The page is not really a newsletter but, instead, simply information about the Tropical Storm Sendong (Washi) that hit our city of Cagayan De Oro and Love Mae's home city of Iligan on the 16th December 2011. 

Despite being local photographers here we chose not to take any images of the immediate effects of the storm. There was so much destruction, loss of life and suffering that we felt it was inappropriate and insensitive to stand around taking pictures. 

However, a few days have now passed and the amazingly resilient nature of the wonderful Filipino people is evident as smiles begin to appear and surviving children play among the debris in a much changed landscape. 

We visited Balulang where I had previously considered establishing my slalom kayak training site back in May/June. As with other plans for our new life here, we did not rush around and chose to take our time in getting to know the place. How wise we were. The flood destroyed so much in Balulang and had I built a course, suspended gates, built a boat store and classroom/clubhouse, all of it and all my equipment would now be swept out to sea. 

We took some iPhone images and videos of the area yesterday (21st) where I had planned to set up the training ground. Compare these with the ones taken and displayed in a previous newsletter and you will see the way the force of the water, and the stones and debris in it, has changed the landscape. 

The water rose so very high. Look back at me riding my motorbike over the rickety rope bridge. That was swept away by the flood. The people in my earlier images crossing that bridge all lived on Puntod Island at the other end of the bridge. The entire island was submerged and it was only possible to survive if you climbed the smooth, branchless trunk of a coconut tree that remained standing until you were rescued by helicopter. I am unsure how many of those lovely people did that. And worse still, I never will. 

The river deposited so much stone downstream of Palaez Bridge that when the water returned to it's normal level (just the next day!) the main river flow was seen to be flowing lady of Puntod Island instead of right. This means the ideal small flow that I had expected to use for training new paddlers has become  twice as powerful and is no longer suitable. 

Palaez Bridge is our get-out point when we kayak down on our white water runs. While Oneal was going back to the get-in to get the truck, I usually spoke with the people who lived under the bridge. I hope April and her family had time to move to higher ground but, again, I will never know. 

Looking upstream a few hundred metres from Palaez Bridge was  the mecano style bridge that carried a large water pipe delivering fresh water from the reservoir to the city. This was very high and it's amazing to imagine this being washed away. But it was. This added insult to injury as, aside from taking away the water supply to a large area of the city, all the water from the reservoir was then added to the flood water. The pipe was previously buried underground and visible only on the bridge but you can see a large section of it now exposed on the right side of the picture. There was a wooded area for paintballing games on the left side of the same picture where Love Mae and I visited a while back but, apart from 3 trees, this has been replaced with a rocky area that changes the flow of the river. 

The two spillways now feature powerful hydraulics (stoppers) even at low water so when the river runs a little higher, there will just be a straight run of slalom-unusable standing waves. I was envisaging using the coconut trees to suspend gate lines but all these have been laid low by the debris strewn floodwater. 

We visited a new subdivision further downstream where the first pictures of me standing in the river were taken when we arrived here. To date, only a clubhouse has been built and completed and we sat in there discussing plot values. All were sold fronting the river of course but I was concerned how low the land was and I asked if it flooded. I was told it was not expected to flood and thought this was not possible at all. The clubhouse was submerged in the flood. The only reason it was still standing wad because coconut trees upstream acted as a strainer catching a lot of debris that would have swept it away. It was, however, totally destroyed inside of course. 

I found a family photo album in the debris downstream of Balulang. It was in great condition inside the mud covered cover and perfectly dried in the hot sun. I could neither leave it there nor take it away and discard it. I took it home thinking maybe from the images I could trace the owner online (school names evident with graduation images etc). If it was mine, I would like it back or at least my family to have it. It may be a pointless exercise but if it finds it's way back to the family, I will be thrilled and am sure they will be too. It's a small way to try and help but really it is so difficult to help at all. 

I will maybe upload some more images in time but they are likely to be river/flood/ kayak related rather than about the tragedy itself. I just do not feel right uploading images of other people's misery. That's what the media do. I do not.