location is only five minutes away from home and transportation isn't a problem.
The landfall was nerve wracking. I'm really thankful that we're safe at home and the house is sturdy enough to give us shelter here in the city. However, the one on the countryside wasn't saved —partially damaged. The worst feeling of all was knowing what happened but couldn't follow up on it since network signals were down with all networks. It was like that for almost a week.
On that very night, I still went to work. Since we didn't have electricity at home, I hurriedly reported at my workplace 4 hours before my shift just to charge my phone, have a decent nap, and check for possible updates. I don't have any idea if the work will be suspended for now since both power and network was down. On my way, I was thankful enough that even if jeepneys were out, there's still buses and tricycles passing by. On some areas, there's no public transportation at all. It's understandable since they were also securing their family's safety.
When I arrived, from the lobby and to every rooms, hallways, and corridors in every floor —everything was swamped with employees. They brought their phones with them and taking advantage of the power since the company have a generator to keep the operations going. Some didn't have a shift that day but choose to go there to power up and rest there instead since it's more safe inside the building. Some of the employees took the company building as their home —taking showers inside, occupying the sleeping quarters and sofas. The company couldn't issue an Incident Report at this time since there's a calamity.
My phone's dying but thankfully, I found a vacant plug on the highest floor. It's not allowed usually but the company kept a blind eye to help. The company also provided free foods in the pantry to help more. However, not everyone can avail since there's a lot of us there.
Even the convenience stores nearby were out of supplies for instant noodles. We decided to order from Grab instead but even taht would take a while from the volume of orders coming to them. We walked to the nearest fast food chain then, it was like 20 minutes away from the building and our orders took a while at the store. We need to wait for at least 20 minutes, too.
The situation remains the same for 3 days. On the 4th day, the power was restored but the network signal were still down. I only relied on Wifi to communicate. Almost 2 weeks have passed, water, electricity and networks have been restored here in Bacolod City but some other parts of Negros Occidental, they're still out of power and recovering from the horrific flood.
My heart aches for those greatly affected, especially for people from Cebu, Negros Oriental and Southern Negros Occidental. I hope and pray that they can received more help that they deseve to recover fast from the calamity.
I was writing my experiences here during the event to somehow relieve the anxiety it caused me. Until now, I couldn't still have contact with my family, so I wouldn't be totally relieved if I couldn't see them in person and I need to wait for the weekends for that. My experiences can't be compared to the ones that was greatly affected but in some way, it's really crazy. It's hard to continue working while thinking about your family that was also affected.
Anyways, I will be ending this blog here. Thank you always Hive community for the support. 💟