I was in Tacloban when Supertyphoon “Yolanda” hit. Our house was in San Jose, a kilometer away from the airport. San Jose is a promontory surrounded by the sea.

Our house was several hundred meters away from the sea to the West, Cancabato Bay, and about two kilometers from the sea to the East, part of the Leyte Gulf. The whole of San Jose was submerged during the storm surge.

According to reports, the storm was supposed to arrive in the morning of Nov. 8. We believed we were prepared for its arrival as we had stocked up on canned goods and emergency lights.

The local government had closed schools and offices since Wednesday to allow people to prepare for the storm. Families who lived along the eastern coastline of Leyte Gulf had already been evacuated to schools and other centers.

On the eve of the storm, we celebrated my father’s birthday. My wife’s parents came over from their house a few streets away. They had moved to Tacloban in June to be with their grandson, Mito, the first grandson on both sides of the family.

My wife and I had moved with our son to Tacloban in March so I could work full time in my parents’ business in Leyte.

During the celebration, my wife got text messages from her friends in Manila, asking how our preparations for the storm were going. I told her in jest, which I’ve regretted since, to say that we would welcome it with open arms. This was like inviting a thief into your house and steal everything you own.

When Supertyphoon Yolanda entered Tacloban, it stole everything people had, including their lives.

The onslaught begins

The storm arrived in the morning. I’m normally a heavy sleeper but the roaring wind woke me up shortly before 6 a.m. The walls and floor were already moist with the wind forcing the rainwater through the slightest of openings.

I woke up my wife who tended to our infant son while I removed all the sockets from the electrical outlets. Sometime after, the power went out.

I got a text message from my father to unlock our door to allow our two househelp to enter the main house through our room, which is part of an annex structure. If they didn’t go through our room, they would have to pass through the garden braving the wind and the rain.

Shortly after the help had passed through our room, my father came in to check on his grandson. Outside, the wind howled like a pack of hungry wolves. When we checked our cell phones, there was no longer any signal.

Sometime after, we heard crashing sounds coming from the dirty kitchen which connected our quarters to the main house. My dad peeped and saw that the roof of the dirty kitchen had collapsed, and the wind was flinging pots and pans everywhere.

We thought our room was the best place to stay since the roof was still secure. It was between 6:30 and 7 a.m. when the water reached ankle deep. A wooden beam smashed through a window.

I told my wife that we should probably leave. As I walked to the door, I heard knocking sounds. My son’s yaya Airene was standing in waist-deep water. My mom had sent her to fetch us because the water was rising everywhere.

As we readied to move, the door at the other end of our room collapsed with a roar and black seawater rushed in. In a few seconds, the water was already chest-deep. We all formed a human chain with Airene at the lead, my father following her but holding my wife as she held our son, and me pushing the two of them forward.

Obet, a house tenant, joined us. We raced to the stairway to the second floor. Most of us had already lost one or both slippers by this time after the current pried them off our feet.

Just outside the subdivision were more scenes of destruction and desolation.

As we ran up the stairs, we could see through a broken window floodwaters roaring from the East, from the direction of Leyte Gulf. It was a view to our death, which seemed terrifyingly imminent at that time.

Waiting out the storm

On the second floor, we took refuge in the bathroom of a room facing West, away from the mouth of the storm. My mother and Berna, our cook, were already there. All the eight members of our household crowded in that small space.

Fifteen feet from the doorway of our shelter was a hole where sliding windows used to be. The wind had blown the glass away, tearing away the metal framing right before our eyes. We had just witnessed a destructive force greater than anything I had seen or experienced. Floodwaters roiled and surged toward the East, in the direction of Cancabato Bay.

The second floor of our house is around 25 feet high above the ground, but the water continued to rise.

Inside the bathroom that was our shelter, the water was already ankle-deep. We were prepared to break through the ceiling and climb through to the space beneath the roof, which had now been torn apart by the wind.

My wife, Jackie, tied Mito to herself with a blanket. Obet removed the sliding glass from the window inside the bathroom in case we needed another escape route. Through the bathroom window, he saw two men holding onto a door being swept away. An SUV, which we thought was ours, was swept away like a paper boat.

We stayed in the bathroom for close to four hours. Obet wore a waterproof wristwatch so we were keenly aware of the time. Even after the waters had receded, we couldn’t leave the house right away because the wind was still flinging debris about.

Mud and debris

When I went down, I saw how the first floor of our house had been filled with mud and debris. Mud covered everything, including the ceiling.

