Yolanda: Super Typhoon Haiyan

By Lawrence Gleason

On Magallanes Street, in Tacloban, Leyte, Philippines, amid the wreckage, flies, mosquitoes and the stench of death, Cora Jularbal made friends with a discarded stranger, Vanessa Abordo, 34, so recently a mother of two, grocery shop employee and homeowner. The two talked, woman-to-woman, heart-to-heart, about super-typhoon Yolanda and the loss of her two children and her two-story home in the storm. She and her mother searched for her children's bodies for weeks, declining rescue from horrid conditions, and eventually found the bodies of her children in debris piles left by the storm surge. Vanessa Adorbo was one of 38 Yolanda survivors interviewed in Project Yolanda, that brought a human face to the grim statistics of those killed and displaced by the super-storm.
For ten emotional weeks, Cora Jularbal introduced herself to victims of Yolanda and asked for their stories. Opening up to her were a cross-section of Northern Leyte residents, professional weather observers, police officers, fire fighters, fishermen, teachers, students, small store owners, jail guards, radio broadcasters, housewives, office workers, neighbourhood health workers, an engineer, a parish priest, C-130 evacuees, people who lost almost their entire families, and interviews detailing the last hours of those who perished, through their still-grieving relatives.
Through their stories we learn what happened the week history’s first superstorm struck humanity, and what lessons there are to avoid future catastrophic loss of life should another super-storm form and strike anywhere in the world.
Yolanda is the book that brings voice to the voiceless of people who were not unlike you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483536361

Book preview

Project Yolanda photographers: Charlie Jularbal, Adriane Renzl Cahingcoy

Cover photograph by Adriene Renzl Cahingcoy

WMI

word media international

2014

ISBN: 9781483536361

Forward

I can think of no better way of telling you what this book is about than to tell you of one of the 40 interviews Cora Jularbal conducted, face-to-face, with victims of Super-typhoon Yolanda, in their own language of Waray, the language of Leyte, Philippines, that she later painstakingly translated to English.

One woman owned, with her mother, a two-story house in Tacloban, Leyte, a house so large they took in boarders. She herself worked in Manila, 24 hours travel north by bus, and sent money home for her mother to raise her two children while she was away. Employment is often hard to find in the Philippines.

Their house was swept away to nothing but the cement floor by the greatest storm in recorded history ever to make landfall. The bodies of both children were found, months apart, in debris piles left by the storm surge that flooded inland like a tsunami. Aghast and shaken by television news reports of the surreal storm damage, she left her job and returned home. Distressed and determined, she her aging mother turned down certain rescue from the devastated area that could not possibly support life well. For two months the two women searched mountains of debris for the bodies of the two children, Regine, 7 and Reginald, 5. The two women eventually found both bodies, each in large debris piles. Regine’s poor decomposed body was found last, in a debris pile in a neighbour’s yard.

The Tacloban street was an overflowing garbage dump, but the woman was trying to maintain a small shelter and some semblance of life, on the once-familiar street, for herself, her 65-year-old mother and her brother. Cora went up to her, a stranger, and said hello, taking a discarded chair out of a debris pile, and sitting on it, told her about Project Yolanda, a mission to give voice to the voiceless to those affected by the recent superstorm.

Cora was warned, very recent to this, that to walk through another section of the city, San Jose, without being a familiar face in parts of that baranagay in that desperate post-Yolanda time, was to risk being mauled and robbed. She had felt real fear with this warning, given her while she saw the unfriendly looks of people in that area who observed her while observing them. Now, in an equally ruined area of Tacloban, Cora approached a stranger, determined to accomplish her mission of hearing her story of what happened to her during the recent super-storm that had devastated the city and other entire cities in Northern Leyte.

The newly homeless woman, trying to survive on one the most devastated streets in the world at that moment, saw Cora was sincere, and she burst into tears.

