Faces of Death in the Philippines: Natural Disasters

The Philippines is no stranger to disaster. It is an archipelago that is situated in the Pacific Ring of Fire and is always in the path of at least 20 typhoons each year. Given how accustomed we already are of typhoons, you’d think that Filipinos will be more prepared but until now, our attitude toward getting memorial plans in advance or getting in touch with a funeral home in the Philippines still remains on the list of the last things we’d rather leave until too late.

Especially for rural communities, the toll that a typhoon may take is greater. Super Typhoon Yolanda took the lives of more than 6000 people, most of them from the Visayas region in 2013 and, up September 13, 2016, it was considered as the most violent storm in world history. The tragedy was so immense that, even after a few months, the smell of dead bodies still haunted survivors and more bodies continue to drift ashore.




But that isn’t to say that NCR is invulnerable—tropical depression Ondoy (2009) killed 464 people, taking the urban area by surprise. Although less people died, the unprecedented Habagat of 2013 destroyed the livelihood of so many people, most affected of them were small businesses.

When it came to life plan and funeral homes talks in the Philippines, we are more than prudent to keep quiet but amazingly, in the light of communal suffering, after the panic has subsided, the Filipino spirit remains resilient.

I guess it is safe to say that, when we face death as a nation, we are also more keen to standing my each other to see the future through.