Typhoon ‘Ruby’ scenario: Some families seek shelter in ‘foxholes’

QUINAPONDAN, Eastern Samar—Some families would rather sit through a storm on roadside ditches than take shelter in concrete buildings as another supertyphoon threatens to wreak havoc on their areas.

On Friday, hours before the anticipated landfall of Typhoon “Ruby,” (international name: Hagupit) brothers Jojit and Florencio Parajilla were almost done building their shelter—a three-foot burrow—on a mountain in Barangay Parina, in Giporlos, Eastern Samar province.

It was high just enough for a child to squat in.

“We started digging this up just this morning,” Jojit, 33, said.

The burrow, locally called kulong, can shelter two families of the Parajillas, composed of eight people, among them small children. It had an iron sheet roof and was propped up with rice sacks filled with clay-like soil on the top and on the sides.

“And this is where we’d put the machine gun,” Florencio, 24, quipped when teased by the Inquirer that it rather looked like a foxhole during wartime.

Strong enough

Jojit said they planned to fill it with just enough food supplies. But a policeman with a megaphone asked the residents to evacuate soon.

The Parajillas, however, were confident their burrow was strong enough.

“The school where they wanted us to move in is still under construction. It might collapse,” Jojit said. The previous school was destroyed by Supertyphoon ‘Yolanda.’”

Improvised huts

“It’s common here. There are more of that in the mountains,” said police chief Sr. Insp. Sabino Araneta Jr. of the kulong.

“It (the kulong) is safe anyway,” Araneta told the Inquirer when asked what they would do with residents who refused to evacuate.

In Barangay Sto. Nino, also in Eastern Samar, at least 10 families also refused to evacuate to school buildings. Instead, they built improvised kubo or huts that looked like Indian tents on the side of the road.

The huts were made of strips of coconut lumber and used tarpaulins. Some of the families were seen cooking rice when the Inquirer team stopped by.

“Is the storm already moving away?” Bernarda Baguan, 68, asked.

Like the Parajillas, Baguan feared the evacuation center, also damaged by Yolanda, was still not strong enough.

High ground

Baguan said they were confident a storm surge would not reach them this time since they were on higher ground.

“The last time, I remember losing my shorts because I was holding my grandchild as we swam in the floodwaters,” she said. She said she lost two other family members to Yolanda.

In Barangay Amambucale in Marabut, Samar province, five families of the Balbalda clan still showed signs of trauma from Yolanda. They also refused to go to evacuation centers and said they would rather stay in a roadside ditch.

Fisherman Matias Balbalda, 54, used a rope to tie used tarpaulins to the road railings. These tarpaulins would serve as their roofs throughout the typhoon.

“We got scared the moment we heard (Ruby) was coming,” said Matias’ son Andrew, 20.

The Balbaldas, with their little children, were cooped up in the ditch. Andrew said they were banking on a large rock behind them should there be a storm surge.

“We only brought mats, a few clothes and water. Everything else we left behind,” said Matias’ daughter, Marisol, 18. “If they get lost in the typhoon, we could recover them anyway, but lives, never,” she said.