MY SARISARI STORE

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Pictures taken by Albert Hamor.

More than 300 houses were completely destroyed by the typhoon Milenyo in Sorsogon.

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Instead of showing you the damages in Manila I decided to publish the pictures of a friend Albert Hamor who lives in Sorsogon City. The Bicol region was one of the most affected regions in the Philippines. When I look at some of his pictures it reminds me of a war zone.

I should have taken that little boat. It would have saved me from wet pants and shoes... but I encountered those people when the night was falling in and with no light I decided to go home instead.

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Even in the worst situations some people keep smiling. To be honest I love this attitude. It was dark, water all around us, a long way to go before getting home and the prospect of no running water and electricity for many days to come. And in the middle of all this sh*t, people are still able to crack jokes! I love the Philippines ! :-)

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Some streets in Manila are quickly flooded during heavy rains.

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An average typhoon produces an energy-quantity of approximately 20 millions megawatts. It is told that this quantity correspondents to the annual electric power production of the United States. And the average rain-quantity of a typhoon reaches nearly half of the rain-fall in Germany.

The westward or northwest to the Philippines moving typhoons appear between July and November – mostly in the months of  September and October .

Often, whole provinces, sometimes the half island-archipelago suffer under its effects. Particularly affected are the coastal-areas between northern Luzon and the southern Visayas. The islands Samar and Catanduanes as well as the province Bicol should be mentioned especially.

The number of the typhoons increases on the Philippines. The cause may be the increasing earth warming. In former decades round about 20 typhoons passed annually the Philippines. Now the span increased to 25–35  expected typhoons.   

The 25–35 typhoons on the Philippines cause hundreds of dead, injured or missed persons every year. High also the number of destroyed streets and houses, evacuations, immense the damage through storm-tides and landslides. Harvests, for example coconut harvests can suffer heavy losses and a stronger erosion of soil is often the consequence. Since a gust of 130 km/h can practice a pressure up to 400 kg per cubic meters, roofs are torn away, trees get uprooted and electric- and telephone lines can be destroyed.

Source: Wolfgang Bethge
(Wolfgang Bethge has an outstanding website about the Philippines)

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A lot of the huge billboards that you can find in the main thoroughfares of Metro Manila collapsed.

A megataxicab driver, Felipe Gumapon, was killed on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue near Estrella Street in Makati City when a billboard fell on the Toyota FX van he was driving. A passenger was hurt. (Source: Business Mirror)

For the billboard lovers you can see my series about those huge structures here.

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To be honest I wasn’t intended to make a series about typhoon Milenyo. I wasn’t prepared to the events that would unfold that fateful day. I thought it would have been the usual strong rains and winds. 

In the course of the day I quickly realized that this time around we would have a serious typhoon. To be truthful I was scared to go out. I feared for my safety, for my car and for my camera. Being anxious is not a good start for a successful photo shoot. When you think more about falling trees, lampposts, billboards and flying iron sheets you can’t really concentrate on your subject. 

It was also impossible to move around quickly due to the fallen trees that blocked most of the streets. 

On top of that the rain made it difficult to protect my camera. I wrapped the camera body with a plastic bag but my lens kept being wet by the torrential rains. 

In the end I went out when the typhoon was already leaving Metro Manila. 

I truly want to stress that this series don’t claim to be representative of what happened that day and I realize that I was not able to capture the intensity of typhoon Milenyo. What you will see in this series is just a small part of what really happened during those crucial hours.

But enough whining about a sloppy job...

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           Typhoon Milenyo (Xangsane)

On September 25, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) named an active low pressure area within its area of responsibility Tropical Depression Milenyo. On September 26 the Japan Meteorological Agency named this system Xangsane. The name Xangsane was submitted by Laos and means elephant. Later that day, the JMA upgraded Xangsane to a severe tropical storm. A bout of rapid intensification followed, and all agencies, the JMA, JTWC and PAGASA all upgraded the storm to a typhoon late on September 26. Xangsane made landfall on Samar Island as a severe tropical storm.

The typhoon dropped heavy rainfall in the Philippines. To avoid the storm, transit authorities kept seacraft at several ports in the archipelago, leaving over 3,500 passengers stranded. Xangsane also prompted Philippine officials to close all schools, financial markets, and government offices in and around Manila. The typhoon killed at least 103 people while crossing the country, with 69 missing as of October 2. At least 65,628 houses were damaged by the storm and at least 262,941 families were affected by it. Xangsane produced strong winds and rainfall in the country, downing power lines and causing mudflows.

Most of those killed when the typhoon hit on Thursday died from drowning, electrocution or being hit by falling debris and trees.

The strong winds forced the Manila Electric Company to shut off power in most parts of Luzon as a precaution.

The most graphic reflection of Milenyo’s strength was found in Metro Manila, often relatively unscathed in typhoons that wreak havoc on the countryside. This time around, the entire National Capital Region bore the full brunt of the storm, which, besides causing floods, felled trees that caused instant “blockades” in busy cities like Makati and Pasay, peeled off entire marble blocks from some buildings while tossing scaffoldings in others, twisted metal structures in airport warehouses, and hurled billboards down the main highway on Edsa. Besides the debris from countless felled trees, cut power cables dangerously dangled like spaghetti in the streets.

The typhoon, packing maximum winds of 110 kilometers per hour near the center with gustiness of up to 140 kph uprooted several trees rendering several major streets impassable.

Source: businessmirror & wikipedia. Satelite picture: Nasa