By DANNY O. SAGUN

PANGASINENSES particularly those from western and central part of the province saw the wrath of weather disturbance Cosme Saturday night. We think the damage it wrought surpassed that brought by Gading in 1998

Cosme was only considered a storm, not a typhoon, by Pagasa, with winds packing from 90 to 120 kph. A typhoon is supposed to be much stronger than that.

What happened that night belied Pagasa’s prediction- the winds, we think, passed the 200 kph mark, what with the tragedy it brought to us. The Gading experience was repeated. The weather bureau that time only warned us of Signal No. 1 with Gading SUPPOSEDLY only packing about 60 kph. People were complacent about any preparation for that storm. Gading proved to be much stronger that it had been predicted as shown by its fury - toppling houses, trees and electric posts.

Last Saturday, who would think his rooftop would be blown off, or electric posts toppled, or trees chopped down to pieces or entirely topped?

This writer himself thought it was just a storm as predicted by Pagasa. At around 3 p.m. of that fateful day, we thought we were just seeing another “ordinary”storm as we had been used to seeing some 10 weather disturbances throughout the year. We did not know that starting at around 7 p.m. Cosme would become a super typhoon.

I and my wife were trapped at our small store in the public market as the winds became stronger and stronger and we could not dare go home. At around 8:30 p.m. we received a text message from our firstborn: the roof of our carwash makeshift was blown off including the just-built extension. That afternoon, we had just cemented a portion of the extension. Several GI sheets of our house were also blown off, soaking the entire house.

Winds subsided a bit and I decided to go home with my trusty old owner jeep. My wife could hardly bear the damage wrought outside as we tried hard to negotiate the road with peeled branches of trees all around. In an emergency situation, you could do what you could not normally do like pulling away all those fallen branches and other debris just to pass thru. Luckily one motorist helped me clear the road.

Wet all over, we managed to go home only to see the damage. We tried to control our emotions as we were not the only one affected. We thanked we were alive.

We are not blaming the weather bureau for its faulty warning system. Perhaps its equipment are simply not adequate.

We wonder whether it was a tornado which hit us that day as did Gading 10 years ago.