On Nov. 7, Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda in Philippines) hit Leyte Island and slammed into the city of Tacloban, (a city of over 200,000 people), just on the coast.

Ty-phoon   Haiyan is the most powerful typhoon to hit land on record. Tacloban was completely devastated. Many fishermen had built shacks on the shore as housing for their families. These were the first to go, and following the nearly 200 mph winds came the ocean surge that flooded the entire city up to 20 feet in depth.  

All structures were carried away in the flood and at minimum were leveled to the ground. The surviving structures were mostly of commercial concrete construction, but still the flood damage there was extensive, too. Thousands lost their lives in this disaster due to the city being in the direct path of the typhoon when it peaked in its velocity and power, but one pair of lucky twins survived, and this is their story.

On the evening just before the typhoon landed in Tacloban City, a grandmother came from Samar Island to ask her son if she could take the twin girls home with her because she feared they would be hurt or worse when the typhoon landed. Their father (a fisherman by trade) refused to allow the girls to leave as they were his and his wife’s only children. No one really could know exactly where the typhoon would hit, and it may be that the father thought his children could be in harm’s way on Samar Island just as much as on Leyte Island, so the decision was made the girls would stay with the parents and the grandmother slept over the night with her son and his family.

The twins, 8 years old, slept in late the next morning when suddenly they were awakened by wind and water crashing into their little homemade cottage on the very edge of the ocean. The house was almost instantly torn away by the wind and the angry seawater booming onto the land pushed by the 200 mph winds of Yolanda. The girls screamed and scrambled to hang on to something, and they made it to a tall tree and climbed and climbed until they were in the tree canopy and they held on. The big tree began to be torn apart by the winds and branches came crashing down on top of the girls, but they clung for dear life (for an eternity it seemed) until the wind subsided and water receded back into the ocean from whence it came.

When the girls opened their eyes all they saw was water crashing throughout Tacloban City and nothing was standing, only debris floating. Not even a tree was left standing, save the sole tree they clung to for dear life. Their world was entirely gone. They stayed there for hours and hours, not really aware of how long they were up in that tree. When the winds moved on over towards the western part of Leyte Island and Ormoc City, the water in Tacloban began to recede back into the ocean revealing the blank now flattened landscape with no recognizable structures or roads, just debris where once stood a city. Seagoing cargo ships were now perched inside the city having been carried there by the ocean surge and deposited where they now sat.

As the twins clung to the tree, they moved the leaves away and looked down. On the ground lay their grandmother, drowned in the water, about 20 feet from the tree. She lay beside a vehicle. They saw dead bodies everywhere they looked, but there was no father or mother calling for them. Only the grandmother who came to try and take the girls to Samar Island for safety was remaining, but she was now dead. The girls climbed down from the safe haven of that lone standing tree and returned to earth to search for their mother and father. Their bodies were not found.

In the first few days after the  storm the girls wandered alone with no one but themselves. Small and only 8 years old, they ate found scraps for food and slept anywhere they could lay down and be out of sight. When the relief lines began to form the little twin girls tried to stay in the line moving up towards the front to get some relief food and water, but the crowd was not in any kind of civil order, and angry pushing and shoving and fighting were breaking out all around them. They were injured by bigger people pushing them out of the way and there was no one to look out for them or to protect these tiny girls from the mad frantic mob, all of them trying to get food and water.

Finally, after a few days of struggling for survival, they were not having much success in the relief lines, and when they searched and searched for their parents they found only more and more dead bodies all over in the area which once was their home. The tiny twin girls decided to move on down the highway on foot towards another town and try to find some help.

For three days and nights the girls walked and walked, begging for bits of food here and there from strangers who themselves were barely surviving. Yet, even in this aftermath of the storm, a few kindly people gave the girls  a few scraps for food. They slept on the side of the road or in the jungle wherever they could find a place where no eyes were on them. The journey from Tacloban City to Ormoc City is over 65 miles on the highway. They continued on their journey through various little villages and small towns until they came into Ormoc City, where they found some success in obtaining food and water by begging or scrounging when they could avoid the bigger people who were stronger.

For their sleeping they found various places in the city parks to sleep, or in the jungle areas where no one could watch them or prey upon them. The girls survived like this for four and a half months in Ormoc City until one day in their walk around the city they came upon a newly opened market operated by survivors themselves of the storm. Fortunately for Ormoc City on the western side of  Leyte Island, the damage to this city was not as severe as it was in Tacloban and although there were casualties, they numbered in the tens instead of the thousands as in Tacloban.

When the people I know who own and operate the little rice market met the twins, they gave them food and water and asked the girls to tell them a little about what happened to them. After a while, as the twins told their story and ate, my people decided to take in these girls and provide food and shelter for them until a further search could be made for their parents. But for now, they are safe and protected by the 30 people in the group I am helping, and we are all thankful to God that these tiny twin girls were found by God-fearing good people who will keep them safe and nourished.

In the months following the storm destruction of Tacloban, several groups of people and several organizations have come into the city to provide help and food and water to the survivors. It has only been not quite five months now since it happened, but the city is still much like a bombed-out scar on the earth and no real progress has been made to bring order and prosperity back. This rebuilding process will take years, maybe even decades. The Philippines government is moving  towards restoration, but it is slow.

For now, this is the first story of the events that happened to these twin girls who survived a deadly typhoon in the ruined city of Tacloban, on the island of Leyte, in the island nation of the Philippines, and now begin a new life together with a new family.

Dean Freeman is a resident of Lakeside.