Jersey Mom versus Philippine Typhoon Haiyan
By Ernesto Cullari
Would you risk your life for strangers? My mother Dalisay Dwinells (everyone calls her Lee) has faced death numerous times over the last several years, while serving impoverished children at orphanages in some of the world’s most dangerous places. When she volunteered at Rancho 3M in Guadalupe, Mexico, her and her husband faced the threat of abduction by drug cartels that regularly kidnapped, tortured and murdered American citizens for profit.
In the last few years my mother has established an orphanage in both Cebu City and Bohol, Philippines, where she recently survived a 7.2 and 4.8-magnitude earthquake that taunted them with nearly a thousand aftershocks and tremors. The quakes killed 200 and reduced the stone church in the village where she lives to rubble, leaving thousands homeless, without food and clean drinking water. She and the 27 orphans that she cares for had to sleep outside, because of the real possibility that their home could collapse on them.
Despite the dangers of her work, nothing could have prepared my mother for the 145 mph winds and 175 mph gusts of Typhoon Haiyan, regarded as one of the most powerful storms ever to make landfall.
The day before the Typhoon hit, my mother’s vehicle filled with children, was nearly tossed of a cliff when flash floods caused landslides on many of the islands. From my mother’s Facebook page: