any short story or incident related with natural disaster
Answers
1) Santiago’s survival story
Santiago is 14 and has four siblings: E.J., Amiel, Princess, and Gerardo. He’s partial to 4-year-old Princess, his only sister. When she smiles, her eyes light up. Princess feels closest to Santiago too.
“I love him because he always takes care of me and he feeds me,” she says.
When Typhoon Haima bore down on the Philippines, Santiago’s family went to his grandparents’ house. But when the storm worsened, “My father and my grandfather had to destroy the plywood at the back of his house for us to escape,” Santiago says.
“When we checked on our house the following day, I could no longer see a trace of it,” he says. “Our things were soaked in floodwater, my books and school materials all destroyed.”
Recalling their narrow escape and their losses, Santiago breaks down and cries.
But three days after Super Typhoon Haima ravaged Northern Luzon, relief goods arrived in Solana.
Families who had lost almost everything, like Santiago’s, received kitchen sets, blankets, mosquito nets, and hygiene kits containing toothbrushes, toothpaste, laundry and bath soap.
“We’ve seen the best of people’s generosity in the past days,” Santiago’s mother, Elena, tells me. “My husband’s boss took us into their home, asking nothing in return; while you, from Manila, came to give us relief goods.”
Her family was the first to receive relief items in their community.
It was a joy for me to follow them from the World Vision distribution site to the place where they are staying. Princess excitedly opened boxes while other family members gathered around to see what they had received.
Were they happy? Yes, they were. Was I happy? Oh yes.
Moments like this are a highlight of my work. While there’s no getting used to emergency communications, that’s a good thing. It will always be a mix of pain and joy, sadness and gratitude.
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