FLASHBACK: TYPHOON GLENDA Experiences and Readiness

July 16 2014, which was almost a year ago, when the worst typhoon to date hit Lipa City on top of my knowledge.

I was preparing to work at about 5 in the morning when I noticed our ceiling was being pumped by a strong air from outside and in few minutes we saw heavy water coming inside our home. It was a traumatic experience and we never thought that it will happen to our home. 70% of our roof was walloped by the strong wind and everything inside our home got wet. Big branches of trees also hit our home and blocked our gate.

The good thing about this typhoon was it never lasted long and stopped before noon. If the typhoon had stay longer, it has created a bigger casualty in Lipa.

As soon as the typhoon ceased, photos of typhoon aftermath in Lipa were posted here in LCP. There were several stories of damages and bad experience of the typhoon Glenda. Even big establishments like Robinsons and SM malls had damages in their buildings.

There was no electricity in Lipa City for an average of 5 days in city proper while there were some areas that had their electricity back after 2 or 3 weeks. Shortage of water, bread and other food were also experienced by Lipa. There was a long line of shoppers in grocery and supermarkets.

Typhoon season is here again and in the next weeks, the Philippines is anticipating strong typhoons to hit our country. We should always be ready for this unstoppable natural disaster by making our homes secured, having our emergency kits ready, storing easy to eat foods, wrapping our important documents in sealed plastic bag and making ourselves prepared.

I am just hoping that our local government of Lipa is prepared as well and has this Emergency Response Team and planned evacuation centers during typhoon and other natural calamities who will be available and dependable real time. Our local government should allocate a large amount of funds for this cause. Lipa City could be protected by two mountains and highly elevated but the world is changing and we have alarming change in distribution of weather patterns caused by humans.