We need information. Any information at all at this point.
Our last contact with family in the Philippines was by phone yesterday evening, around 5:00pm MST. The government had already cut the power for safety reasons, and the cell phone batteries were on their last legs. Palm tress had started snapping off. We have upgraded the family of my wife to a cement construction home, with steel roof. Because of that there were around 100 people crowded into it for protection. From what she heard, my wife thought that all of them were crying from fear, and my understanding of the time line is that things got vastly worse in the next several hours.
I'm finally able to devote the rest of my day to seeking information, and one phrase from one news report captured my attention, the typhoon "scoured the northern tip of Cebu Island." Our house, almost our entire extended family is north of Bogo, on the northern most piece of the Island, and not a great distance due west of Tacloban City, Leyte. Because of that, some things reported last night indicated that the eye of the storm would move directly over our people.
There is no more direct contact, and will not be for, likely, some extended period of time. But Kossacks are everywhere. Kossacks, more often than not, collectively know everything. Anything, any morsel of information to (hopefully) help lift the shroud of doom. Please.
Thank you!!!
(And if someone is better with tags than me, that would be wonderful.)
3:41 PM PT: I'll post seperately a bit more of an update, but this will express some of our sense of relief. Modern technology is amazing. My wife is on the cell phone right now. She has a niece married to a guy in Texas, and they built similar to us, and on a piece of family land close to ours. As of now, there are only two houses left standing in that entire part of the small town of Medellin. And, gratefully, all of the neighbors for some distance had sheltered in one of the two, so no one close to us may have died. Also, we just sent them money for a fifty pound bag of rice the other day so no one will go hungry in that area for a day or two. After that, the word is, the area is waiting food shipments, with nothing being available for sale today. That still leaves many extended family exposed variously around that part of the island, and many more reports that we need to receive.