On Magallanes Street, in Tacloban, Leyte, Philippines, amid the wreckage, flies, mosquitoes and the stench of death, Cora Jularbal made friends with a discarded stranger, Vanessa Abordo, 34, so recently a mother of two, grocery shop employee and homeowner. The two talked, woman-to-woman, heart-to-heart, about Yolanda.

For ten emotional weeks, Cora Jularbal introduced herself to victims of Yolanda and asked for their stories. Opening up to her were a cross-section of Northern Leyte residents, professional weather observers, police officers, fire fighters, fishermen, teachers, students, small store owners, jail guards, radio broadcasters, housewives, office workers, neighbourhood health workers, an engineer, a parish priest, C-130 evacuees, people who lost almost their entire families, and interviews detailing the last hours of those who perished, through their still-grieving relatives.

Through their stories we learned what happened the week history’s first superstorm struck humanity, and what lessons there are to avoid future catastrophic loss of life should another super-storm form and strike anywhere in the world.

Thank you, everyone, who opened your hearts to Cora.

Thanks, Aileen, for helping,

and I wish we could have helped you, in your time of need.

Perhaps we can in future.

To Cora and Charlie Jularbal,

thank you for your hard work for Project Yolanda.

Most especially, thank you

Josie,

who puts up with a husband who begins such projects.

To our family in the Philippines from Palo to Bicol to Laguna to Manila to Cavite,

and other equally important places,

thank you so much,

for your every kindness.

THE HAIYAN DEAD

do not sleep.

They walk our streets with us

climb stairs of roofless houses

latchless windows blown-off doors

they are looking for the bed by the window

cocks crowing at dawn lizards in the eaves

they are looking for the men

who loved them at night the women

who made them crawl like puppies

to their breasts babes they held in arms

the boy who climbed trees the Haiyan dead

are looking in the rubble for the child

they once were the youth they once were

the bride with flowers in her hair

red-lipped perfumed women

white-haired father gap-toothed crone

selling peanuts by the church door

the drunk by a street lamp waiting

for his house to come by the girl dreaming

under the moon the Haiyan dead are

looking for the moon washed out

in a tumult of water that melted their bodies

they are looking for their bodies that once

moved to the dance to play

to the rhythms of love moved

in the simple ways--before wind

lifted sea and smashed it on the land--

of breath talk words shaping

in their throats lips tongues

the Haiyan dead are looking

for a song they used to love a poem

a prayer they had raised that sea had

swallowed before it could be said

the Haiyan dead are looking for

the eyes of God suddenly blind

in the sudden murk white wind seething

water salt sand black silt and that is why

the Haiyan dead will walk among us

endlessly sleepless--

Merlie Alunan

January 4, 2014,

Batinguel,

Dumaguete City

Merlie M. Alunan retired as Professor Emeritus from the University of the Philippines in 2008. An award winning poet, she has published five collections of poetry, including Hearthstone, Sacred Tree (1993), Anima Among the Angels (1997), Selected Poems (2004), Tales of the Spiderwoman (2010), and Pagdadkop sa Bulalakaw ug uban pang mga Balak (2013). A teacher of creative writing, she is a strong advocate of writing in the mother tongue. She continues to write from Tacloban City where she returned in April 2013 after the November, 1913 holocaust of killer Typhoon Yolanda. We are pleased Merlie Alunan became part of Project Yolanda by granting us a poem to help set the tone for this book.

