HADLEY, Mass. — TACLOBAN is my city. I grew up directly facing the Pacific Ocean, on the Philippines’ eastern shore, which takes the brunt of the yearly monsoons. Geography and history provide the textbook nickname of Leyte and Samar, the provinces hardest hit by Haiyan: “The Typhoon Path.”

I grew up with the natural signs of storms: cockroach hordes marching out of cupboard lairs as if in warning; cockpits losing roosters that preferred to perch on roofs than fight; the still alertness of lizards as winds rise; and the epic hooves of the rain on windows, coming from the ocean gods.

Always, after the rains on Juan Luna Street, there was the great communal cleansing, children, housemaids and busybodies sharing stories; the familiar howl of Bruce Lee, our cowardly dog; the usual flooding of our walkway that doubled as a pigpen, housing a single hygienic pig owned by our neighbor Mano Bading, whose love for his pig we tolerated because we would eat it at fiesta; the examination of debris — clotheslines, buckets, cardboard election posters falling off a corner store, where we got our i.o.u.’s when typhoons hit, racking up our debts in Spam, Hunt’s pork and beans and rice.

But this year’s post-typhoon cleansing has become an unimaginable orgy of grief. Friends who have escaped speak of strangled, directionless horror: No one is in charge. We don’t know how to account for our damage, or where to go to repair our fate.