Outside, it was a wasteland. Only concrete structures of what were once houses remained. Everything else that used to be standing, except for a few trees, had been washed away. Cars were carried more than a hundred feet away from their houses.

Several bodies were lying on the streets of our village.

The first thing my father did when it was safe to venture out was to check on my wife’s parents. I stayed behind to watch over my wife and our son. A wound on my foot, suffered as we moved to higher ground, began to hurt after my wife cleaned it.

When my father came back, he pulled me aside and told me what had happened. Apparently, my in-laws were able to flee their house but by then, the water was already chest-deep. My father-in-law held my mother-in-law by the collar of her dress, but her head was already bowed; she must have already drowned. But he never let go.

Neighbors tried to help by throwing a makeshift rope made out of blankets. He was able to grab the rope while still holding on to his wife. They told him to let go of his wife so he could grasp the rope with both hands but he never let go.

The current grew so strong that it tore my mother-in-law from his grasp. The neighbors told him to wrap the rope around his forearm so that they could pull him in. He tried to but had no more strength and was also swept away by the floodwaters.

Before my father could tell my wife the news, my mother took our son Mito from her. Mito was now asleep in a warm blanket. I held my wife as she was told how her parents had been swept away in the storm surge.

My wife wanted to rush outside to look for their bodies but we didn’t let her. In the chaos, they would not know where to start searching.

Devastation

Outside our subdivision, the devastation was much worse. The surrounding communities were mostly one-story houses, the makeshift homes of informal settlers outnumbering concrete bungalows. All around me, the houses seemed like tombstones in concrete. Even fallen hardwood trees resembled skeletons with their leaves gone and their trunks bleached of most of their bark.

Along the highway, the survivors walked like ghosts, wailing at losing family members or entire families. Everyone was moving in the same direction, further inland, away from the tip of San Jose where the airport was.

My father and I asked why everyone was leaving. They said somebody had announced that a tsunami was coming. My father told several people this was impossible because the storm had passed and that tsunamis are caused only by earthquakes. One survivor told my father, “Sige, mamatay ka na lang dito.”

The Tacloban airport days after the storm.

One person we asked said that somebody had been announcing it around the neighborhood on loudspeaker.

The announcement had come too late, I thought. If they had told us that a tsunami was coming, everyone would have evacuated and more lives would have been saved. Even if what happened was a storm surge, technically not a tsunami, who would care about a misnomer as long as lives were saved?

Fear was not the only emotion present after the storm, only the most palpable.

Kindness despite the desolation

Yet hope, kindness and compassion were present in the midst of desolation. Someone was giving away fish from a fallen jeepney as I passed by.

There was news that Patio Victoria, the resort owned by the mayor, had opened a storehouse and was giving away food and supplies. People also said that damaged warehouses along the highway had opened their stores of rice sacks and food and were giving them away—as much as any one person could carry.

My family spent the night after the storm in the building where Obet worked. He was the supervisor of the place and ordered the guards to let us in even though it was technically forbidden to do so. He said he allowed us inside because we were family.

That night, the wind resumed its howling outside the building. We slept on chairs because the floor was wet. My wife and I took turns watching over Mito.

It was 1:30 p.m. of Nov. 9, the day after the storm hit, when my wife and I decided to try our luck at getting a flight out of Tacloban.

I made a brief stop in our house to check on my parents and tell them about my plan to go to the airport. They told me to go. They said they would stay behind to secure the house against thieves, help other survivors, and look for the families of our employees, our relatives and their friends.

My wife and I struggled to get to the airport. I carried Mito, who weighs about 15 kilos, despite my injured right foot.

As we neared the ruined airport terminal, the sight of a C130 plane parked on the runway lent strength to our tired bodies and we quickened our pace.

The plane was already loading passengers when we stepped on the runway. A female soldier saw the three of us approaching. Perhaps the sight of us dirty and disheveled made her accommodate us on the plane headed for Mactan, Cebu.

As my wife and I took our places at the end of the line, I held my emotions and fatigue in check. We were still in Tacloban after all.

Mito slept contentedly in my arms, too contentedly that I feared he was no longer breathing. Only after my son moved beneath the towel did the tension gripping my body give way to tears and whimpers of joy.

I am not an emotional person but as the plane made its ascent, I alternated between sobbing uncontrollably and thanking God for allowing us to be on that plane.

Cesar Miguel G. Escano was a journalist and teacher for several years before he and his family moved to Tacloban last March.