From boom to bust to dust: how Covid-19 and typhoon wrecked Siargao, surfers paradise in the Phil
“There weren’t many tourists at all,” says O’Donnell, who began travelling regularly from southern China, where he worked in manufacturing. “Then they built a road and investment began to come in from all over.”
In 2015, O’Donnell met Manila-born surfer Marja Abad. The couple married and decided to make a go of it in paradise. While James managed eco-retreat Greenhouse and the Kudo Surf Shop, Marja founded SEA Movement, a community-based NGO dedicated to protecting the local marine environment.
“In 2019 tourism was just booming,” says James O’Donnell. The island was surfing a wave of popularity, after a 2017 movie, romantic comedy Siargao, helped cement its reputation as the “Bali of The Philippines”.
But as the pandemic washed onto Philippine shores in 2020, boom turned to bust for a lot of newly opened hotels, restaurants and bars.
“Business owners really had to tighten down the screws and trim the fat to be sustainable through the pandemic,” says Filipino-American Eddie Nassr, whose family opened the Kaimana Resort Siargao in 2018. “Some didn’t have the resources.”
O’Donnell estimates that “over half the businesses that popped up before the pandemic have closed down”. Because of travel restrictions imposed to curb the spread of Covid-19 “we’ve been cut off from the world, the rest of the Philippines even”, he says.
Respite came in the third quarter of 2021, when the government eased domestic travel restrictions and hoteliers looked optimistically to the Christmas holiday, their mood buoyed by Siargao being chosen as Asia’s best island by the readers of Condé Nast Traveller. Then came Typhoon Rai, known locally as Odette.
“The local government evacuated certain areas,” Nassr says. “A lot of people didn’t take it too seriously, but went reluctantly. In retrospect we can see that really saved a lot of lives.”
O’Donnell says: “They were forecasting a Category 2 or 3 storm. I’ve been through that before. But environmental factors started to align about 15 hours before it hit. We didn’t have good internet, it cut out and then when it came back on for 30 minutes or so I saw people writing, ‘Category 5, evacuate!’”
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It was too late and the O’Donnells, like the Nassr family, hunkered down on December 16 in their respective guest houses with staff and friends while the storm made short work of the tear-drop-shaped island and surrounding region.
“The pressure built up was like a jet engine ringing in your ears. It was so intense that it actually burst some windows,” recalls O’Donnell. The Greenhouse and Kaimana resorts were among the few buildings left standing.
“The most consistent story was that people ended up in the bathrooms, which was the most concrete portion of the house, as their home was getting torn apart,” Nassr says.
One hillside village on the island of Bucas Grande, to the south of Siargao, was particularly hard hit, says O’Donnell. “All the houses were destroyed and the parents were lying over the children just to try to give them some protection.”
A storm surge whipped up by the typhoon brought more damage. “In Burgos [at the northern tip of Siargao] there’s a sea wall that goes around the whole town, but the tide broke it into pieces, turning it into boulders that just mowed down houses,” says O’Donnell.
A lack of clean drinking water and shelter became acute problems in the aftermath of the storm. “For the first two weeks it was all about water,” says Gregory Guy, a Chinese-Filipino surfer from Manila who spends much of his time on the island and who took refuge in the Kaimana Resort when Rai struck.
“The storm brought salt water onto the island and you couldn’t drink from the wells. Septic tanks all overflowed. It was really hot, people who drank the water started getting diarrhoea.”
Having been protected by mangroves, the O’Donnells’ boat was spared and James was able to venture out with the coastguard – whose own vessel had been destroyed – to see whether relief efforts were under way.
“At first we went to seek help in Surigao City. When we arrived there was a dead floating carabao (Philippine water buffalo) and debris everywhere,” says O’Donnell. “We soon realised Surigao City was also devastated.”
In Cantilan, though, they found supplies had been prepared for them to take back. “They knew Siargao got hit,” says Guy. “No calls could be made but they assumed someone would come with a boat and prepared supplies.”
Islanders call Cantilan “the mainland”, says Marja O’Donnell, “as it is the nearest point on the main island of Mindanao. [It] was where James and a crew of local boatmen, coastguard and fellow business owners headed to get supplies like petrol, solar lights, generators, food and water. Much was supplied by the Cantilan Bank team.”
With looting rife, the O’Donnells’ guest house became an emergency distribution centre.
“Greenhouse is situated on the main tourism road and is very accessible,” says Marja O’Donnell. “It is also beachfront and has access to a dock for our speedboat and other hired boats. It became a point of emergency distribution because of its location and ease of logistics.”
Meanwhile Nassr, an engineer by trade, spearheaded water collection and distribution efforts. “They located abandoned resorts with generators and used them to power up water facilities with the assistance of the police,” says Guy. “They also got the owner of the ice plant to help supply drinking water to the people.”
The whole community came together, says Marja O’Donnell. But, more than a month on, the situation remains critical.
“Ninety per cent of the island is devastated,” she says. The whole of Surigao del Norte has officially been declared a state of calamity in view of the “the damage caused by tropical storm Odette”.
To help the relief effort, Marja O’Donnell has repurposed her NGO. “I can use the social media pages to reach out and raise funds. We can also help in a logistical capacity as we have a boat and a car,” she says.
“In the short term we need basic supplies like water, food, medicine and shelter, as a lot of people are homeless or have severely damaged houses. But it’s hard because it’s monsoon season and the internet has been down on the island.”
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Those staying in resorts that have a generator are the fortunate ones, says Guy. “But maybe 40 per cent of all the electrical posts have been damaged by falling trees. Four companies are working around the clock to fix that and they say power might be back [soon] in certain tourist areas, but that still leaves most of the island in the dark.”
The resurgence of Covid-19 is exacerbating the situation. In 2021, the Philippines fell to last place in Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking and is averaging over 33,000 new cases a day as of January 20.
It is not hard to imagine how fast an outbreak on Siargao would spread under current conditions.
Nassr estimates that it will be three to four months before Siargao will be ready to start hosting visitors in significant numbers again, and James O’Donnell – who likens the economic damage of the typhoon to “Covid on steroids” for an island that runs on tourism – believes they cannot return soon enough.
“We need people to come and surf, to give jobs to locals,” he says.
The Philippines contributes less than 0.4 per cent of global carbon emissions but is especially vulnerable to rising tides and extreme weather events driven by the warming planet.
With waters rising and storms worsening, President Rodrigo Duterte has suggested that rebuilding efforts should not be undertaken near the coast. Marja O’Donnell doesn’t disagree, but she sees regional poverty as an issue that must be taken into account.
“People who live below the poverty line are so vulnerable. If we move them inland we must consider how they are going to sustain themselves as they live from fishing and the sea.”
She sees Typhoon Rai as one more weather shock that should prod the world’s governments into climate action.
“The storm hit luxury resorts just as hard as it hit fishing villages. The last time Siargao was hit by a big storm was in the 1980s. They say it happens every 20 years or so. But if this starts happening every five years, well, people just won’t be able to survive.”
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