Woman from Capiz island suffers trauma after husband dies for her

ROXAS CITY—Couple Hilario Carpina and Lowella Aninang left their children in their hillside home on Olotayan Island just so they could cross to the other side of the island, about half an hour trek, after hearing news of relief distribution in preparation for typhoon Yolanda.

But instead of a kilo of rice, tragedy lay in wait for them.

“That was around noon and the wind was growing stronger,” Aninang, 27, said on  Saturday in an interview here.

Like the other residents, the couple sought refuge in a school located near the seashore and stayed inside one of its classrooms as they waited for the strong winds to subside.

Recalling her husband’s final moments, in mixed Filipino and Hiligaynon, Aninang said Carpina suddenly pushed her aside just as the ceiling collapsed on them.

A steel rod left a shallow cut on her neck but an angle bar pierced through Carpina’s neck. The man was also pinned under a collapsed concrete wall.

“Right then and there I knew he was dead. He wasn’t even able to say any last words,” she said.

Aninang let herself out through an opening in the fallen building and ran out for help amid howling winds. She held onto a tree until three men came to pull her to safety before returning later to recover her husband’s body that was under the debris.

Although they were not married, Aninang referred to Carpina, a 34-year-old charcoal-maker who earned P1,000 a week, as husband. They have two daughters, Hazel, 4, and Lyka, who turned 3 years old on Nov. 17.

“He was a very loving husband,” she said of the man she met four years ago in Novaliches where they both used to work—she in a canteen and him in a factory.

Aninang said the children were still too young to understand but it pained her to hear Hazel telling people: “I don’t have a father anymore. ”

Manuel Aninang, chief of Olotayan Island village, and a distant relative of the family, said it was only on Friday, one week after Yolanda’s fury, that  a doctor in the city attended to Aninang’s wound.

“She said she wanted to kill herself but we told her the reason her husband let her live was [to take care of] their children,” Manuel said.

Aninang said she did not have a job and was unsure of how she could raise her children.

“Maybe someone could help me put up a store elsewhere,” she said.

“But I don’t want us to go back to Olotayan because I don’t want to remember,” she said.