Memories of Ruping

November is still remembered by many among older generations of Cebuanos as the month super typhoon Ruping hit the island, specifically on November 13, 1990. Memories of Ruping came back more vivid than before this year as super typhoon Rolly barreled into southern Luzon last Sunday, leaving a wake of devastation yet to be fully seen.

This prompted my college classmate Jeanette Malinao to write on her Facebook wall about her family’s experience with Ruping. I’m not surprised that her essay found its way to The FREEMAN’s Facebook page the other day, as I’ve always known Jeanette as a superb writer of our batch. She was a member of the “Bad Girls Circle” in UP Cebu Masscom that formed in the rigors of the Journalism classes of the cool and most respectable, but academically exacting and “badder” professor, Mayette Q. Tabada.

Jeanette wrote about her experience in Liloan: “‘Pun-i pa! Kuwang pa na!’ (Is that all you got? Give us more!) my angry Papa screamed at heavens, challenging the typhoon to do more, puslan man. We all cried in grief. He wanted to run outside, maybe to chase the wind away, but Lola held him back inside the house.

“Morning came and everything cleared. We lost our house, barely visible under the leaves, and all our stuff were buried under branches of the fallen mango tree. Neighbors and relatives brought sundang (bolo) to help get the stubborn branches out of the way so we could salvage whatever we could. I can still feel the abysmal pain I felt then at seeing my usually strong Papa looking so forlorn and defeated.

We ate noodles, sardines, miswa, and monggos for weeks, relying on aid to survive.”

Down south in Metro Cebu, the epicenter of Ruping’s devastation, there was I, a 14-year old kid who took comfort in the thought that we were safe in the house because our parents will do everything to keep it that way. My only worry was losing the makeshift tree house I and my cousin built months earlier at the top of a santol tree.

When the eye of the storm arrived, there was the expected calm. My father warned us that the howling winds will soon come back, but we briefly went outside to survey the damage at the residential compound. The typhoon left no trace of the tree house as the winds felled the santol tree where it sat.

As the eye of the storm came to pass, the howling winds came back with a vengeance. All radio stations were silenced; the last voice I heard was I think that of broadcaster Cerge Remonde warning his listeners that his broadcast could go off the air anytime soon. With no mobile phones and no internet yet at that time, Cebu was cut off from the rest of the country.

Electricity and phone lines were out for at least a month, if I remember it right, and so was the piped water connection for a few weeks. The aftermath of the storm saw poor, middle class, and rich residents in the Banilad area lining up for free water at the manual communal water pump along A.S. Fortuna Street.

My memories of Ruping were not all bad. Really, what stuck in my mind was the bayanihan spirit that prevailed at that time. Family friends travelled near and far to personally check on each other’s situation in the aftermath. Cebu’s leaders rallied the people to a quick recovery. I could still remember that part of a popular melody at that time: “We will rise to the top of the heap, we are Cebu!”