Two years after the devastating typhoon Ketsana hit Manila on September 26, followed by Typhoon Parma a week later, I thought this year would just be to commemorate the tragedy of those twin typhoons whose magnitude of destruction was historic for this country. But, I never knew we would relive it again, and this time with much greater damage brought by Typhoons Nesat and Nalgae.

When I went out to cover Nesat, I said to myself it’s just another typhoon, got some pictures of school cancellations, knee-deep flooding and villagers pre-emptively evacuating with their families, belongings and pets.

But the situation seemed to be getting worse when Bobby started photographing the already flooded U.S. Embassy along Manila Bay, something that has never happened in recent history. Storm surges created waves as high as the coconut trees lining the seawall. An oil tanker ran aground, almost hitting hundreds of shanties along the coastline of south harbor.

In the midst of it all, I chased breaking news announced over the radio, that three children together with their grandmother were buried alive by a collapsed wall due to the strong winds of Nesat.

I arrived there in time as rescuers were trying to recover the unfortunately dead bodies of the victims. I climbed on one of the three fire trucks on the scene to get an unobstructed angle for my photos. By then, I was already soaked in rainwater and the cold wind chilled me as I waited for rescuers to look through the rubble. They first pulled the young girl out. As the relatives comforted each other, a boy stayed outside, weeping silently as he awaited the recovery of the other bodies.

But only later did I discover that this was just the beginning, as another typhoon, Nalgae, made landfall three days after Typhoon Nesat. Nalgae pounded Luzon again Saturday. The following day flooding was all over the news. This time the provinces of Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac and Nueva Ecija were badly hit.

I was assigned to Pampanga province. Floodwaters submerged houses, schools and other buildings. Villagers took to the rooftops of their two-story houses as their temporary shelters. Relief can hardly reach where they were so they either butchered their chickens or ducks, or rode makeshift boats made of banana tree trunks to get to higher ground for food and water.

Together with Reuters TV, we also covered Calumpit, Bulacan. As soon as we exited the freeway, we were met with residents lined up along the highways in their makeshift shelters, the only high ground left not flooded. We drove past them but only to the point where the vehicles could still maneuver. From then on, it was a combination of wading through knee-deep floods of strong currents and boating on more than five-foot deep water. As rescuers tried to reach them, residents took to living on the available means at hand.

Bobby went to Pampanga to cover more flooding and rescue operations for trapped residents, while John stayed around Manila to photograph evacuees and the houses in coastal areas washed ashore.

As flooding spread damage to rice fields and the death toll rose, we juggled to cover the places affected by Typhoons Nesat and Nalgae.

I went back to cover the development in Calumpit and Hagonoy in Bulacan. The floods persisted despite the heat from the sun, although slowly the waters subsided. Villagers tried to bounce back to their normal life. They continued to bury their dead despite the knee-deep floodwaters. While some dried their wet clothes from their rooftops, others braved the flood to get supplies to survive the torment of being isolated for days.

It will take weeks, some says months, before these millions of my countrymen get back to the life they had before Nesat and Nalgae changed its course. But they also know that this is not the end, as climate change continues to affect lives throughout the globe. They can only hope and pray that this won’t happen again soon, not until the wounds of destruction are rebuilt.

(More images from the aftermath of Typhoons Nesat and Nalgae.)

I suited up with excitement. I put on a hospital gown together with a mask and cap that I bought inside the hospital. I entered a two-door room filled with doctors and nurses. I walked around and found the labor room on the left side. It had six beds but all were occupied. There was a patient on the first bed who was uneasy, fear flashed in her eyes. Medical staff stood next to the bed to counsel her. Next to her was a doctor conducting an internal exam on a mother, I could see her pain while waiting to be fully dilated. In no time they transferred her into the delivery room.

I couldn’t help but notice the pain in every contraction as the mothers lay in bed. They were dressed in white dusters and their body shifted from one side to another. As moans echoed from every corner, a familiar feeling flashed back; my first birthing experience two years ago. I could somehow feel again what they were going through, the only difference was I was able to watch and capture the pain this time with my cameras.

Women on stretchers were being wheeled in and out. As the clock ticked, the numbers went up at the country’s busiest maternal hospital which sees an average of sixty births a day. But that is small compared to over a hundred daily deliveries during peak season in this hospital alone.

The door opened again and another woman arrived in a wheelchair. Since there were no beds available she ended up sharing with another and so did the woman who came after her. In the midst of a seemingly uncontrollable scenario where patients continued to pack the room and medical staff attended to every patient, I found peace in the soft cry of a baby after he was pulled out of the womb.

I kept on shooting. The doctor cut the umbilical cord of a baby boy, as another mother gave birth as swiftly as she arrived on a stretcher. The medical staff didn’t even have time to transfer her onto the bed. My attention switched to a woman doing controlled breathing. Doctors were giving her words of encouragement. Three more sets of pushing yet the baby didn’t come out. I was told it would take an hour or longer.

As much as I salute how the staff managed the sixty births a day, I empathized with the patient’s condition as I went to the ward. A mother cooled her baby with a paper fan as she put him to sleep. The room accommodated nearly a hundred beds where two to three mothers shared a single mattress. They lined up to use two shared bathrooms.

The conditions were totally different from what I experienced when I gave birth to my son, Jacob. But being a mother, my heart goes out seeing newborns in this situation. I can still picture in my mind the vivid expression of either a premature baby crying at the top of his lungs as he reached out his hands or a two week old baby dressed with only booties and mittens while lying on an infant scale weighing below the normal average weight.

