460,000 Fil-Ams scurry to safety

WASHINGTON – Hurricane “Sandy” slammed the eastern seaboard of the United States on Monday with full force sending tens of millions of people, including some 460,000 Filipino-Americans, scurrying to the safety of their homes.

Peter Enriquez of Lakewood, New Jersey, about 80 miles (128 km) from Cape May where Sandy made landfall, described the howling winds and horizontal rains slamming into his house as terrifying.

He said his main fear was the number of trees in his property that could come crashing down.

“It’s not yet over but somehow though I don’t feel as frightened as I did in 1964 when ‘Dading’ hit the Philippines probably because I don’t see billboards and sheets of steel swirling in the air threatening to decapitate people as I did then in Manila,” he said.

Dading killed an estimated 100 people and made more than 500,000 homeless.

Rowena Bobadilla, an ad agency executive in Manila who immigrated to New Jersey only last year, said the howling winds and driving rain were scary. “Pero alam mo naman sanay tayo sa bagyo so Pilipinas (We’re used to typhoons in the Philippines), so okay lang,” she said.

Authorities said it was still too early to know if there were any casualties or to give any damage estimates.

Ambassador Jose Cuisia, in a new reminder to Filipino-Americans, appealed to them particularly those in the New York and New Jersey areas to stay indoors until US authorities declared that the danger posed by Hurricane Sandy was over.

“What is barreling towards us is one of the most powerful storms to strike the US mainland,” Cuisia said in a statement issued by the Philippine embassy.

“‘Ondoy’ is nothing compared to the devastation that Hurricane Sandy is expected to unleash,” the envoy said, referring to the powerful typhoon that struck Manila in 2009 and which left more than 700 people dead and billions of pesos in damage.

The embassy has set up a 24-hour hot line manned by experienced staff to render assistance and respond to phone queries from Filipinos, particularly tourists, seamen, businessmen and workers who may find themselves caught in the middle of the storm. 

Cuisia said there were no Filipino casualties during the deadly sweep of Sandy across the Caribbean that killed as many as 65 people.

He said Filipino leaders in Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Haiti, Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago told him all their members were accounted for.