Manila’s Typhoon Hackers Treat Storms Like Hackathons
By Syed John
Every landfall spawns volunteer war rooms rewriting relief workflows in real time.
Whenever a typhoon targets the Philippines, a Telegram group called STORMFORCE lights up. Coders across Manila pull all-nighters, patching logistics apps, scraping Doppler feeds, and issuing API keys to barangay captains who barely know what an API is. It's chaos, but it's the only time bureaucracy yields to raw talent.
Government agencies quietly rely on these hackers because procurement can't outrun a storm. The volunteers don't seek credit; they seek uptime. They treat each landfall like a marathon hackathon where victory means fewer evacuees in gymnasiums.
I love their energy but hate that it's necessary. Disaster response shouldn't depend on donated Red Bull. Yet until budgets catch up, these storm hackers are the unsung heroes keeping archipelagos stitched together.