Typhoons outside Philippines (ahooy.com)
Debate has ensued about “crying wolf” and the overhyped hurricane coverage. Here’s an example of the other extreme:
In the fall of 1989 I was living at a basic hotel near the airport, outside Manila. I was executive producer of a language video, one of the first anywhere to use interactive DVR. The army was footing the bill, and I was on a tight budget.
Life in Manila was not easy then. The dictator Fernando Marcos had recently been deposed, and Cory Acquino was now head of state. I visited the Marcos’ estate and saw Imelda’s closets filled with thousands of shoes and elaborate dresses. The bedroom walls depicted Marcos as a sexy Adam. In the middle of the room was a portable toilet he had used in his old age. The Philippinos who visited the palace were laughing at that reality.
During our month stay, our American crew was living in a hotel with no tv or radio. Electricity went on and off regularly. One dim light made it hard to read. After work I usually fell into bed, exhausted.
One morning I heard a sustained howling outside my window, sounding much like an off-key kazoo. I opened the drapes and saw that the trees were bending, and that sheets of rain were pelting horizontally. The ground was littered with branches.
I rushed downstairs to the coffee shop where people mentioned in an off-handed way that we were in a typhoon.
“In a typhoon.” Just like that. I had no advance warning, had heard nothing and neither did most of the people in that hotel. Nobody had mentioned it to us.
The mood during the typhoon was quiet, not unlike most other breakfasts where groggy folks were awakening, eating their cereal and drinking coffee.
That day I was scheduled to video a segment at a bank. All was set weeks before, including location and actors. We were on a tight budget, and losing a day would have thrown the rest of the schedule off.
In the hotel lobby I noticed that activity seemed pretty normal. There was no electricity, but daily brownouts were common most days.
A group of Hong Kong tourists boarded a bus to go sightseeing, howling wind and torrential rain be damned. Others were entering cars, readying for business meetings in Manila.
At first I was shocked. I grew up in Miami, where hurricanes meant boarding up and staying indoors. Even back then, coverage was constant and warnings were frequent.
But here I was in Manila. I thought about it a bit. I saw our van under the portico, and decided “when in Rome...” Our actors and crew drove to the bank to shoot the video.
The traffic was worse than usual, with traffic lights out and trees down. But we rode out the storm indoors, shooting the video. When I looked at the scene, behind the blinds on the bank windows you see the trees whipping about in the typhoon.
Villages were out of power for months. Destruction was evident. But we got our job done.
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Comments
I only have one question: did you manage to score a pair of Imelda's shoes?
And Sally, I was tempted but did not swipe even one pair of Jimmy Choo's.
look love--- w w w - jordan forworld - c o m
believe you will love it.
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love good go.
(actually, come to think of it, I have a similar story on an errant missile launch from Gaza to Israel ... a near-daily occurrence in a town called Sderot. ) On assignment, getting the job done.
Thanks for yet another great piece.
Rated
It wasn't until I left the U.S. for the first time that I realized how different our country seems when it comes to personal safety and laws.
While I appreciate the concern, it does feel as if we are treated like children with all of our laws and mandatory evacuations and such...unfortunately, it seems not in the name of keeping people safe, but more in the name of protection from lawsuits.