TAGUM CITY, Davao del Norte: Edwin Ballenas, 44, father of five children and a resident of Andap village, New Bataan town, Compostela Valley, busies himself by attending to his four sons who miraculously survived

the flashfloods during the onslaught of Typhoon Pablo (international codename: Bopha) so that he will not dwell on the fact that his wife and another child remain missing.

Edwin is grief-stricken because he has no idea what happened to his wife Aida, 44, and son Alvin, 12. But he is trying to fight the anguish to be able to take care of his surviving sons Angelo, 8, Aldrin, 20, Erwin, 22 and Pancho, 24, who were all injured.

He and his sons are housed temporarily in the gymnasium of Tagum City, along with other typhoon survivors who are all residents of New Bataan, one of the hardest-hit areas.

While he was consoling of his children, Edwin narrated to The Manila Times how his sons were swept away by rampaging walls of mud coming from the mountain.

“We left our home and took shelter in the two-storey health center of our barangay. I thought that my family was safe because of the solid structure of the health center.

Unfortunately, the building that we considered as a haven turned out to be our biggest coffin,” a sobbing Edwin recounted.

“My wife and my son are missing. My four sons were in deep pain, seeing their ordeals made me even weaker. Pablo wrought so much havoc in our lives. The pain I am going through is unexplainable,” he said.

Cedric Daep, team captain of Team Albay-OCD5 humanitarian mission currently providing assistance to typhoon victims, said that the devastation brought by Pablo was similar to that caused by super typhoon Reming (international codename: Durian) in Bicol Region.

“As you enter the Compostela Valley, you could see the vast devastation on agriculture and that the number of displaced and homeless families was huge. Banana plantations are totally down and coconut trees were uprooted. The economic displacement is massive considering that the labor force here is dependent on agriculture. It will take so many years for them to get back on their own feet again,” Daep told The Times.

“The resiliency of the people is below par as of now because they are not used to natural calamities. We need to lend a hand to our brothers hardly affected by the disaster,” he said.