The Elders

Luisa Brieba

Apolinaro Canilas

Monday, November 4, 2013

Chapter 1

Jelly Ann Estil, student

Kibou Maneja, student

Elena Zabala, university instructor

Chapter 2

Luz Calipara, housewife

Ailyn Alcantara, office worker

Jon Mar Aliposa, Bethany Hospital

Alexis Patan-ao, student

Vincent Jularbal, office worker

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Chapter 3

Aileen Awa, office worker

Ruperto Corton, jail guard

Charito Salabao, teacher, and her sister, Raquel Omillo

Frederico M. Lago, engineer

Sandra Gabrilla, sari-sari store owner

Remembrance of Elizabeth Rocha

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Udang, 1991

Albuera

Chapter 4

Apolinario Canillas, elder

Luisa Brieba, elder

Claire

Crispin Malibago, maintenance fire chief

Tacloban City cadaver recovery list to time of writing

Thursday, November 7

Maridel and Rodante Ilaya and family, hotel evacuee

Charita Pablayan, Astrodome evacuee

Chapter 5

Corazon Pagad, Tanauan resident

Pamela Buendia, barangary health worker

Bonnel Pingol and Cornelia Pingol, Tanauan residents

Reynaldo Dagandan, fisherman

Vanessa Abordo and her mother, Narcisa, Marcelles Street residents

Nestor Ercilla, C-130 evacuee

Gina Cordero, C-130 evacuee

Noel Casillar, police officer

Interview declined, police officer

Rey Cahinde, police officer

Luchie Zabala, Palo resident

Friday, November 8

Chapter 6

Marische Angel Matilda, overseas worker returning home

Rizadly Ducta, rescue volunteer

Chapter 7

Luchie Zabala, Palo resident

The Elders

Luisa Brieba, 81, and Apolinaro Canillas, 92, are life-long residents of Palo, Leyte, Philippines. Aileen mentioned their names to Cora, then guided her to their homes to be interviewed. I had asked Cora to put one question to them, to compare the destruction of what was then the still-prevalent and wide-spread damage of Super-storm Yolanda to the destruction following the four-hour American naval artillery barrage that dislodged Empire of Japan entrenched positions in the hills behind Palo during one particular day of World War Two, the day of the Leyte Landings, 70 years before.

The Leyte Landings provide a good starting point for a book about an area only familiar to many because of that long-ago day in history, when a stubborn and flamboyant American general walked from an amphibious landing craft through surf to shore. It also makes a circle, as in the immediate aftermath of super-storm Yolanda American warships again lay offshore the same areas of Leyte, providing vital aid, a loyal ally returned to the Philippines in a time of greatest need. To know Yolanda we first need to know about Leyte, most particularly Northern Leyte, and her chief cities of Palo, Tacloban, Tanauan, and Ormoc.

We will start with Palo.

Friday, October 20, 1944

Brieba and Canillas lived in Palo, Leyte, when President Sergio Osmeña waded through near-knee deep water from a troop landing craft, alongside American General Douglas MacArthur, both walking through the shallow surf at Palo’s Red Beach, where the general soon grasped a prepared microphone and over radio encouraged the people of the Republic of the Philippines to repel the occupying troops of the Empire of Japan, as his forces had arrived to fight and were not leaving until the war was won.

Speaking into the large metal microphone the general roared: I have returned! Rise and strike!

Nearby, the Palo Palace, not yet called the Palo Cathedral, stood against the backdrop of the nearby punished hills, but 40 kilometres south, the Dulag Cathedral, also near the beach, was half rubble, only a cross standing atop a peak of what remained of the roof of the rubble of the church, most of the roof open, twisted and broken. Many people inside lost their lives. Throughout the eastern shore area, from Tacloban to Dulag, the American landing at Leyte was similar to the allied landing at Normandy, France, eighteen weeks before.

Luisa Brieba was 11 then. Apolinaro Canillas, 22.

They both remembered the day, seventy years and 19 days before super-typhoon Yolanda struck Leyte, when 700 American warships were in the vicinity of the Leyte Gulf, a dozen or more of them anchored side-by-side on the white-sand shore off the town of Palo, 11 kilometres south of Tacloban, Leyte’s capital city. The specially-designed, whale-shaped ships, anchored with their unusual bows resting on shore were huge, massive creatures, 100 metres long, each with yawning mouths three times the height of the steel tanks disgorging themselves from each ship’s dark bowels. Each tank roared up the white sands followed by helmeted, carbine carrying American soldiers, thin, sweating, some with chin straps dangling as they walked. Earlier, more soldiers, here, and on a nearby beach, 40 kilometres south, at Dulag, had stormed ashore from much smaller landing craft for infantry, short steel walls on every side, the same type of landing craft used in June to secure a beachhead in France, on the cold sands of Normandy.

