Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed
Then comes the thunder a'rumbling,
Then comes the lightning flaring,
And then downpours the heavy rain.
But the lightning is my torch, the thunder beats
the cadence of my steps,
And for my walking cane the rain…!
– Traditional Ivatan poem
All over Batanes, the signs came days before the storm. The residents of the northernmost Philippine archipelago — even the ones without radios or televisions — could sense the typhoon’s approach. The hermit crabs began scuttling away from the beach. The moon looked full, but dull. Old folks complained of reawakened aches and pains in their joints. In Uyugan, a coastal town of 1,200 people, a friend called fisherman Alex Ibay with an urgent piece of news: The water buffalo was out.
Ibay, 49, remembered his grandfather’s simple warning about the islands’ severe weather: “Just be ready.” He taught Ibay to look daily toward the promontory called Disiay south of Uyugan, where the island’s main throughway, National Road, wrapped around a cliff. If a lone water buffalo looked out from Disiay over the water — forgetting, for a time, its grazing and its herd — a destructive typhoon was on its way to Batanes, one that would require the islanders’ best preparation. If the water buffalo was not there — if his friends were mistaken — Ibay could relax.
Ibay looked out toward Disiay on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. There it was: a brown water buffalo, unmoving, staring toward the ocean as if in vigil.
Ibay rushed to his motorcycle and drove north to the capital, Basco, the only town in Batanes with internet cafés. There he read that three days earlier, some 1,500 miles north, scientists at the Japan Meteorological Agency already had begun to watch a tropical depression roiling 800 miles east of Manila, the Philippines' capital. The weather forecast, sent by the JMA to the Philippine weather service, PAGASA, confirmed what Ibay suspected: An ominous blue and red mass spun west toward Batanes. Its international name was Usagi. PAGASA named the storm Odette.
The Philippines has long been at the heart of the Pacific’s typhoon belt. Now, with the warmest decade ever recorded in human history, the seas east of the archipelago have experienced the highest degree of sea level escalation in the world: 60 centimeters, or three times the global average. With more water at the ocean’s surface, pushed by stronger, hotter winds, typhoons are becoming more monstrous. By day's end, Typhoon Odette, which was rapidly intensifying, would be reclassified as a super typhoon.
Alex Ibay motorbiked from the internet café home to Uyugan. He and his fellow fishermen met near the port and agreed; they would bring their wooden fishing boats ashore, and, using the protective methods of their forebears, cover their hulls with the thick, heavy fronds of coconut leaves. Local officers at Batanes’ branch of the National Council of Indigenous Peoples have given a name to the indigenous methods of reading the arrival of a storm, one passed down through generations: ethnometeorology.
The people of Batanes, like Ibay and his grandfather, are the Ivatans. The Ivatans rarely fear or deny the storm. They have built their lives around their preparation for nature’s unpredictability. They know how to read nature's messages and have minimized risk by building strong homes, always having a month’s worth of food on hand, and obeying commands to evacuate or remain inside for typhoon warnings. Their history and mind-set show that the people of Batanes are of the storm, shaped by the storm’s demands, rooted to their soil even as strong winds and rains buffet their fates. With lives made near unforgiving waters, Ivatans’ stories of unbelievable survival are far more common than unspeakable tragedies. For the Ivatan people, to die in a storm is so unnecessary, it’s nearly shameful.
That tradition of self-reliance is largely a product of the islands' sheer isolation. Only recently has Philippine Airlines begun flying to Basco once a day from Manila, and flights are frequently canceled due to severe weather. Fuel, imported food, and new clothes are triple the price they are elsewhere in the Philippines. To supply the islands with necessities, ships must pass through the Luzon Strait, where the biggest waves in the world form underneath the ocean’s surface.
“We are as one,” says William Agsunod, the mayor of Mahatao, a town in Batan, the archipelago's largest island. “We understand nature. Nature cannot live with us. We have to live with nature.”
As citizens around the world find themselves coping with more vicious and unpredictable weather, the centuries-old practices of the Ivatans offer modern lessons in disaster preparedness. While the rest of the Philippines — and the world — debate the practicality of adapting versions of the Ivatans’ best practices, the people of Batanes themselves may be growing away from the customs that have enabled them to survive for so long.
Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed
Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
Batanes appears on a map like tiny footprints making their way to Taiwan. One of the most remote archipelagos in the greater Philippine archipelago, it has a population a little under 17,000. It's a tropical Ireland by way of the Pacific: an undulating green, hilly, limestone-cliffed panorama — coastal grandeur in every shade of blue. The beauty of the oceanside commute from the capital of Basco to the southern towns of Batan Island defies all hyperbole. Small goats leap from rock to rock on the hillsides, some wearing sweaters; families of carabaos graze on cogon grass and regard passersby peacefully. Fishermen and farmers leave their doors unlocked; small children startle visitors by taking their hands and asking, respectfully, for the traditional blessings of their elders.
Justine Zweibel / BuzzFeed
According to the latest statistics, Batanes has one of the lowest crime rates of any province in the Philippines, and its physical landscape may be its Ivatans’ best law-enforcement method: “If you commit a crime here,” Mayor Agsunod says wryly, glancing toward the rough seas outside his office window, “there’s nowhere to run.”
Foil this with life in the Philippines' capital. Manila, 400 miles south, is a 12 million-person megalopolis, where residents live 3,400 times past its rate of sustainability. Most of the city’s paltry green space has been overtaken by private corporations, and scenes of poverty are matched only by surreal shows of wealth. Manileños often cultivate a self-protectiveness, a simmering fear about theft, car accidents, random crimes — cruel realities constructed by the country’s income inequality, overpopulation, and poor urban planning. In Batanes, visitors often shed their wariness. To leave the region is to mourn.
On Sept. 20, as Typhoon Odette approached, Batanes Congresswoman Henedina Abad was in Manila texting every official that the storm coming would be a strong one. Local Batanes leaders went town to town to perform the bandillo, a town-crying tradition from the days of Spanish control. They traveled to each town’s square, calling out for locals to gather and listen, making sure the citizens without televisions and radios knew what was coming. Residents readied their monthlong stores of canned goods and local food: sweet potatoes, dried fish, rice, sardines, corned beef. They secured their roofs with fishing nets and tied strong ropes around the walls of their homes. If they had the room, they brought their pigs, goats, and chickens inside with them; cows and carabaos would be heavy enough to withstand the outdoor gales. None of these measures were enshrined into law; everyone obeyed their memories and traditions. Around 2 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21, Abad’s iPhone woke her up. Versions of "Ma’am, please pray, the storm is here" buzzed in from different numbers, over and over.
In Uyugan, William John Nanud, 29, sat with his father and his wife in the house his overseas wages had helped them to furnish. He had returned home safely from a job in Afghanistan, where he’d taken shelter from missiles; he and his family prayed now against the assault of Odette. Jhing Umal was at Nanud’s side, pregnant with their first child. She clutched her belly as she listened to Odette’s wind in the dark morning hours. It did not seem to merely blow; this wind screamed from all directions. She was sure it signaled the end of the world. In Jhing's home region of Bicol, 500 miles south, storms less intense would kill untold numbers of people. "Don’t be scared,” he said. “Here in Batanes, a strong storm is normal.” They could not yet know that Super Typhoon Odette was the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful storm to hit Batanes in 25 years.
A local grocery store operates by candlelight.
Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed
A few streets down from Nanud, Alex Ibay settled into his storm routine. He was well-stocked with food. Ibay had anticipated the power would go out, so he readied his radio with batteries. While the storm exploded around him, he rested in his one-room, limestone home, a narrow, ancient plank of wood set in two holes across the doorframe for protection.
Decades ago he had slept on the wood floor next to his grandparents during storms, as was the Ivatan way with small children. Now he rested in his own bed. His black cat, Ming, kept him company, curling on an old blanket near his feet. He warmed his throat with Matador brandy and listened to his favorite American country singers, Tim McGraw and Dan Nelson. He listened, too, to Odette’s wind; whenever it slackened, he emerged from his room, struggled the few yards to his boats, and replaced the blown-off coconut leaves.
The tail and eye of Typhoon Odette moved through Batanes from Friday into Saturday, the 21st. In Ivana, the town just northwest of Uyugan, Narciso Cabas, a 68-year-old farmer, watched in disbelief across the street as the second story of the home he’d renovated only five months before was sucked into the sky. Odette’s winds blew from the north; his green, galvanized iron roof smashed to the National Road. Odette’s winds blew from the south; his home’s wood frame scattered like matchsticks. Before he ducked into a neighbor’s concrete and limestone home, Cabas watched the destruction in disgust. He had purchased his building materials from Manila, and nature had undone his home in hours.
