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All Barangays of Cagayan
de Oro Agusan
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Now, many days after the tropical storm "Sendong" has hit Mindanao and Negros with all it's force and dumped a large amount of water, with the result, the Cagayan river rised to extrem water levels in a short time and re-wrote the map of Cagayan de Oro, Iligan and Dumaguete new. The barging waters on their way down to the sea destroyed bridges, homes, cars and cost hundreds of people, many children, their lives. I want to tell the story how I witnessed the desaster and the aftermath of tropical storm "Sendong" in Cagayan de Oro City, because this is the city where I live and I call home already for many years.
Dec. 16, 2011: This friday morning we planned to go and see the Elementary School in Malasag, in barangay Cugman, to check if we could be of some help with the association I work for. We went early but most classrooms were deserted because of the season break. Since a few days, I was already monitoring the tropical storm "Sendong" on my computer at home via PAGASA and TYPHOON2000 websites. I expected the rain to come already around 10 am that day, because on the weather radar the rain was already seen on a line from Balingoan to Malaybalay. We talked a while with some of the teachers and warned them of the approching storm to come and left. We didn't go to town that day anymore because I expected the rain to come early. The rain approched slowly and it was late afternoon already when it began to rain. Every hour I checked the new maps and course of the approching storm. I was in constanct contact with my friend in Belgium via SKYPE. Around 10 pm that evening I told him already it looks like we will get a direct hit from "Sendong". It was raining constantly already but not heavy. A few minutes before the current went off, I told my friend, we have the center of the storm almost overhead. Around 1 am that night, the storm began to blow fiercer and the rain heavier. Since we didn't have glasspanels in the windows but screens only, the curtains began to fly and the rain came in. We had to evacuate the rooms facing south and stayed on the veranda in lee side and watched the rain flying by horizontal and listend to the howling gale. When the wind and rain ceased we went to bed, unaware what happend at the same time at the barangays by the Cagayan river. Since the mobil signal was gone, there was no call or text message. Dec. 17, 2011: The first text messages from some relatives came in early morning already by daylight. We decided before we would go to Tibasak in Macasandig we would go to Isla de Oro first and search for a mother and her child we hadn't heard of. Here begins my first set of images when we parked on Capistrano St. near the street going down to barangay hall 15 and where the hanging bridge is located. We have been prepared with rubber boots and slippers. Just on the street corner we met already someone who could give us news about the persons we were searching for. That women with her kids survived on the Isla de Oro the flood on top of a roof. She could tell us, that the one we are looking for left the Isla de Oro early that night and went to the Central School to seek shelter there with her son. We split into two groups, one went to Central School and I wanted to go down to Isla de Oro and see the damage by myself. We decided already at home, since we are here in Cagayan de Oro, we will have to help so good as we can and try to get some donations from abroad, even if it is not the task of our assosciation. There are no donations without images. That was also one purpose to go down there.
To know our relatives save we will go to Tibasak in Macasandig a little bit more up-river bad badly hit by the rampaging waters of Cagayan river. We tried to pass Velez St. to the new bridge but there it's just bad as Isla de Oro. The new roundabout where on weekends merry-making people enjoy the evenings by a drink and a barbeque is in total dissaray. Benches in trees, a whole house on top of a wall, 40 footer containers from a nearby construction site in the middle of the rotunda. The circle can only be half used by the traffic and we cannot do a leftturn to barangay Nazareth and have instead to retour over the new bridge to Carmen and find another way to Macasandig. Also here near the old Carmen bridge, everywhere distruction.
It takes us a while to find and negotiate our way through heavy traffic to Tibasak. What awaits us here is beyond our imagination. It begins with the first flooded portions of the street leading deeper into Tibasak. To the right is the Cagayan river. We pass the first turned over motorela and multicab. People are on the move. Some parts are still under water knee deep. To a church they bring dead bodies as they find them. There will be hundreds of missing persons they will never find under the mud and debries or washed out to the sea. I have to take this pictures, I want these images as a documentation for years to come when people will not have forgotten the great flood of December 2011 but when memories fade. In the moment the pain is to much for people who find their loved ones dead, covered with newspaper and rags; babies, children, women and men, young and old. We find the place of our relatives. The house and the sari-sari store are completly gone with everything in it. They can be lucky to be alive. They stayed that night somewhere in Nazareth for a little farewell gathering and that saved maybe their lives. People with nice houses lost in a few hours all they had or even more. That yellow house is a two storey and strong building but the water rised up to the ceiling of the groundfloor and the occupants had to flee to the upper floor. There was no time to save anything. But these people were able to save their neighbors lives. The neighbor's house had only a groundfloor and was built of light materials. They were already sitting on their roof but the waters rised higher and higher. Their neighbors used an aluminum ladder from their second floor to their roof and they all crawled to safety just to see a few minutes later their house to desappear in the floodwaters. I began a conversation with the woman on the bench. She said they lost everything but their lives and ask what will she be doing with her life, they have no more house, no more food, no more money - everything is gone. I said something like the government will come to your rescue and will help. She tried to smile but failed when she said, they don't expect anything of much help from the government. Across-the-board I will the next few days and weeks hear this sentiments from all kinds of people. They really don't have much believe in their lokal or national government. When I told them, we will try to get some donations so we can help. All of them mentioned not to give the donation to the government, better direct to the people in need. We took that advise, because not all of them can be wrong and maybe they talk out of experiences. After this we went to Nazareth to find out that almost the whole city had no running water. We promised them to bring the following day water. I begin this image series with a photograph of a little girl wandering alone through immense distruction like a war zone. She must be traumatized and all the smile is gone from her little face.
I end this image series with the little girl from the beginning. She is sitting under a makeshift shade where once her house stood. Here she lived with her family, mama, papa and grandpa and was happy. All what is left you can see here on the picture. She is somewhat lucky, she still has her parents and grandpa. Mama and papa looking for help, Grandpa is not far away looking for food and water. The neighbors know each other but everybody has his own problems now and here hundreds of people died. Those people will need help for a long time and I hope, the government will not just put those people in far away relocation camp and forget them there.
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