Where I was in a suburban village of Tacloban City, the lashing of 280 kilometer per hour winds subsided around ten in the morning. Towards noon, the punishment was over and that was it.
But Yolanda finished San Jose, the environs of Fatima Village, the housing sprawl at Old Road Sagkahan and Magallanes, and the densely populated blocks that hemmed downtown Tacloban.
Thousands from these residential and commercial clusters met their death. The aftermath of the disaster bared cold bodies strewn all over the fury's violent path. The weather would clear on a great mountain of rubble, piles of corpses, and a sea of desolation.
I don't want to remember Leyte November 08, 2013 and immediately thereafter that way. But the poignant scenes of destruction blended with the pallor tragedy and stink of death can't help but sear into the memory. I know it will, in decades to come.
The devastation was so colossal, it was hard to think anymore, to fathom, to understand. In the afternoon of the second day after, food or rather the prospect of its disappearance was in the mind. My companions have to trek 16 kilometers from our place to get rice and viand with it.
They returned at eight in the night, shadows moving under a total blackout. They brought stories of looting, holdups of folks traveling on foot on the road from the airport to Palo, and pure terror of man victimizing man in dog-eats-dog fashion.
