Thankful for earthquakes and supercyclones

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.