| Lourdes' Home Village (near Dumaguete City, Negros Island) She visited in early September 2002 |
| The house we built for Lou's mom (for $3500 incl labor!) before our wedding last winter. It's now the best house in that village... Lou visited there just after our USA trip, for some family-business. She was just in time to witness a horrific flash-flood there! She got no photos of the actual flood tho, just the aftermath. |
| Other parts of this village were not so lucky. The central basketball court and meeting-plaza was ruined (left). The house shown on the right, typical of houses there, had part of its front wall ripped off and other walls left damaged. Many families lost all their pigs, chickens or water-buffalo and are left destitute. 6 people drowned as they were swept away. Lou's mom only lost 2 out of her 12 pigs, and otherwise came out fine. She credits the protection of Our Lady of Lourdes, to whom she prays daily at her own garden-shrine. Me, i'm just glad that we had this wall built just in time! |
| A week after the Sept 7th flood, mud is a foot higher against the wall (that we just built in July!) than before. Debris is still laying where the waters left it. |
| This shot of the side of the house shows how close it is to the stream, which is sadly prone to flash-flooding due to excessive logging in the jungle-mountains upstream. During a tropical monsoon downpour, the water can rise 6 feet in 5 minutes, spread a torrent over the entire valley floor. There is usually no warning... it may not even be raining down in this village. |
| Big logs and brush make temporary dams upstream, and when they burst, the flash-flood torrents carry the floating logs as high-speed battering-rams that can kill people & livestock and destroy flimsy houses. Here you can see some logs that tried but failed to penetrate our wall. The cooking-shelter (visible grass-roof in left photo) and the pigsty (to it's left) remained safe enough. |
| Lou's little niece and nephew, cute to-the-max! |