This was presented during the panel discussion "When the Stakes are High and the Story Ever Changing: Online Crisis Reporting", during the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit on 25 January 2015 in Cebu, Philippines.

Blogger Joey Ayoub (Hummus for Thought) from Beirut, Chloe Lai of The Oval Partnership and Hong Kong in Media Net, and Internet entrepreneur Mohamed Nanabhay, who founded the New Media division at Al Jazeera, composed the panel. Global Voices News Editor Lauren Finch moderated.

We had around five minutes each to talk; the parenthetical notes here are points I didn't mention during the panel, but which I think might be useful.

Thanks to my colleagues Alex Badayos and Amper Campaña, both of Sun.Star Cebu, for the photos. (Alex took the quake and Haiyan photos; Amper snapped the tornado and the concert/fundraiser photos.)

-- Isolde D. Amante, Sun.Star Cebu

I have been a journalist for nearly 23 years now. Let me tell you about 23 of the strangest days I have ever seen on the job.

On October 15, 2013, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit the provinces of Bohol and Cebu in Central Visayas. It killed 230 persons, eight of whom were children.

(The quake also injured 976 other persons, destroyed 14,512 houses, damaged 58,490 houses, and displaced 348,507 persons. These figures are from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council or NDRRMC.

The quake struck at 8:12 a.m. on a public holiday. Otherwise, thousands of children would've been in their schools when the tremors began.)

Less than three weeks after the quake, a tornado struck three cities and two towns in Cebu. It damaged 70 houses and left nine persons injured.

We were all still reeling from the earthquake and the tornado, when the third calamity in 23 days hit us.

Typhoon Haiyan (which we called Yolanda in the Philippines) made landfall six times across the Philippines last Nov. 8, 2013---twice in Cebu Province.

It displaced about four million persons (almost equal to the population of the entire Province of Cebu) and either destroyed or damaged 1,084,762 houses.

(The national disaster council has estimated that Haiyan destroyed P88.59 billion or about USD2.02 billion in roads, bridges and other public infrastructure, crops, farms and agricultural facilities.)

A powerful storm has hit the Philippines every year, usually toward the end of the year, since 2008.

But in Cebu, the most powerful storm before Haiyan struck us way back in 1990--before the Internet or social media. That was typhoon Mike (locally known as Ruping).

After comparing the coverage in those 23 days (but particularly of Haiyan) with our coverage of Mike in 1990, three changes are apparent.

(1) Citizens on social media have helped us monitor more events despite a lean staff. We learned about the Nov. 5 tornado, for example, not from radio or our other usual sources, but from Gabriel Hidalgo, who posted a photo on a social media account and gave us permission to circulate it.

(2) Sites like the Japan Meteorological Agency and the US Military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center provided information on approaching storms days before these disturbances entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility, when the government's weather bureau typically begins to issue storm signal warnings and related bulletins.

Meteorologists on Twitter also provided early warnings, which bought people time to prepare. In the days ahead of Haiyan, you couldn't find a transistor radio or batteries in many supermarkets in Cebu; that's one sign of how people prepared.

(Another thing we can fact-check and monitor together: the delivery and use of humanitarian aid. Government's Foreign Aid Transparency Hub reports that of the USD$1.74 billion in total pledges, about USD$791.8 million or 45 percent has been delivered so far. Of the cash and non-cash pledges delivered, government received 56 percent, while NGOs accounted for 44 percent.)

Access to the Internet and social media accounts have helped us reach a much broader audience, but these have also made the demand for information more urgent.

During typhoon Mike/Ruping in 1990, we only had to think about the information needs of our print readers. After Haiyan/Yolanda, the demand for information came from Filipinos abroad who needed to know about the communities where their extended families lived.

The material that our online readers spent the most time on was the list of those who had been reported missing.

(Forgot to mention during the panel that both our print and online teams live-blogged immediately after the quake and Haiyan. One thing I noticed during these times was that citizens seemed more eager to share opinions and analyses, instead of contributing facts.)

One thing that kept us sane during those 23 days was the inspiring response from the community, who used social media to organize themselves into fundraising and relief teams.

In the first 30 days after Haiyan, the NDRRMC report showed that 57 percent of the amount of relief assistance distributed in Cebu came from the private sector. (About P44.51 million or USD$1.05 million.) Local governments supplied 11 percent (P8.56 million or USD$203,809).

(The national Department of Social Welfare and Development, in those first 30 days, gave survivors in Cebu P25.4 million or USD$604,761 worth of relief goods, about 32 percent of the total. To get a closer look at these figures, you might want to search for the Dec. 8, 2013 report of the NDRRMC on www.ndrrmc.gov.ph.)

(Local crises give journalists, whether citizen or mainstream, a chance to show how broad global crises, like climate change, affect families and communities.

These also create opportunities to examine other, deep-seated crises that often magnify a calamity's effects: the poverty that forces people to build makeshift homes on unsafe ground; the decades of under-investment in public hospitals and health centers, which rob the injured of life-saving care; and the corruption that has left us with weak bridges, roads and schools.)

The international media that arrived to cover Haiyan stayed for a week, perhaps two at most. But for our community, this is a continuing story. Among our many challenges will be finding stories of hope, stories about how people are coping with what has happened.