That morning the hills behind Palo and Dulag were pummelled by massive guns of dozens of American warships that began firing at 6:00 a.m., and kept ceaseless firing for four eternally long hours. The hellish explosions and punishing ground vibration should have been frightening beyond all comprehension, but were cheered by knowing and waiting Filipinos. The Americans were coming. The hills trembled, exploded, trees covering the hills were denuded, stripped of palm fronds until the trees were scattered posts littering the hills. In the small town of Palo, crowned with its central church, the Palo Palace, the air smelled of smoke and fear, excitement and anticipation.

The four-hour barrage done, steel landing craft sped beachward, carrying standing troops from the offshore war ships, from sea to shore, until a front gate dropped and determined U.S. infantrymen rushed up the beaches, from Palo to Dulag, and in just 42 minutes, a U.S. soldier raised the American flag atop a tree that somehow survived the barrage atop Dulag’s Hill 120. Twenty-nine months after Empire of Japan forces conquered the Philippines with the decisive Battle of Corrigador, the American flag was once more raised in the Philippines, and would ever since be a banner of pride, still included today as an appreciative logo on the t-shirts of Filipino teenagers.

Luisa Brieba

Cora: How do you compare the destruction of the war and that of Yolanda?

Luisa Brieba: By comparison the destructions were both the same. Nothing was left standing on the areas were the bombs hit, similar to what happened after Yolanda struck. No standing trees could be seen and the areas were left totally denuded. Both events brought sufferings and hardships to all. Many lost their lives on both occasions. It was a common sight, both times, to see dead bodies lying on the streets unburied. In contrast, Yolanda destroyed a much larger area compared to the destruction of the bombing. In addition, after the bombing, there was no shortage of food and water, unlike in Yolanda, where the people became desperate due to the lack of essential things.

Apolinaro Canillas

Cora: Was the destruction of the hills similar to the destruction of Yolanda?

Apolinaro Canillas: During World War Two, it was only the hills were destroyed because of constant shelling of the American ships, but Yolanda had a wider coverage area of destruction. Towns like Palo, Tolosa, Tanauan and Dulag, with hills, were the areas attacked and destroyed by the bombs. Only selected areas were affected by the bombing whereas Yolanda covered the whole area. Many dead bodies were seen during World War Two, the same as with Yolanda, and the area where dead bodies were seen the same. Many dead bodies had no more clothes and some were partially naked. Dead bodies were left alone in the street and nobody cared for them. The same is true with Yolanda. Dead bodies were buried by mass grave. In Tanauan [south of Palo], the mass grave for collateral victims of the war is in the same area as where victims of Yolanda are buried.

Cora: Was there a food shortage during the war?

Apolinaro Canillas: None. Civilians were provided with a supply of rice by the Americans. Aside from rice, they also distributed chocolates, biscuits, canned goods and toiletries. They were also given an assignment like cleaning their camps or a short errand and were paid for their short services. The civilians were also warned to hide once there was an attack.

Cora: Was the rebuilding and repairing of the damage brought about by the war difficult?

Apolinaro Canillas: No, it was not. Repair was easy because most of the houses were simple and made of native materials, unlike what happened after the super-typhoon, Yolanda. Besides, the peace and order situations in both occasions were in contrast. The U.S. forces readily assisted the people on rebuilding damaged structures, while with Yolanda it took many weeks before relief operations took place.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Four days before super-typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines, a light morning rain fell on the statues of the MacArthur monument in Palo, recreating the famous photographed scene taken 70 years before, almost to the day, when President Osmena and General MacArthur walked through the shallow surf just behind the monument. The much-visited, larger-than-life statues are posed as if walking through a rectangular pool in MacArthur Park, amid beautifully placed trees of palm and mahogany.

