OPERATION GREENE

AFTER TROPICAL CYCLONE HAIYAN pummelled the Philippine Islands last November 8, 2013, the Death Valley Magazine, through their Death Valley Expeditionary Corps, came to Cebu to engage in a humanitarian mission. Also known as Typhoon Yolanda, Haiyan was the strongest storm that the world had ever experienced in its entire modern climatic history with wind strength at 215 KPH and above. The islands of Samar and Leyte bore the full brunt of the storm as well as Northern Cebu and some parts of the Visayas.

DVM is an online magazine about professional adventurers and interesting people while the DV Expeditionary Corps is its humanitarian arm. It gets its crew from the very places where they go to execute their relief missions and expeditions just like they did at Guintarcan Island on November 23 and 24. Their Philippine contacts were from the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild, a Cebu-based club of outdoorsmen who are passionate about primitive-living skills and knives.

James Price, founder of DVM, decided to continue with what he started in Guintarcan by pushing for more aid for the island residents and so the DV Expeditionary Corps executed OPERATION GREENE. It is a much bigger relief operation and much more organized with the involvement of two trucks, a good-sized motorboat, a chainsaw, carpentry tools, 20 gallons of gasoline, five kerosene lamps, a stove set and more manpower. Crews coming from Camp Red (with support from the Don Bosco Technical High School Batch ‘94) assisted Operation Greene that targetted the small communities of Pasil and Dapdap in Guintarcan Island.

The DV Expeditionary Corps left Cebu City for Medellin on November 30 in a convoy of four vehicles provided for by DBTHS ‘94 with cargo of locally-sourced goods like old billboard tarpaulins, laminated nylon sheets, mushroom nails, GI wires, roof sealants, biscuits, candies and a ton of bottled water which were transferred from shore to shore over the Bantayan Channel.

Operation Greene is named after American philanthropist, Brett Greene, who gave the bulk of the funds which the people of the United States of America provided for this second segment of the Typhoon Haiyan Humanitarian Mission. Moreover, Operation Greene assisted and donated cash to one household to rebuild a damaged motorboat and on another household to put roof over a battered house.

The crew returned to mainland Cebu on the evening of the following day, December 1, after a very successful aid mission. Camp Red crews who participated were Jing de Egurrola, Ernie Salomon, Glenn Pestaño and Justine Ianne Abella with Jhurds Neo as base support. The succeeding montage of images told of the two days that Operation Greene undertook:

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