A disaster coverage
The latest sea tragedy, or our daily coverage of its chilling aftermath, reminded yours truly of an out-of-town assignment in February 2006. For about a week our team – myself and two photographers — stayed in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte, at a house offered by the first man we met on the street as we asked around for lodgings. Such were the kindness of strangers in that part of town, at that particular time.
We got there a day after the neighboring hillside village of Barangay Guinsaugon, all six hectares of it, disappeared in an instant. Survivors remembered first feeling an earthquake, a crack on the ground, an explosion sending tons of loose earth down the slopes. As in all calamities, the cruelty was indiscriminate. An entire school was entombed while classes were underway, and with it some 200 children. A man on a bike, fortunately heading out on some errand, froze on the spot as he turned and saw his neighborhood for the last time before it all became rock and mud.
Still, in the next four days, rescuers with their sophisticated sensors reported hearing sounds of ‘’scratching’’ and ‘’knocking’’ coming from beneath. Late-night press briefings at the town hall offered hopes of a miracle and made the newspapers in Manila wait. On the fifth day the sounds were no more.
But then, there were things reported, remembered, and described for the benefit of those like us who merely parachuted into the scene. And then there were things I actually saw or heard: body bags and bulldozers, body bags on bulldozers; US relief choppers thundering in the sky at 3 a.m.; rescuers ultimately outnumbering the missing; cramped evacuation centers and the smell of canned sardines that won’t go away.
And then there were things I saw or heard but which never saw print: details that probably got buried deep in my notes, overlooked in the margins, or ‘’overtaken’’ by the next bulletin, the next quote, the next imagery. I once reported how a barangay multipurpose hall served as a makeshift morgue for bodies retrieved from the landslide. That evening, seemingly untouched for hours, about four or five of them lay covered in sheets on top of tables, while on one side of the dimly-lit room stood a stack of empty coffins. To this day, more than two years later, there remains something in my head from what I saw that night which, for some reason, never made it to my copy: Up there, hanging from the ceiling, catching the faint flicker of candlelight that illuminated and sanctified the dead below, was a disco mirror ball, probably last used during a Valentine or Christmas party.
Finally returning home on a weekday afternoon and with time to spare, there was a moment’s impulse to shake off all that and restore everything with a leisurely trip to the mall: perhaps score a new shirt or CD, or just slow things down browsing at Powerbooks. But no, it took about two days before I listened again to rock music or opened a book. Until then the hours just stretched in between snatches of small talk, quiet meals, and lingering thoughts of regional Math champions forever trapped in the rubble, a ‘’text’’ message for help sent from maybe 10 or 30 feet underground, and a motionless sphere of a thousand mirrors, barely aglow.