To the north, light rain fell on the waters of the San Juanico Straight below the two-kilometre span of the San Juanico Bridge, a winding slithering silver serpent connecting the two tropical island provinces of Leyte and Samar. The south end of the San Juanico bridge ends just north of Tacloban, the capital city of the island province of Leyte, home to 220,000 souls on the Philippine island’s north-eastern shore.

Light rain was also falling on a sleepy Tacloban street, as Kibou Maneja, 20, slept and dreamed a dream she remembered later, from the safety of Cebu. In her dream Maneja looked out her second story window. Outside the window she could see trees, cars, homes, nothing unusual. A typical street like any other. But in the sky, something unusual. Clouds boiled angrily. Sudden rising winds blew with an unimaginable ferocity, shrieking like one hundred women terrified of hell suddenly unleashed. Wind peeled rooftops from nearby houses, flung them angrily away. Trees bent, broke. Rain fell in such torrents houses on the street’s other side could not be seen. In what seemed seconds the street outside became a muddy brown river as high as the second-story window. Water splashed Maneja looking out on the scene, water from this new frightening muddy brown river that had just engulfed her home, carrying floating debris of all colours and perhaps even people, as dead as the debris. A frightened Maneja quickly closed the window on the new muddy river as if closing the window would save her and others with her.

We were praying, saying Hail Mary, all of us, inside the room, to protect us and keep us safe from that huge water. The water was almost 20 feet high in my dream. Then when I try to see outside, the water went down and the street was muddy. When I opened the door I see people falling in line to get food.

Kibou Maneja’s eyes opened. She woke from her dream in her family’s small ancestral home on an ordinary street in the city of Tacloban. The street outside Maneja’s window was serene. Trees, homes, cars. A street like any other.

Maneja, a second-year entrepreneur student, shook off her strange dream. She prepared to carry on with her day.

It was Monday, November 4, 2013. Tacloban was waking.

Few cities in the world seem better placed than Tacloban, a port city with exceptional beaches and coconut trees facing the beautiful blue Leyte Gulf, and from there the wide blue Pacific Ocean.

If you were to fly over Tacloban on Monday, November 4, four days before super-typhoon Yolanda struck, some features would immediately stand out.

You would see the airport you lifted off from, Tacloban’s Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport, named for a former Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives, looks like it was built, not just near the beach, but seems almost to be the beach on a narrow jutting small peninsula, the lone runway built along its length, very close to the east beach, facing as close to the open Pacific Ocean as it can be without being in the water. As your aircraft rose higher you’d see the land the city is built on looks like a horseshoe, the right arm of the shoe that jutting narrow peninsula you just took off from, everything from the base to the tip known as San Jose. Different areas of Tacloban have their own names.

The shoreline of Tacloban is extensive, thanks to three peninsulas of land that extend into the Letye Gulf. The most southerly of them you just took off from, at the airport.

The centre, and most prominent peninsula, one kilometre wide, is Tacloban’s downtown, where Leyte’s provincial capitol building, the Tacloban municipal hall, the University of the Philippines, and government offices are located. Family parks are found along this shoreline, and the curve of Magsaysay Boulevard follows the curve of the shore.

The third and most northerly peninsula of Tacloban is thin, short, and narrow, and is approached from the area known as Anibong, and leads to the industrial oil storage area in Barangay 69, at the end of the short highway of the same name. Barangays are the neighbourhoods of any Philippine city, each with their own elected council and each are a link to the elected town or city councillor, representing several barangays. Each barangay is not just a political entity, but a tight neighbourhood of volunteers and relationships that come together for clean-up days and local information meetings. Most barangays have health workers available for simple consultation and advice. On that third city peninsula, at the top of the Barangay 69, is the heavy industrial area, with gigantic oil storage tanks built close to the sea so great freighters and oil tankers can easily offload.

If your plane rose higher in the air while you looked down you’d see everyone in Tacloban seems to want to live near the beach. Tacloban’s buildings are concentrated as close to the ocean as possible, every building crowding the beach like a full stadium crowding a fence at a seatless track, everyone wanting to see the finish of a race. Behind the city, very close, green farmland, the fields each separate green squares, separated further by scattered buildings and a few small isolated subdivisions.