They say pregnancy and childbirth is a special time in a woman’s life. Probably true in any situation because despite the long lines in pre-natal check-up, the labor pains and the crowded wards at the hospital, the majority of women in Manila endure it. And no matter how poor the conditions may be, the richness dwells in the joy of sharing your love with a newborn baby.

A fire broke out at night in one of Manila’s most densely populated cities, Malabon City, known for its year-long floods due to the coastal city’s gradual sinking. When the smoke cleared at dawn the next morning, an estimated 300 houses were burned to the ground.

As I went through the narrow streets, measuring only half a yard wide, almost all the residents I saw warned me: “Be careful!”, or “Don’t move back, you will fall in neck-deep murky water!” They were not exaggerating. Everywhere I looked, heads were sticking out among charred wood floating in the blackened water.

They moved carefully as their bare feet did the work. I called it ingenuity, as they could grope valuable and recyclable items buried deep in foul-smelling water just by using their feet. Even children dived in. Some focused on collecting metal items and disconnected electric wires, which could be sold for a few precious pesos per kilo at nearby junk shops. While a few lamented their fate, most of the residents laughed, despite losing their houses, moving on to rebuild what was left of their property.

I was not a pet lover but I was disheartened seeing dead and hurt animals. I saw a dog barely surviving on a flattened roof, his left eye burnt. There was a cat, burnt to its skin, clinging on a post to stay dry while a lifeless dog floated by with gutted belongings.

Months ago, another huge fire occurred and as I arrived in the area, black smoke billowed into the sky. I ran and leaped, literally, to go near the fire as residents ran away with their belongings and families. I followed the fire hoses stretched out on the pavement and found myself over the riverbank. I twisted my wrist, and got a wide angle view to shoot the general view of the quickly spreading fire. I twisted back, and I went tight to shoot residents saving their belongings. I saw a man fleeing the inferno holding his rooster. Another man went back and forth throwing a bucket of murky water into his burning house. Some trapped residents swam their way out on the other side of the river.

I went over to the other street and found a more chaotic scene. Sirens rang out, flashing red and blue lights at every corner. The main avenue was covered in thick, black smoke. A woman emerged carrying her school-aged child. Fire trucks pulled back as strong winds fanned the blaze and razed more houses. The fire marshal ordered his men to move back as a burning electrical post threatened to collapse. I stood beside the fire fighters as I took pictures. I felt the intense heat on my skin as we moved closer. I was told the heat reached about 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit). The heat and smoke hindered my movements. I cooled off by splashing water from a fire hydrant on my face. I clicked more photos while breathing through my wet towel, as fire fighters struggled to contain the flames. The fire broke out late at night and about a thousand families lost their homes and livelihood.

Fire occurs mostly in heavily populated slum areas, where informal settlers build their houses of light materials, mostly of wood and plastics, so close together, even piled one on top of another. They secure their rusty tin roofs with used tires — to keep it from flying away during stormy weather — while a maze of electrical wires crisscross narrow streets, not big enough for fire trucks to maneuver their way through.

Faulty electrical connections, unattended candles, flames in the kitchen or a simple cigarette butt thrown onto a garbage heap are common causes of fires in the congested capital of Manila, home to about 13 million people.

As the smoke clears, all that remains are numbers — number of homeless families, destroyed houses, injured people and animals, and sometimes lifeless bodies.

By Cheryl Ravelo

One year ago, my country was in mourning when former President Corazon Aquino died. Cory, as she is known, is revered as the mother of Philippine democracy because of her role in the overthrow of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

Today, I’m at Mass in the same school gymnasium where her body was laid for the public to pay their last respects. I’m with the same media people who covered the week-long mourning period and funeral. I’m photographing the same Aquino family, whom some call the Philippines’ Kennedys. There’s a crowd of supporters, gleaming in the yellow shirts and ribbons that were Cory’s trademark.

Unlike a year ago, the gym is not jam-packed. There were no queues of people from all walks of life, just families, friends and supporters gathered to attend the memorial service. Fewer people perhaps, but I feel the same feeling of unity and hope in democracy from the crowd.

The La Salle Greenhills gymnasium has another important connection with Cory. Here in 1986, an election tally showed Aquino leading Marcos in the snap elections he had called. When it was clear that Marcos had stolen the election, some generals mutinied, sparking the People Power revolution that drove the dictator into exile and Cory to the presidency. A blackboard with that vote tally from almost 25 years ago still hangs on one wall of the gym, joined this year by a bronzed ribbon loop that became a symbol both of the country’s liberation from dictatorship and Cory herself.

There is one other difference at the memorial service. Her only son, Benigno Aquino III, was a low-profile Senator when he delivered a eulogy last year. Today, he is President, largely because of her legacy.

Aquino told the memorial service that he thought what Cory represented to many Filipinos died with her. He was proven wrong as her passing sparked an outpouring of emotion, with the memory of her integrity and courage in standing up to Marcos after the assassination of her husband transforming this year’s election.
From nowhere, Benigno, known as Noynoy, became a front-runner for the presidency, winning the May election in a landslide.

After the service ended with the hymn of Bayan Ko (My Country), the crowd flashed the “laban” (fight) sign, made by shaping the index finger and thumb into an L, and I followed the family to Cory’s grave in Manila Memorial Park.

It was supposed to be a private event but to my surprise a lot of people were there. Some stayed to attend a short prayer with the family. Some wanted to catch a glimpse of the new president and some had their pictures taken at Cory’s grave.

There were many other tributes from Filipinos. In Quirino grandstand, where Benigno took his oath of office on June 30, a massive mosaic of her made up of 3,200 photos taken during her six-year presidency was unveiled.

Cory Aquino may have gone, but she remains remembered and honored and still has the power to inspire hope in the Philippines.