Jen Hardy, regional information officer for Asia, is on the ground to document the CRS response to to Tropical Storm Washi (local name “Sendong”), which struck northern Mindanao in the Philippines on December 17.
It’s a struggle to come up with a way to really show the devastation of areas along the Cagayan de Oro River in the Philippines. Emergency photos that have stuck with me in the past usually feature crumpled, twisted buildings that used to be someone’s home or business. People are interviewed in front of their old residence, and the combination of the human face and the destroyed building conveyed the level of devastation and the long road to recovery.
This disaster is different. The flash floods completely stripped the land of any hint of human habitation. The buildings on higher ground that survived are full of mud, but most can likely be salvaged with a thorough cleaning and some repair work. There is little visual in-between.
Joe Curry, CRS country representative for the Philippines, summed it up well. He observed that “You can only hold a camera on an empty piece of land for so long.” It’s one thing to say that the land used to be filled with homes, churches, livestock and gardens. It’s much harder to imagine when the only remnants of people’s lives are a few scattered boards and tatters of clothing embedded in drying mud.
I won’t be sending in many images of destroyed homes, simply because much of the rubble is being scattered by waves in the Pacific. And I’ll spare our photo editor from sorting endless photos of mud. The level of damage can best be glimpsed in the faces of displaced people, especially those who lost loved ones or are still waiting for word about a missing family member. Sadly, by that measurement, the devastation of the flash floods in Cagayan de Oro run deeper than any of us can grasp.
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