There are hills behind Tacloban, steep mounds of low green mountains in a range that extends down the spine of Leyte and restricts Northern Leyte to two east-west crossings, but the cities along the North-Eastern Leyte shoreline, including Tacloban, Palo and Tanauan, are built on exceptionally flat shore areas. The highest points in Tacloban and Tanuan are only a couple of metres above sea level at high tide.

If the northern half of Leyte is a clock, Carigara would sit at noon on its northern shore, halfway between Ormoc and Tacloban.

Tacloban, Palo and Tanauan are sea-side cities built close together, within a 20 kilometre span, and might all be placed about 2:00 o’clock. Going clockwise from there, Dulag and Mayorga, also on the eastern shore, would be about 4:00 o’clock. South of that, perhaps at 5:00 o’clock, would be the sea-side town of MacArthur, named for the American general.

Starting up on the Western shore, Baybay City sits at 7:00 o’clock, Ormoc City about 9:00 o’clock and Carigara, again, at noon.

If you flew very high you’d see the Leyte Gulf looks like a funnel. From the open Pacific Ocean, the most likely unobstructed path of a typhoon into this area is through the ever-narrowing Leyte Gulf toward the narrows of the San Juanico Straight, where the City of Tacloban is located.

Before your airplane landed again, features that might stand out as you flew closer to the airport would include the Tacloban Astrodome, looking like a giant, round multi-story flying saucer, perched on its square pad built off the beach and into the waters of the Leyte Gulf.

As your plane descended it would be possible for radio announcers at DYVL Tacloban to watch your plane land from radio station’s large windows, overlooking the gulf, even though two kilometres away, directly across the water.

As your plane was to nearly touch down again on that Monday, November 4, you would see homes built in this narrow peninsula just outside of the airport. You’d also see large cargo storage buildings built of massive, seemly too-thick concrete, capable of withstanding the strongest imaginable storms, the typhoons that regularly and seasonally come in from the Pacific Ocean. As your plane touched down back on earth, it would taxi toward the small, neat airport rectangular terminal building with its green roof and single tall square tower.

When you disembarked from your plane, you might also see the Tacloban weather station, perhaps without realizing this weather station is not just taking observations for the airport alone, but is part of a link with other weather stations throughout the Philippines, all watching for inclement weather than can quickly form in this part of the world.

In the Philippines incoming storm seriousness is measured by a four-level warning system, from Signal Nunber 1, the least serious storm, with 30 to 60 kilometre per hour winds, followed by Signal Number 2, signifying 60 to 100 kilometre per hour winds.

While a Signal Number 1 storm can often result in no damage, a Signal Number 2 can remove rooftops of corrugated metal, and uproot trees. A Signal Number 3 typhoon, with winds of 100 to 185 kilometres per hour, is very serious, causing serious damage to houses made of indigenous materials, or nipa, of bamboo, coconut wood and thatch, but can also damage very sturdy urban buildings. In a Signal Number 3 storm not only can roofs of homes and businesses be removed, but electrical poles and communication lines can be downed.

Signal Number 4 typhoons are rare. Some people in Leyte, even with much experience with typhoons in their lifetime, and very familiar with the signal warning system, didn’t realize storm warnings went beyond Signal Number 3. Signal Number 4 storms have winds of greater than 185 kilometres per hour.

In the United States a five-tier system is used to measure hurricane intensity. That scale, recognized world-wide, is largely based on wind speed, and begins with storms labelled as Category 1, with maximum 153 kilometre per hour winds, and a air pressure reading bottoming out at 980 millibars. Category 5 storms have wind speeds exceeding 252 kilometres per hour and air pressure readings below 920 millibars.

Wind speed is further broken down in both systems. Average speed is measured in small increments of time, such as ten minutes, and maximum speeds are measured in one minute segments, to capture the incredible speed of storm gusts within the storm.

When people in the Philippines receive storm warnings, all warnings use the four-tier Signal warning system. Internationally, news media generally use the storm intensity measurement, describing one of the five-tier Category storms.

