Before Typhoon Tino (Kalmaegi) struck us hard last week, I thought that my home and its utilities had enough redundancies built in to survive. However, when the strong winds toppled power lines, leading to an extensive and extended black out, I quickly found out that my preparations were not enough.

The worst hit in my place, aside from electricity, was the internet and communications service, which for people who work at home, has become a critical service these days.

The winds had just started howling when my Fiber modem displayed the dreaded blinking red light of LOS. This is a light that almost a week later, remains blinking. This has happened to me only a few times before, but repair response times were quite decent, at around 24 hours. This time, whether it is due to the extensive damage of the typhoon or some other reason, it is looking like a week, minimum.

This outage wasn’t supposed to be so bad, because I had a LTE-based home wifi backup from the same service provider, which in theory could provide a decent connection while we waited for the repair crew. However, because of the brownouts, and probably due to the traffic as other people were also relying on it as their own backup plans, the data signal became almost non-existent after a few hours.

The final nail in my work-at-home coffin was also losing my mobile data signal, which is from a competing telco, probably because their cell sites have no back up power. In a worst case scenario, I would’ve been able to use my smartphone as a hotspot, but without a signal in our area, I was effectively disconnected and had to go to my lola’s house to attempt to get any work done.

Unfortunately for the newspaper, all our editorial staff were also having the same connectivity problem, so none of us were able to get any work done for the first two days after the typhoon made impact. If it had been only me, I would’ve had to go to a nearby relative’s house for a decent connection.

Another thing that made me even more disconnected was that today’s landlines are now internet and electricity powered, so losing both meant I couldn’t make or take any calls at all. My home was totally disconnected during that time because I didn’t have enough redundancies built in.

By the 4th day of outage, I had booked installation of a prepaid fiber service from a competing telco, which quite surprisingly had a crew in my home within a couple of hours. We were back online, and this time, with 2 fiber connections, our home should be more disaster proofed.

I was of course tempted by Elon Musk’s satellite-based Starlink, which would be the ultimate disaster fallback, but it is still quite pricey and requires a monthly service fee. Prepaid fiber, while still vulnerable to being cut by falling branches or wayward trucks, is prepaid and has no lock in period, so aside from the discounted installation fee which was on promo last week, I should only pay as needed.

My home’s power redundancy also failed, as my tiny 1.5KW genset broke down due to the lack of use, caused by a battery backup system that can provide minimal basic power for around 4 hours. We weren’t using the genset because it is a hassle to switch power and turn on, so it ended up getting gunked and stuck up. The irony was that I had just sent it out for repairs, which weren’t done yet when the typhoon struck our power grid. Four hours of battery obviously wasn’t enough, and we had no more emergency lamps or battery-powered electric fans anymore in the house, so we ended up turning to candles for the first night, and was fortunate able to rent a small genset from my repair guy by the second night of the blackout.

As for water, I have a water district connection and a deep well, but can’t really do much without electricity. Fortunately, the water district was still able to provide a bit of water during the blackout. The pressure wasn’t strong enough to take a shower in, but it flowed, remained clear, and we had the good old, reliable bucket to store it in.

These redundancies for the home that were found to be wanting when tested by a natural catastrophe like Typhoon Tino, are just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other preparations that we have to involve ourselves in, especially during this era when extreme weather has become commonplace, and is even expected to worsen as humans fail to mitigate the impact of climate change. Those in flood prone areas may have to build better protection measures for their homes. We need to have go bags ready in case of earthquakes or forced evacuations, secure our important documents better, and even prepare for the worst by providing those who survive us with the necessary information like passwords and bank accounts, so they can go on if we don’t make it, either in a disaster, or through natural causes.

Whether our government sucks because of rampant corruption or not, there is still so much we need to do to make our homes and communities more resilient. Typhoon Tino was just another reminder. Hopefully this time, we are paying attention to all the warning signs and taking action.*