By Anabelle Hazard
When supercyclone “Haiyan” was poised to whip at the
Philippines, I joined my countrymen in prayer, every hour on the hour.I sighed with blessed relief when my sister
reported that although power had gone out, my hometown of Cebu City (which had just
been rocked by a 7.4 magnitude quake) escaped the eye of the storm and didn’t
sustain much damage. But over the next
few days, as more photos and news reports emerged of severe destruction, missing
persons, unknown casualties and downed communications and transportations north
of my province and its neighboring islands, my sighs were snuffled into
tissues.
A ship washed into a leveled shore of a once bustling port;
coconut trees shaven or snapped in two; a looted half of a mall building
teetering; a roofless hospital; entire towns and villages pulverized into debris;
paper plates and pieces torn from the boxes containing messages of survivors to
their anxious family members that “we are all alive” or “so and so is dead”; survivors
sagging on evacuation centers, one of which was a grown man, with a
distinct brown scapular around his neck, crying… and the most heartbreaking of all: a muddied
corpse of a mother clutching her dead boy and her baby.
Along with the
distressing images, my Facebook page has been flooded with information
on
how to help and help speedily on its way. Packed bags of relief goods,
donation centers set up, money coming in, my
teenage nephews helping build homes, medicines arriving with volunteer
doctors
from California, Canada and Israel, US. Marines deployed, Japanese
rescue teams, and local corporate businesses and news reporters doing
their
primary job of being compassionate human beings.
Continue reading at Anabelle's Blog Written by the Finger of God.
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