For our purposes we will use the four-tier "Signal’ warning system that the Filipino people use, and will use the local name, Yolanda, for the November 8, 2013 super-typhoon, rather than its international name, Haiyan.

The name Yolanda was provided by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), when the storm entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility.

Super-typhoon Yolanda was to form this Monday, and would make landfall in the Philippines on the Friday, with a record 315 kilometres per hour winds, so strong the storm would bring about a storm surge, similar to a tsunami, pushing sea water three kilometres inland, and would be recorded near the shore areas as over six metres, or 20 feet deep, and as far as more than a kilometre inland the storm surge was deep enough to cover the outdoor rooftops of one-story homes and businesses. Further inland waters reached indoor ceilings, forcing people to hang on to indoor roof trusses to survive. Very few people, before the storm, knew what a storm surge was. They’d never experienced one before.

Even with advisories and compulsory evacuation notices, people directly in the path of super-typhoon Yolanda were lulled into complacency, as this super-typhoon approached land with unusual stealth. Incoming typhoons usually announce their presence the day before with low cloud or winds or breezes, and people get the sense, a feeling, that bad weather is coming, a personal confirmation of PAGASA storm warnings, broadcast by Philippine radio and television news. But this storm, which was by many measurements, history’s greatest storm, would not follow normal patterns in the days leading up to it, even the very day and evening before. Many people would comment how the day before the super-typhoon struck the weather was so fair and the night before was so clear, with bright stars in the sky. But those people who took notice of such things also noticed an unusual quiet the evening and night before, no animals making noise, not even crickets chirping. It was as if nature was already hiding.

The day and night before being so fair, many chose to ignore even dire and repeated warnings of what was then already confirmed by professional weather watchers as the greatest storm ever. Many chose to ignore even compulsory evacuation notices, and remained where they were, even close to the sea. Tens of thousands did evacuate to evacuation centres, chosen by their local barangays: schools, municipal halls, stadiums, large buildings, only to find the evacuation centres overrun by the storm surge. No one expected a storm surge like a tsunami. It was unprecedented. Many chose to evacuate Friday morning, but the storm surge came in far too quickly, filling houses to ceiling level in minutes, Many who waited until Friday morning to evacuate were too late to outrun the storm.

Some could not evacuate as their jobs depended on working directly in the storm’s path. Tacloban’s five professional weather observers, at the weather station next to Tacloban’s Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport, reported their observations of the coming storm so every Filipino in the storm’s path could have as much warning as possible to make a choice to evacuate. But the weather observers would maintain their posts, even at the risk of their lives, even when they realized the 25 kilometre wide eye of greatest storm in recorded history was approaching and would be within mere kilometres of their position.

Weather Observer Nilo Polenas was on duty that Monday, on the night shift, to be relieved at 6:00 a.m.

One of the duties of all the station’s weather observers is to interpret radar data, then send the results to the Philippine central office of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration.

Every observation is entered in the form of numbers. We call it a code, said Polenas, a 35-year veteran of professional weather observation.

From that we get a forecast. If it is a weather forecast it means the weather is normal, with no detection of a low pressure system or a typhoon. But if it is classified as a weather bulletin, that means we have detected a low pressure system or a typhoon.

That Monday Polenas was relieved at 6:00 a.m. by Salvacion Avestruz, 42, wife and mother of three. This was Polenas’ last night shift before his two days off. His next night shift would start at 10:00 p.m. Thursday and continue to 6:00 a.m. Friday, November 8, which, unknown to the weather observers at the time, would be the very time super-typhoon Yolanda would make landfall at this very spot. Yolanda was at present a low pressure system over the Pacific, already noticed internationally since Saturday. The typhoon would form this day, this Monday.

Another weather observer, Anthony Sanchez, after his shift, would leave for home in distant Maasin, for his days off. For weather observers who lived far from the station, like Sanchez and Avestruz, two sleeping rooms were provided, one for males, one for females. The weather station also had its own kitchen.

