These are flood victims. They had a house along the river behind them here, and then the wind and rain and floods came. They ran to higher ground, and escaped.
But now that the water has receded and they have returned, only to find everything gone- their house, their furniture, appliances, all washed away as though they never existed. Nothing is left but a ruined set of shelves on the empty ground.
They all react differently, depending on their ages. The little boy in the background is playing happily under the trees. He’s too young to understand what happened. The little girl in the foreground in the tank-top is looking around in numb surprise that nothing she knows is there anymore.
Only the gray-haired woman holding her head in her arms seems to understand what this means for her and for her family. She has probably seen this happen before. And you can see that she knows it will happen again.
But this picture is not from last week- it’s from the flood that happened along this same river two years ago. Perhaps this family recovered and rebuilt their house with new furniture and appliances, only to have it all washed away again in the typhoon last Saturday.
Typhoons are rare in this part of Negros, and so people are relatively unprepared for them when they do happen. If they live beside a river, or in a gulley in the hills, their property and even their lives are at risk from the whims of wind and rain when they do come, and as the climate changes and becomes more violent and unpredictable, their risk increases, year by year.
They can’t be blamed for rebuilding on the same ground that flooded last time- It’s the only land they have. Where else will they build? Where else can they go? But it’s only fair to warn those who have yet to buy and build to choose their locations carefully, away from the paths of wind and water.
The Philippines is a relatively benign place to live, even for ordinary people with little wealth. The horrors that plague other countries are absent here: Blizzards, droughts, famines and violent revolutions don’t happen. Even the poorest can usually find food, water, and shelter enough to survive.
But no place is free from natural disasters, and the natural and persistent enemies here are wind and rain.