Cebu City, after 'super' typhoon Odette / Rai
I live near to the top floor of a high-rise condo building in Cebu City near the main Ayala Mall. On the night of the typhoon, the wind was so strong that the building was swaying. There is another foreigner living in the building in a unit a few floors above me, and he said he also felt the building swaying.
The storm lasted about 2 hours here. During the storm I went down to the parking lot area of the building to have a look outside, though sheltered from the wind and the rain it was terrifying to listen to the wind howling and screaming, to see the rain thrashing the trees outside and to see debris being blown and hurled around outside.
Living in a sturdy and well constructed building, there was no damage to the structure of the building, but there was minor damage to some areas. The swimming pool took a hit and was filled with all sorts of debris so it will have to be drained and thoroughly cleaned.
Though many people were evacuated from the shanty areas to storm shelters, some weren't, and I can't imagine what it was like for them when the storm hit if they were stuck in a ramshackle house with a flimsy roof and walls.
The mains electricity is still off in my area and has been since the night of the storm, but I am lucky because there is a back-up generator in the building which has been running 24/7 since the night of the storm.
From the news reports I have read, millions of people have no mains electricity or water, we initially had a water supply here in my condo building but it went off 2 days after the storm, though it resumed again a day ago. Whilst it was off they arranged for water trucks to bring water in and pump it into a storage tank in the basement, then we had to go down with buckets or other storage containers and you could either bring it back up to your room by yourself or wait (sometimes hours) for the staff to bring it up to your room.
When I went out the afternoon after the storm there was a lot of traffic about and some roads were gridlocked. The cause? Motorists panic-buying petrol! I passed by 3 petrol stations and they all had massive queues, 100+ cars and dozens of motorbikes outside each one.
And there were massive queues at bank ATM machines, some had about 100 people in the queue, one, in the Metro supermarket at the main Ayala mall, had about 250 people in a queue.
There is plenty of food available in the supermarkets in Cebu City which have all been open since the storm struck, but they are all closing early at 4 pm or 5 pm. There is a shortage of bottled drinking water, I have been out every day since the storm hit to look for drinking water, on approx 20 visits I only managed to buy bottled water on two separate occasions, once in a supermarket in Colon last Sunday, and then yesterday in the Metro supermarket at the Main Ayala mall.
The supermarkets were unable to accept card payments after the storm as their payment systems went offline, so it was strictly cash only. That was still the position as of 2 days ago.
I use Globe who provide the Internet service in my room, and apart from a couple of occasions when it went down for a while it has been very reliable, other foreigners I have talked to have told me they have been without Internet access for days.
The overnight curfew in Cebu City still kicks in at 12 midnight, 5 days ago in Lapu-Lapu it was brought forward from 11 pm to 9 pm, it was reported that it was done to prevent looting though I have not read any reports of any looting incidents.
The main Ayala Mall is still closed, the Ayala central block at the IT Park reopened today with most restaurants and shops inside open. I went to SM Seaside 3 days ago, it was open but only on the first 2 floors, and only a handful of shops and restaurants were open, the majority were still closed. They have opened up free phone-charging areas just outside the main 'inside' entrance (the sheltered area where the taxis drop you off), and I saw about 500 or 600 people sitting down on the ground, in small groups, all huddled around their phones which were plugged into the charging banks.
Some areas in Cebu City have had the mains electricity restored, and a couple of local bar / pubs are open, others are still closed.
I have now experienced two earthquakes and one typhoon, and all were in the Philippines! The first earthquake was in Manila in 1988 or 1989 (I can't remember the exact year), it was on my first visit to the Philippines, the other was in Davao City in 2018. On both occasions I was indoors when they struck. In Manila I was inside a hotel building up on the 20th floor and in Davao City I was inside a condo building up on the 25th floor, and on both occasions the buildings were violently shaking and swaying, though suffered no serious damage. The Davao City earthquake was a magnitude 7. 2. I'm not sure about the scale of the first one in Manila, but it was really terrifying and I thought the hotel building was going to collapse on me and that I was going to die!
Anyway, enough of my rambling.
My thoughts at this time are with all the less fortunate people here who have lost their homes and their businesses, and for the many hundreds who have lost their lives.
[B]NB[/B]
This is just from what I have personally seen here in Cebu City, and from what I have seen Cebu City has not suffered too much damage. But there are many reports of serious devastation and damage in other areas of Cebu island and in neighbouring islands.
The aftermath of the typhoon
[URL]https://youtu.be/g5STK9K9IjU[/URL]
This is a video of less than 2 minutes in length, that describes the nightmare aftermath of the typhoon.
GE.