The storm lingered until making its way toward China early Sunday. The city of Basco and surrounding villages were without power and water. Water pipes and bridges were demolished. Concrete roads washed away. The windows of Batan Island’s only air traffic control tower were blown out. The wind and rain measuring equipment of the local PAGASA weather station were ruined. The roads that remained were covered with fallen fruit trees: Local avocados, coconuts, and bananas would take years to grow back.
Congresswoman Henedina Abad reached Basco on Monday, Sept. 23, riding a Philippine Air Force C-130 military plane filled with food packs. She met with local officials to assess the aftermath. The storm reports calculated massive destruction: nearly $43 million USD in Batanes. One hundred and seventy-four houses were totally destroyed, largely made of inexpensive lumber and aluminum from Manila. The list of injuries? Three men, cut by flying glass and aluminum. None were knocked unconscious.
Odette held the title of 2013's largest storm to date until, in early November, even stronger Super Typhoon Haiyan would kill 6,000 Filipinos and displace many thousands more. After one of the strongest typhoons in the history of Batanes, no one went missing, and no one died.
Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed
In the Philippines’ brutal history, Batanes was the last region to be subdued. Dominican missionaries arrived in 1686, over a hundred years after the largest Philippine island, Luzon, where Manila would be built, had been colonized. The Spaniards did not like the Ivatan homes built of planks and boughs atop natural precipices in the mountains. The roofs of the precolonial homes were set low, for wind resistance. The average Dominican priest could not stretch his long legs in such structures, and the structures also abetted the tribal warfare that characterized early Ivatan life. So Spaniards forced every Batanes resident down to settlements on the coast for easier governing. They imposed Catholicism, the orders of the Spanish king, and large-scale limestone harvesting for the homes lining the coasts today. It was a mixed inheritance, as the results of colonization often are: The Ivatans lost their low-roofed settlements in the mountains, which were safer locations from storm surges and tsunamis. But they gained windproof, stone homes that would last centuries.
The limestone house is traditionally planned with walls a meter thick or more.
Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed
The limestone house is traditionally planned with walls a meter thick or more, depending on the wealth of its owner, and is built through the cooperation of the local community. The roof is a thick, woven net of cogon grass that can last for decades. No limestone home is ever built facing the north, the direction from which the wind typically roars strongest. The windows, equipped with tough wooden shutters, face the oceans at the east or west. The following centuries saw other invaders, other influences: a United States military installation after the Philippine–American War, a Japanese occupation during World War II, the Marcos dictatorship, and, now, modern democracy. The land has never been easy to till; the seas have always been rough to maneuver. But the Ivatans’ deep regard for nature’s offerings, and nature’s dangers, has remained throughout.
“Disaster preparation is not just a construction style or a choice in architecture,” says Dorian Merina, an American Fulbright scholar of Ivatan heritage. "It also means creating and maintaining a culture of resilience."
Electricity reached the most populated island, Batan, only in 1987; Sabtang and Itbayat nearby still have limited hours of electricity. The region’s biggest employer is the national government; no private industry can support the islands’ entire population yet. Government employees have second jobs as small-scale farmers and fishermen for their basic needs. There is no movie theater, no chain store, no fast food restaurant.
"Being so remote has certainly caused the people of Batanes hardship over the years," Merina continues, "but it has also meant that people had to choose cooperation, honesty, and integrity in order for the community to get through the current disaster, whether a typhoon, lack of food, or other problem. These qualities, developed over generations, are not always so easy to transfer.”
Florencio "Butch" Abad
Laurel Fantauzzo / BuzzFeed
Henedina and Florencio Abad have overseen Batanes for the past two decades. (It’s not unusual in the Philippines for congressional representation to be occupied largely by one family.) Henedina has served as the congresswoman of Batanes twice in the past 10 years; before that, Florencio was congressman from 1987 to 2004 (he is now budget secretary of the Philippines). Both earned their master's in public administration at Harvard University. The couple are known locally as Dina and Butch, and when they travel to Batanes, crowds gather to greet them and gift them with choice catches of bluefin tuna.
Henedina Abad
Laurel Fantauzzo / BuzzFeed