“We have lost everything. We don’t have a home. We need help. We have no place to sleep, no food, nothing to use. We only have torn clothes. We just need food, rice, anything to eat, but we have nothing.”
Mely Saberon, 52, waded through the muddy remains of her home in Talisay City, on Wednesday, November 5), trying to recover what was left after a typhoon ravaged her community.
Typhoon Kalmaegi slammed into central Philippines on Tuesday (November 4), inundating towns across Cebu Province and leaving at least 66 people dead.
Scenes of devastation emerged in Cebu, a major tourist hub, as floodwaters receded, revealing destroyed homes, overturned vehicles, and widespread debris.
Saberon recounted how the water rose rapidly, forcing her family and relatives to flee their riverside home.
“It was quick. It started around midnight, and it made landfall around 4PM. Around 4:28 a.m., we went up and only had our clothes on,” Saberon said.
“We expected it to be weak like the previous storm, but it destroyed our house,” she said, through tears.
Saberon returned to her home only to find the muddy remains, but she was grateful that her family survived. Saberon now faces an uncertain future.
“We don’t have any home anymore. We weren’t able to salvage anything from our house. We didn’t expect the surge of rain and wind. We’ve experienced many typhoons, but this one was different. Our homes were gone,” she said.
More than 200,000 people were evacuated across the Visayas region, including parts of southern Luzon and northern Mindanao, ahead of a storm that submerged homes and caused widespread flooding and power outages.
The devastation from Kalmaegi, locally named Tino, comes just over a month after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck northern Cebu, killing dozens and displacing thousands.
Tino, the 20th storm to hit the Philippines, slightly intensified as it was crossing the South China Sea on its way to Vietnam where preparations are underway ahead of the typhoon’s expected landfall on Friday (November 7).
—Production: Adrian Portugal, Peter Blaza
