Typhon...

Bonjor à tous et bises aux dames,

Les Philippines viennent d'être frappées par un typhon d'une ampleur rarement vue.
Voici ce qu'en dit le journal "Le Monde"
https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2021/12/18/aux-philippines-le-typhon-rai-a-fait-plus-d-une-vingtaine-de-morts_6106589_3244.html

Wikipedia (super réactif!) donne, également, beaucoup d'informations
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhon_Rai



Voici, également, le compte-rendu qu'en fait (désolé pour ceux qui ne lisent pas l'anglais) dans un mail reçu ce matin, Philippe Poppe, le co-directeur d'une entreprise philatélique. Son témoignage est impressionnant.

Many amongst you will be wondering what happened to your very beloved company. Here is the short version of events:

On 16 December we were, in the central Philippines, expecting the land fall of Typhoon Odette. The land fall was expected in the south of Cebu Island at 4am in the morning with a force of about 150km/hr. winds. So, all Filipinos are used to half a dozen such typhoons arriving in the country each year. All took light measurements to go through the night. 

The reality was much different. Suddenly, at 8 pm Odette arrived in the central of Visayas, 8hrs ahead than expected, with a force of winds of 350km/hr. It was a Super Typhoon. The trajectory did not go over Argao as expected, but the center went straight over Mactan Island and Cebu City, the second most important human center in the archipelago.

As this is a brief email, the result in short: 1.9 million Filipinos were affected. As of now more than 400 dead have been reported. 600,000 are homeless. The devastation is in Mactan almost total. The devastation in Cebu City is gigantic. We are talking about a trillion-dollar loss for the country.

Our company is situated in Mactan Island. 76% of the electric pillars are on the ground. We expect electricity to be back within 3 weeks for the company but much longer for the rest of the island. This is the most optimistic estimate. 

The internet and telephone network are expected to be repaired between 6-8 weeks from now. Mobile coverage is extremely spotty and of almost no practical use. 

Infrastructure for receiving and sending parcels is gone at present. We are waiting for news from that side but hope that all will be repaired in 3 months from now. As this is a critical economic necessity it can be much sooner.

At present, there is shortage of gasoline, water, cash money – as the banks cannot function without electricity and internet.

On the personal level: both our private houses survived very well as they are in strong concrete and very well built to sustain such calamity. The company is in a building of more than 25 years old was also built-in strong concrete. There we got a small smashed window on a noncritical place and water infiltration from above as that company got all windows blown out and it flooded with rain. Philippe and your author could save the library and servers at 1am in the morning shortly after the end of the passing of the typhoon. On the physical level your author made a bad fall in the pitch dark at the end of the typhoon but is now repairing well.

Our employees were less lucky as they live in the classic lightly built houses as one finds all over the Philippines. All of them either lost their upper floor or the whole house itself and belongings.

The situation now is very hard: we survived with 2hrs daily of electricity from our generators. So do our Kois, but also there we lost 4 of them. There is no electricity and internet: for gasoline, water and drinking water and cash money the average lining up is 3 to 5 hrs. Thousands of people start lining up at 3am in the morning to reach their goal at 9am. 

Up till now the moral of the population is excellent: the Visayans especially make proof of great resilience but at the same time they work extremely hard to free the island and the city from the gigantic devastation. By now 80 percent of the roads are already cleared up: the fallen trees and debris on the road are on the sides. And one can already move from one point to the other. The sympathy between neighbors, colleagues, friends etc…is amazing and exemplary. 

Currently, we cannot operate the company. So, we decided to reopen the earliest when electricity and internet will be back which we expect to be around 1 March. We will continue to pay the wages of our employees to support this tragedy. In the meantime, our family will move to Manila where we can have proper communication with all of you and assess each delay in the several hundred affected cases of ongoing customer interactions.


Thank you for your understanding and we hope to serve you all once everything is back to normal.
P.S. This email is sent by Philippe who drove 2 hrs to reach a point where there is usable internet. 

You can send your email concerns as usual to all of us and we will attend to it as soon as we are settled in Manila after New Year.

We wish you a wonderful Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Sincerely yours,

Guido, Philippe, Sheila, Mona & Alex and the Poppe Stamps Team.
Visit: https://www.poppe-stamps.com/


J'ajoute que Poppe-stamps avait déjà eut à subir les ravages du typhon Yolanda en nov. 2013
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhon_Haiyan

À bientôt.
Michel