This time last year, Haiti and Cuba were reeling from powerful hurricanes that still have both countries in recovery mode. So understandably, the start of the current storm season heightened concerns among people on the islands as well parishioners in places such as Miami, the closest major U.S. city to the islands. This is especially true for immigrant families with relatives and close ties to the islands.

“It’s like a person who [stays on edge] because he knows sickness may come,” explains Auxiliary Bishop Felipe Estevez with the Archdiocese of Miami.
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From an AlertNet report:

Exhausted aid workers are gearing up for the third typhoon to strike the Philippines in less than four weeks, a storm they say could be “disastrous” for people living in the already weakened northern regions.

Within the next 24 hours Typhoon Lupit is due to hit the Luzon area in northern Philippines where thousands of people are already living in temporary accommodation. This map charts the course of the typhoon.

Flood survivors in southeast India stand in front of their destroyed home. Photo by Father Jijo Murthanatt for CRS

“When the flood hit, the water rose from my feet to my waist in five minutes,” says Kasturi, a 20-year-old mother who is nine months pregnant. “My husband put our two daughters on his shoulders, one on each side. We walked about a mile in the water.”

Like tens of thousands of impoverished villagers in Andhra Pradesh, an area in southeastern India, Kasturi and her family escaped the flood with their lives and nothing else. Most people from Kasturi’s village went to a railway platform that stood above the floodwaters in a neighboring district, sleeping there until the waters receded.
When they went back after three days, there was little to salvage. “Our house is mud now,” says 20-year-old Adam, another villager. “Just completely filled with mud.” Some managed to dig up a few pots, pans or the jute sifters they need to sift rice.
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CRS continues to distribute essential items to families affected by the West Sumatra earthquake, including tarps, blankets and sleeping mats. “Our front wall fell down,” says one beneficiary named Sudirman (in this part of Indonesia, many people use just one name). “We will use the tarp to cover the wall.”
Here is a video clip of a distribution in action, captured by Regional Information Officer Debbie DeVoe in the hamlet of Kapa Utara where about 120 houses were damaged by the quake.

CRS’ emergency response team for the West Sumatra earthquake is already working as a well-oiled machine. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS

Every morning around 7:30 a.m., CRS’ emergency response team in Padang, Indonesia, gathers around their one conference table. The team—which two weeks after the quake is now 25 strong—includes CRS Indonesia staff, CRS employees from around the world who have come in on temporary assignments, and newly rehired staff who assisted CRS with our tsunami response in Aceh.

The team meets in the living room of a house CRS rents—a house that now serves as the main office and guesthouse. The space is tight, and so are the relationships. Five years of emergency response and recovery work in Aceh have created strong bonds of friendship and trust among many of the members. These are staff members used to getting things done fast under suboptimal conditions—and on little sleep, whether crashing on the floor of a diocesan building right after the quake or now sharing a room with mattresses thrown on the floor.
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An extended family of 22 living in 5 houses are building a transitional shelter to house the children until they can rebuild their permanent homes. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS

Irwan Etendi’s family had never experienced anything like the earthquake that hit West Sumatra, Indonesia, on September 30.

“We were all inside when we felt the shaking,” he says. “We all ran out—even my father-in-law who hadn’t finished his [daily] prayers.”

The extended family of 22 members lives on a large compound in five cement block houses. Now one house is a heap of pink concrete rubble. The other four have crumbled walls, extensive cracks and mounds of rubble strewn across the floors.

“That night we all slept on the front porch,” Irwan’s sister Arnis says.

Two weeks later, they are doing a little better but face a long road to recovery. Tarps, soap, and a toolkit provided by Catholic Relief Services, Caritas Indonesia and other Caritas partners are helping.
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 This is an update to an earlier version of this post.

On Friday, October 9, a vast area northwest of Manila was hit again by Typhoon Parma causing new flooding and landslides. More than 2 million people are now affected by this storm, with 193 deaths confirmed and just over 100,000 people staying in 281 evacuation centers, according to the United Nations. An additional 4.1 million people were already affected by the first Typhoon Ketsana, which drenched Manila and its greater metropolitan area on Saturday, September 26. That storm drove more than 240,000 people from their homes who are currently staying in 471 evacuation centers, the U.N. reports.
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Here in Padang, I’m sitting with a mixed team of over 30 people from all over the world and around Indonesia who work for various Caritas entities from different countries (CRS is part of that international network of Catholic charities devoted to reducing poverty and campaigning for social justice). We are sitting in a hot cinder block building which I understand is a Sunday School building under normal circumstances. Off on one side, roasting spices make us cough as some women are constantly cooking to feed the crowd. The group meets every night at 9:30 p.m. to review the day’s activities: traveling to distant villages to see how the earthquake affected them, receiving shipments of tarps, or distributing hygiene kits to affected villages. Most work past midnight, the begin again early the next day.
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As a series of natural disasters continues to pummel Asia, CRS is helping impoverished victims of severe flooding that hit south India on October 2 and only receded several days later.

“I’ve never seen a tidal wave, but this is the kind of damage I imagine a tidal wave would look like,” says CRS’ Katherine Cunliffe of the damage in Andhra Pradesh. “Flood waters rose up to 14 feet in some areas. Houses have been destroyed and there is mud and silt everywhere.”
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Debbie DeVoe, CRS regional information officer, sends in a field report from the Philippines.

Excessive rains forced officials to release water from dams. Overflowing rivers are now flooding almost the entire province of Pangasinan, according to initial reports. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS

Pat Johns and I joined Sister Rosanne Mallillin of Caritas Philippines on a visit this morning to assess the widespread damage in Pangasinan province, one of two provinces currently experiencing extensive flooding and landslides.

When we reached the city of Bugallon three and a half hours northwest of Manila, we encountered a sea of water on both sides of the flooded road. Parish priests told us that people began coming to churches and schools two days earlier, knowing that river and dike levels had already hit dangerous levels—heights that rose further when officials released water from the San Roque Dam to prevent a breach.
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