Tim Clark, ETI’s Director of International Sales, was attending the annual meeting of the FTTH APAC Council in Manila when Typhoon Haiyan struck the island nation. Manila was spared, but other areas were destroyed. We asked Tim, who also serves as Vice Chair of the Planning, Communication and Events Committee for the FTTH APAC Council, to write a blog about the bravery of the people and the rescue efforts that he saw first hand, as well as to report on how the telecommunications industry is recovering.

A Premonition?

The original plans for the general meeting/workshop were to hold the event in Cebu - a holiday spot in the Central Islands. I did not have a good feeling about this location – call it intuition or a gut feeling. Even though I am Vice Chair of the Planning, Communication and Events Committee, I privately decided not to attend.

However, after voicing my opinion to the council about 45 days before the event, they decided to change the venue to Manila. It hasn’t escaped any of us now how fortunate that decision was, Cebu was hit pretty hard by the storm.

Once the venue was changed, I changed my mind about attending and asked if we could sponsor and present Overture GIS at the workshop. I arrived in Manila on Wednesday night -- the Typhoon hit the Central Islands on Friday afternoon and evening.

 The Storm Hits

The day of the storm, I met with our Philippine business partners Pastels, a 30-year telecommunications leader that provides technical, project management and marketing expertise for NGN migration in the Philippines. They had actually taken me out to dinner after the workshop and Overture GIS demo. We were eating at an outdoor cafe when the worst of the storm hit. As the Super Typhoon came closer to Manila, large bands of clouds seemed to break away from the eye, each time leaving a gap that opened up over Manila. The wind damage was very minimal in the capital city, and we experienced hard rain for only about an hour.

In other parts of the island, nation some of the highest winds ever recorded destroyed homes, businesses and even storm shelters full of people. Five days after the storm hit Tacloban, I spoke to Merina, one of the staff members of my hotel. She told me that 7 of the 9 members of her family living in the Tacloban area had been killed in the storm. The two survivors had to bury the other 7 family members on their property, as no official help had come yet. I know this is impossible to imagine, the extreme devastation both physical and emotional. And this was just one of many stories I was told by taxi drivers, staff workers and others.

And of course, all communication lines in the hard hit areas were destroyed. A better way to describe it is to imagine an area bigger than Georgia that contains over 11 million people has lost all fixed line infrastructure. A complete above-ground loss, according the AT&T of the Philippines, the PLDT.

The Relief Efforts

I am so proud of ETI for being continually generous in these types of situations. We decided to give $2000 through Hilton Hotels who allowed us to choose the charity and then doubled our donation. We chose to give to Doctors without Borders, a heroic organization that sends medical professionals and supplies into areas where people need it most.

My wife and I are particularly interested in protecting and helping the children who have been left behind in this tragedy. Unfortunately, those involved in child slavery/human trafficking/child prostitution swarm to areas like this to take advantage of these children. There are several relief organizations dedicated to rescuing these innocent children and I added the links to the end of this article.

In conclusion, I feel very blessed that my family and I were not in the path of this storm, and I am in awe of the bravery and strength shown by the survivors and the volunteers who are helping them. The rebuilding process will take years, but the resilience of the Filipino people and the helping hands of the global relief effort will make it happen.

To donate:

http://www.destinyrescue.org/aus/

http://www.globalgiving.org/hhonors/?wt.mc_id=CMEM_BSg8iSB82cf$PW

Photo credit: Exciting Cebu -- Rusty Ferguson via photopin