With over a week of no communication, we here in Canada suspected that yet another storm had hit Hope for the Island. We received this update from Derek.
Although not getting the international media attention of a super typhoon, we just experienced more than three weeks of very strong winds and non- stop torrential rains. We were unable to communicate because electrical lines and the tower used for cell phones and Internet was down.
Tropical Depression “Agaton” moved very slow and covered a large area spanning the entire Visayas and Mindanao regions. Winds were steady and directly hit us at 65 km/hr. from the north. Rainy season is generally hard, but nearly a month of that weather felt unbearable at times.
Absolutely everything was wet! Even the walls inside our buildings looked like we threw buckets of water on them. We had to mop floors in our home every hour to prevent flooding. All trees were stripped of leaves and branches. Roofs and walls of simple structures were damaged. Before we were able to finish all the repairs at our farm, we were again facing flooding and wind damage estimated to be around $600 USD. Neighboring rice farms have extensive damage with most losing their entire rice crop due to flooding.
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