The Philippines celebrates its seventh anniversary. by Yolanda

MANILA – The Philippines marked the seventh anniversary of super typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) on Sunday, with the central city of Tacloban bearing its brunt by offering mass for the thousands killed and officials remembering the lessons of the tragedy.

The city held a massive celebration on Saturday in Barangay Anibong, which was swept away by the Yolanda storm surge in the early hours of November 8, 2013, carrying a cargo ship ashore, part of it has now become a commemorative marker.

“This shipwreck is a reminder of the thousands of lives that perished throughout the city of Tacloban that day,” said the mayor of the city, Alfred Romualdez, in a message posted on Facebook.

“It marks the genesis of our advocacy for resilience and adaptation to a new normal that will continue for generations to come.”

Another mass was celebrated on Sunday in the city’s Holy Cross Memorial Gardens, where thousands of dead victims were buried, many of them unidentified.

“It is our prayer that all the victims of the super typhoon) Yolanda buried here will finally be identified, handed over to the grieving families and given a proper burial,” said Deputy Mayor Jerry Yaokasin, who visited the grave Saturday afternoon.

Yolanda had maximum sustained winds of 235 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 275 kilometers per hour when it first made landfall in Guiuan, eastern Samar.

It made a total of six land touches throughout the day as it moved westward, affecting more than 16 million people, mostly from Regions 6, 7 and 8. At the height of the typhoon, more than 5.1 millions were displaced.

The typhoon left some 6,300 dead, more than 1,000 missing and more than 28,000 injured.

It damaged 1.1 million houses and the cost of the damage stood at more than 95,000 million pesos, according to the report of the National Council for Disaster Risk Management and Reduction.

Another super typhoon, Rolly (international name: Goni), hit the Philippines a week ago, affecting nearly 1.5 million people and more than P13.8 billion in damage to infrastructure and agriculture.

Twenty-one people in the Bicol region and three in the Calabarzon were killed during the Rolly attack, while six are missing and almost 400 were injured.

On average, 20 storms hit the Philippines each year.