New Manila Massacre

It was the worst "arbocide" I've ever seen.

On September 28, 2006, New Manila residents witnessed a gruesome massacre... of trees, that is. The destruction brought on by typhoon Millenyo claimed the lives of a couple of dozen trees at the very least. Coming home from lunch at a nearby restaurant (somewhere in Tomas Morato) proved to be a great challenge as every street we turned into had a large fallen mango tree blocking our path. Vehicles had to, by trial and error, figure out which roads, or should I say, which combinations of road segments could bring them home.

The very next day was a sunny day. After an entire night of blaring chainsaws, we decided to drive around and take pictures, see what was left of the wreckage. We noticed how efficient the cleaning process was coming along (much to my annoyance as I couldn't get better, more shocking pictures). But I have to commend these people cleaning and chopping all that wood all night. Good job!!!

I just hope someone would start a campaign to replant all these mango trees that were brutally uprooted by the storm because it would be weird to have a mango as the barangay logo if there aren't any mango trees left.

PS: I wrote this in the dark of night and would have uploaded it sooner but we only got our power back at 5:30 this afternoon, after about 130 hours of powerless (literally and figuratively) misery.

Shoutout! Thanks Ganter for all your photo tips!!!