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(here's the entire article, split in two parts)

LOOKING BACK
As of this writing, it's now a week after the tragic events that unfolded after Tropical Storm Washi, known locally as "Sendong". It's interesting to note that this weather disturbance was never declared as typhoon but just a tropical storm or TS (more on this later). "Sendong" made landfall on the shores of Surigao province and brought a colossal amount of rainfall (over 180mm in some areas) over Northern Mindanao and Southern Visayas.

PRELUDE AND WARNING
In a way, I was somewhat directly affected by this event--my daughter lives in Cagayan de Oro City, right beside the Iponan river. This river is WEST of the much larger Cagayan de Oro river, but it too, overflowed and wrought devastation in the western parts of Cagayan de Oro city. The water level in the house she lives in rose up quickly to chest-level but she was able to head for safety. But they were indeed alerted of the possible events associated with a storm. I called them up a DAY BEFORE the tragic events and warned them that the storm had made landfall and was heading towards Cagayan de Oro. I also tried to contact other people re the TS, but had difficulty in reaching them, probably due to issues with cellsites during storms and other weather disturbances. But as early as Wednesday, December 14, 2011, when I saw the PAGASA report on national TV about where the storm's path would cross, I was already up on my toes about it. I confirmed the PAGASA prediction by checking the US NAVY's Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) website (http://www.usno.navy.mil/JTWC/ targe...navy.mil/JTWC/ ) and also scanning the SSEC MTSAT weather satellite images of South East Asia region (http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/geo/in...m_method=flash). And there it was, brewing rapidly, and what startled me most about it was, on Friday when I looked at it again the TS was already bearing down on Surigao...


...and it was then when I realized how potentially dangerous this storm could be--even though the storms winds weren't typhoon-level, the fact that it was moving across the map rapidly was alarming, and I even noted this disconcerted feeling on my FB status page on Friday afternoon with the words, "Looks like this sucker is going to hit us right smack in the middle." And boy did it hit, with devastating results.

Though I was never able to monitor what was actually happening in the two cities on Friday night, I first realized the extent of the calamity when I received a call from Cagayan de Oro, stating that my daughter's house was getting flooded right that minute at around 6:00 AM. I was immediately relieved that, because of my warning the day before, they were somewhat prepared for it and that my daughter was already safe. Without my warning, the situation could have been worse. Then slowly, on TV and across internet news links and discussion fora, grim news reports of the greater tragedy--the loss of lives in both cities, were steadily coming in.

SEEING THE CARNAGE FIRST HAND
Concerned about my daughter's condition, I wanted to go immediately to Cagayan de Oro so I could fetch her, but I had been advised to hold off any travelling across the devastated areas, because I was still unsure of road conditions and accessibility. I had to wait a full day, and on Sunday, I went to Cagayan de Oro, via Iligan City, and fetched my daughter. All along the route, scenes of chaos and destruction a-plenty, especially in one of the worst hit areas in Iligan City, Barangay Hinaplanon. I am quite familiar with the main Mandulog River bridge, because I passed by it daily while I was still working in Iligan City a few years ago. My jaw dropped when I saw that the geography around the banks of the river, esp. on the western side of the bridge, had radically been altered--I almost couldn't recognize it due to the drastic changes the massive volume of water wrought on the river's banks. The main bridge itself didn't escape damage, and the second mandulog bridge on the east side was in fact, totalled. I also couldn't help but notice, strewn across the bleak debris-ridden landscape, huge logs, some even looked as if they have already undergone some kind of processing (i.e they look square/rectangular if you cut them cross section), in various surreal positions (i.e. I saw one that seemed to hit a huge truck that overturned right next to the highway, and I saw some lodged beside a small house that was clearly carried away by the strong current). Further on, right beside Bayug Island, yet another scene of utter devastation--houses totally wrecked and vehicles tossed about like toys. This whole scene was repeated when the bus arrived at Iponan--I wasn't able to get a glimpse of the damage that the main Cagayan de Oro river, because I was only there to fetch my daughter. But even the Iponan River's wrath could be seen in the surrounding area--fields and roads blanketed with a thick brown coat of mud.

THE CRISIS MAP
Upon arriving in MSU Campus, Marawi City, I was contacted by Christian Najibrihani T. Riconalla, who was asking for help with an idea he had--it was a map-based crisis reports web page, using USHAHIDI as platform. At that point I wasn't even sure if I had a decent web connection and the power situation in MSU Marawi was also not stable, so I told him I perhaps could initially help out by contacting web programmers and sys admins that I knew, including Dante D. Dinawanao and Thabet-Abbas C. Burias. By midnight, I was finally able to go online and the initial framework to the site was already up, so I began contributing by adding initial pins/tags on the map on areas that needed attention.


By 2:00 AM that morning, the interim staff (it grew overnight to around 10 people) felt that it was time for the site to go "live", so it went up and we started sharing the link to our contacts. You can see the results of that effort here:

http://http://www.oneforiligan.com

Incidentally, I believe the crisis map team chose the OneForIligan name because the Iligan Bloggers Society already had a campaign with that name, and Fleire Castro together with the IBS were already doing quick response initiatives as early as DAY 1 of the calamity, and so to express unity with this effort, Christian used that as the domain name for the site. Since Day 2, the admins of the crisis map site, together with contributors have been updating the map and have been adding any form of information that could help in the aid/relief efforts going on in Iligan City. Since then, we have been trying to give access to the map's database and data layers so that other crisis maps and other international organizations can utilize the info on the map so that they could help even remotely in the aid/relief campaign.

(continued in Part II, click here https://www.istorya.net/forums/entry.php?b=1549)