Sagbayan – The Epicenter

Today Mery, Laura, Cody, Nickolas, Monet, Yoyoy and I traveled to Sagbayan, the epicenter of the earthquake.  It was a startling scene.  Not because of the damage from the earthquake, but from the fact that so much of the damage is still there.  It has been 3 months since the earthquake and it looked like it happened yesterday.  There were a lot of people moving rubble but it was in very small amounts.  I didn’t see very many pieces of large equipment like bucket loaders or track hoe’s.  They just don’t exist which means every piece of rubble will be removed by hand.  At the municipal building, there must have been 200 people there removing about 30 pounds of rubble in teams of two.  As we moved around the downtown area to witness the destruction, we got smiles and ‘hellos’ from everybody.  Laura and Mery took lots of pictures and interviewed a few people that were affected by the earthquake.  People have adapted to the situation and take everything in stride.

We moved into the town of Loon, which was also heavily damaged.  We stopped at the Barangy hall to watch a Christmas celebration (Yes, they celebrate Christmas from October – February!).  While there, we found Pastor Ryan who has been interpreting for us and runs the youth group here in our barrio.  As we were loading to leave, Pastor Felix, Along’s brother found us and we had a great conversation with him.  They were there to share God’s love and give out gifts to the children of the barrio.  He is a neat guy and I enjoyed the short time we had together.

As we waited for the girls to finish talking to people, we watched this tricycle load up with kids and take off.  It had 14 people inside!  We also walked down to a home where the chainsaw guys were hard at work.  I have never seen three of them working at one time.  As usual, it was quite loud and nobody had hearing protection!  At least two of them had jeans on though so I think they will be fine.  After a two hour drive home in the rain we finally made it home for dinner.  Another long day comes to a close.  Only one full day left – seems like we just got here yesterday.