‘Share the Love’: Behind a Batangas rescuer’s song of hope after Taal eruption

Song on stage (Photo by Anjo Bagaoisan)

The people who took refuge at the covered court of San Luis, Batangas in the weeks following the eruption of Taal Volcano have been at the receiving end of the generosity of hundreds–be they relief goods, cooked meals, clothes, or medicine.

But the group of men and women who took the stage at the court one morning offered something different for the evacuees.

It was a song made for them.

Leading the group was Randy Hernandez, a member of San Luis’s emergency rescue team.

Randy is a familiar face to the evacuees. He works nearby and drops by the evacuation area frequently.

But more importantly, he was one of those responsible for getting many of them to safety the day the volcano blew.

That experience of going in the dark to the worst-hit areas like Agoncillo and Laurel planted the seeds for Randy’s song, which he wrote a few days after.

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Beneath Lando’s clouds

By Andrew Jonathan S. Bagaoisan

PinoyJourn’s 2015 year-end series, Log 1

(Shot by Brian Pimentel, ABS-CBN News)

(Note: In a succession of stories, this blog revisits major events and trends witnessed by this writer, all of which made 2015 a year for the books.)

BALER, AURORA–We were prepared for the worst.

Our news team in Baler had met the night before. Everyone had to know what we expected from the typhoon and from each other in those crucial first hours, and what to do if the unfortunate happened.

But what caught us all by surprise was the arrival of Typhoon Lando (internationally Koppu) 7 hours before the time weather bureau PAGASA first predicted it would reach land.

Our 3 news gathering teams would take their posts in different vantage points around Baler before the supposed landfall time of 8 a.m. We had agreed to be up as early as 3 a.m. that Sunday morning to give them time to leave our hotel.

Our technical team would stay the fort at our lodgings and make sure our means of broadcasting the aftermath to the world would survive the typhoon’s onslaught.

We heard the town would switch off power as early as 10:30 p.m., but most of us had already gone to sleep when the lights did go out past 1 a.m.

It would be shorter sleep than expected for most of us.

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