Two sad events happened in succession on December 16th.
The first was that my wife's cousin's Swiss husband had died of a heart attack earlier that day.
He was a very jovial and friendly man who had stayed with my wife when she was working in Lapu-Lapu City, and he was also a witness at our wedding.
He was in his late 70s, but he was a very energetic person, so it was a shame.
He was a very energetic person and I would like to see him again when I visit Cebu.
My wife's cousin's family relied on him, and I know many of them are sad to hear of his passing.
The other was super typhoon ODETTE, which hit Cebu Island that night.
Although it was not reported in Japan at all, the Japanese Meteorological Agency announced that the maximum wind speed was 270 km per hour. It was a fierce typhoon, with winds of 75 meters per hour in Japanese terms.
The Visayas region, where Cebu Island is located, has been severely damaged by this typhoon.
The situation of human casualties is still unclear due to the disruption of telecommunications.
From the few YouTube videos that are available, we can see that many houses have collapsed in Cebu City, and utility poles have fallen down all over the place.
The city of Toledo, where my wife's parents live and my children live, is on the west side of Cebu Island, so we haven't received any information, but I think it has been severely damaged.
The Visayas region is experiencing a massive power outage, so communication is also cut off.
Facebook is the main way for Filipinos to communicate with each other, but since we can't communicate, we can't be reached at all.
According to the Cebu Daily News, it is expected to take about a month for the electricity supply in Cebu City to return to normal.
However, considering the state of infrastructure in the Philippines, I fear that it may be several months before the entire island of Cebu is supplied with electricity.
Our biggest problem at the moment is that we can't send money. To be precise, we can send money from Japan, but we can't receive cash in the Philippines while the communication is down.
It's just before Christmas and my daughter's birthday is next week and we are in a difficult situation.
If it weren't for the new Corona, I could fly out immediately, but that's not possible.
Anyway, now we have to wait for the communication situation to recover.