Senior weather observer Romeo Elvina rounded out the four staff overseen by Officer-in-Charge Mario Peñaranda.

One of the duties of the weather observers is to monitor a microbarograph, a small instrument with a sensitive needle leaving a thin ink trail on special graph paper secured to a slowly rotating cylinder. The trail of ink on the graph paper tracks very small changes in barometric pressure, enabling weather observers to get advance warning of systems of low pressure.

Atmospheric pressure at sea level, where the Tacloban weather station was located that Monday in San Jose, showed a pressure reading of 1013 millibars, or 14.69 pounds per square inch, as normal in good weather. Typhoons are created in low pressure systems. Anything above 1,013 millibars indicates clear weather. The graph paper secured to the rotating cylinder Polenas watched has a printed microbarograph scale ranging from 1040 millibars, very heavy pressure, down to 950 millibars, an atmospheric pressure so low it had never been seen by any of the staff at the Tacloban weather station, including Polenas, even with his 35 years experience, and no weather observer expected a low pressure system would reach that level.

A level below 950 wasn’t unheard of. Three Atlantic hurricanes in a single year, 2005, each making landfall in the southern United States, all with readings at or below 900. In August, Hurricane Katrina, making landfall in Louisiana, had a barograph reading of 902 and while Katrina’s maximum wind speed was lower than Yolanda’s by 35 kilometres per hour, Katrina’s area of maximum intensity extended twice as far. A storm surge also resulted from Katrina, breaching dikes and levees, contributing to an exceptionally high death toll of over 1,800 people, as large sections of New Orleans were unexpectedly flooded. The following month, September, Hurricane Rita, with a barograph reading of 285, killed over 100, making landfall in Texas, but also affected some areas not yet recovered from Katrina. In October, Hurricane Wilma struck, with wind speeds of measured at 295 kilometres per hour, and a barograph reading of 882, but thankfully, wind speeds slowed before making landfall in Florida.

Even with strong typhoons Polenas noticed the ink on the graph paper would dip to just below 1,000 millibars before rising up again.

But the typhoon that would form this Monday, and make landfall Friday, would drop that needle far below 950 millibars, the limits of the graph and needle. Yolanda, yet to be named, would require measurement from more sensitive instruments than the microbariograph at Tacloban. Yolanda’s air pressure reading would record an air pressure reading of 895 millibars, a level never before seen in the area.

The low pressure system that would form Yolanda was detected early by international weather stations. As early as Saturday media had reported an unusual low air pressure system forming. On Monday by the Japanese Meteorological Centre for the Western Pacific Ocean reported early signs the low pressure system might form the thirtieth tropical storm of year. When it was confirmed it was a newborn storm, the Japanese Meteorological Centre gave the new and still-growing tropical storm the international name, Haiyan, chosen from a list of suggested names provided by countries in the region.

Tropical storm Haiyan formed in the blue Pacific Ocean about 3,000 kilometres, or 1860 miles, west of the Philippines, about 400 kilometres south-east of the tiny, mountainous and rainy Micronesian island of Ponape, and about 105 miles north of the equator.

 The heat on one small surface of the seemingly endless blue water had been sun-warmed over two days to above 27 degrees Celcius, or 80 degrees Fahrenheit. While the warmth flowed down into the blue salt ocean, metre after metre to 50 metres and possibly beyond, straight up in the air, nearly as high as aircraft fly, the sky was moist, cooler than the air beneath.

Warm air rose off this unremarkable ocean spot into the moist air above. Clouds formed. Slowly the clouds became enlongated, leaf-shaped, the tell-tale sign of a typhoon forming.

In this part of the world such vortex-like powerful twisters with an eye and immense cloud formation swirling about are called typhoons. The very same weather phenomenon over the Atlantic Ocean are called hurricanes, while cyclones form in the Indian Ocean.

The unique swirling cloud shape around a central eye, the common feature of typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones, is caused by deflection, the counter-clockwise rotation of the earth.