What I love about the Philippines: Indestructible Houses

First off I just want to apologize for not writing about the things I love for the longest time, and now back by popular demand is another issue of “What I love about the Philippines” and this time in line with the hurricane and typhoon season it’s about how strong Filipino houses are compared to American Houses.

Let me say sorry first to what happened to the U.S. houses that were affected by Hurricane Katrina and now it seems that Hurricane Rita is next. Now on with the topic, what’s with our houses? I mean we’ve been through a lot of typhoons more than the U.S. getting hit by hurricanes but yet our houses are still standing from such beatings. Ang galing diba? And the best thing about it, no anarchy from our fellow country men not even after the floods that occurred during and after a typhoon. Did you see what happened in New Orleans? Chaos, rape, stealing, and whatever describes a sort of end of the world scenario. You don’t see none of that back here in the good ol Philippines.

Okay so maybe people would say “Nah, hurricane Katrina was far worse than any Philippine typhoon”. Let me just say not really and let me explain why. Let me focus on the typhoons that I myself witnessed but before doing so I just want to tell you that typhoons and hurricanes are just the same but from different sources. A typhoon originates from the Pacific Ocean while a hurricane comes from the Atlantic Ocean and such.

With that out of the way let me compare Katrina to a super typhoon that I witnessed in the Philippines, I can’t say typhoon Anding because that happened in 1981 and I was just 2 years old (yes I was born 1979 no kidding!) but another one similar to it that happened in 1995(Sweet 16 for me!) which was typhoon Rosing. Moving on to comparisons Rosing was listed at signal number 4 with a top speed of 260kph while hurricane Katrina was listed at category 5 with a top speed of somewhere in 160-170mph (165-180kph). It ain’t that far diba? Not to mention a comparison between the most powerful country in the world to that of a third…. excuse me ‘developing’ country.

But I’m not generalizing on a comparison of powerful storms but pretty much every single one of them, hurricanes in general only occur between June to November while typhoons can occur once every month. So imagine the damage that our houses take every year.

With this in mind, I just want to say good job to our carpenters and construction workers for a job well done even if it did take forever. Like my Atenean friend use to say to me “Keep it up the good work!”, my hats off to you guys. Okay lang na magatal basta matibay. No super typhoon or flooding can put a stop to our indestructible houses.

In the end, house is just a house and is nothing with a family, it is truly amazing how resilient Filipinos are in such catastrophic situations just like in the song Noypi by Bamboo “mahirap nga ang buhay nakuha mo pang ngumiti, pinoy ka nga…astig!!” To our American friends, we maybe weak in a lot of aspects but strong in our hearts and that you may want to learn from us and other nations who took a beating unleashed by nature or any hardships. We support you guys and we know you can rebound from this let’s just be grateful to God that we all survived.