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    Camp Pendleton Marines help bring 10,000 meals to typhoon-stricken Philippines
    • November 27, 2025

    When Cpl. Efrain Avila-Castro, a Marine who works a desk job at Camp Pendleton, was asked to help get 10,000 meals to Filipinos whose homes, fields and roads were devastated after two super typhoons struck the Philippines earlier this month, he didn’t hesitate.

    The 24-year-old, his leaders said, “was everywhere” on his first deployment helping with the Marine relief, first loading pallets of food onto C-130 cargo planes at Clark Air Base — something that has to be done precisely because weight and where cargo sits can affect plane maneuverability — and then flying along to Virac Airport where the cargo was unloaded.

    Those “combat offloads” of the food pallets — as the planes were still taxiing and pulling into parking ramps, crews pushed the 10,000-pound slabs holding the wrapped, contained food boxes from the back, one by one — was something Avila-Castro had never been trained to do.

    “All of this was outside my job description,” Avila-Castro said in an interview from the Philippines, adding that his regular office job is to help Marines with finances for travel entitlements. “It was super exciting. At first, I felt a little nervous, but my purpose was in front of me — the Filipino people — it was a constant reminder, this is what I’m here for.”

    “We approached one pallet at time, took the netting off and the wrap, and then we did like a daisychain where we just grabbed boxes and passed them to a safe area,” Avila-Castro said, adding that each pallet had 400 food boxes.

    The food packs provided by the Philippine government — each of which could feed a family of five for three days — were taken to the island of Catanduanes in eastern Luzon, where Typhoon Fung-Wong made landfall on Nov. 9. That storm followed Typhoon Kalmaegi that hit the Cebu region on Nov. 4.

    The two storms not only caused severe flooding but also loss of life, officials said.

    • Residents return to what remains of their homes after Typhoon...

      Residents return to what remains of their homes after Typhoon Kalmaegi caused devastation in communities along the Mananga River in Talisay City, Cebu province, central Philippines, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Hernandez)

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    Residents return to what remains of their homes after Typhoon Kalmaegi caused devastation in communities along the Mananga River in Talisay City, Cebu province, central Philippines, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Hernandez)

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    But by the Marines responding, lives were saved, said Col. Robb McDonald, commanding officer for the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

    His Marines, presently deployed as Marine Rotational Force Southeast Asia and training in the region, were part of an overall U.S. troop response that included others from Japan, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, who as a task force worked with the Armed Forces of the Philippines and officials from the U.S. State Department to support the foreign disaster relief.

    The U.S. forces went to work after the Philippine government requested assistance, an ask approved by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. They were led by the 3d Marine Expeditionary Brigade from Japan.

    At Camp Pendleton, McDonald said his Marines completed certifications as part of the pre-deployment training plan that prepared them to respond to a natural disaster.

    “When we trained to come out here, it actually focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” McDonald said, adding that the area is often prone to these storms. “We trained with real State Department people that we brought in. So when we came over here and kicked off our exercises, we saw the second super typhoon coming.”

    The two typhoons were about the 20th to strike the island chain this year, Marine officials said. Ultimately, it took three days before they could get boots on the ground.

    “We had to wait until the typhoon was past,” McDonald said, explaining that bands of rain were still passing through. “And, wait ’til the Philippine government could get an assessment on what happened, how many people were missing, killed and injured, how much flooding happened and how many homes were destroyed.”

    In the end, about 500 U.S. military personnel were deployed to Clark Air Base and Camp Aguinaldo to perform the mission. The three-day operation from Nov. 13-15 also involved more than a dozen aircraft from the Marines and the Air Force.

    Maj. Steve Lundin, who was the officer in charge of the 15th MEU’s Humanitarian Assistance Response Team and the first to be on the ground at Clark Air Base, along with Avila-Castro, received the first U.S. aircraft and personnel arriving from Japan. The two were among other servicemembers who made three trips between the air base and airfield over three days.

    For Lundin, a 34-year-old Marine who grew up on a farm in Oregon and was well-versed in irrigation, the visuals from the first flight to Virac on Nov. 13 were eye-opening.

    “I thought there was no way they were irrigating their land with seawater,” he said. As he looked down from 4,000 feet, he could see areas where there was no separation between the ocean and crops. “Once we got out to the one island, there were buildings essentially submerged. You could see their roofs.”

    Once in Virac, Lundin was told that the area had lost power, there was debris and landslides and roads had been shut down.

    The Marines worked in hot, humid conditions with a heat index above 100 degrees. Once the pallets of food were on the ground, the Marines, including Avila-Castro, did an accounting of what was there and worked alongside the Philippine Armed Forces to prepare them for transport to the affected areas.

    “I like to think what we did definitely alleviated some suffering,” Lundin said. “People on the ground at Virac were extremely appreciative. … Everybody was happy to see us: ‘Thank you so much for getting this food here.’”

    Once all was done, Avila-Castro was the only Marine — and one of three servicemembers involved in the relief effort — to be personally recognized by Gilberto Teodoro, the Philippines Secretary of Defense, and U.S. Ambassador MaryKay Carlson for his outstanding efforts.

    “It means a lot,” Avila-Castro said of the recognition, adding that the entire effort of helping those suffering get food makes his Thanksgiving all the more special this year and is something he will never forget.

    “All Marines look for an opportunity like this. I felt proud of myself, but also of my team.”

    The mission provided Avila-Castro with new experiences — and muscles — working with civilians and in a supply warehouse, both drastically different from his office job. He had to learn arm signals to motion people around and work with embarkation, which Lundin described as much of a science as an art form.

    “We basically trained him to be an embarker with no training and no time,” Ludin said.

    And, for McDonald, Avila-Castro’s action not only made him immensely proud of the “can-do” attitude his Marine demonstrated but also embodied the whole concept of what a Marine Expeditionary Unit is all about: being ready and nimble to quickly respond to any crisis, whether it’s military conflict or humanitarian aid.

    “We’re out here and proud of the support we could bring for the disaster relief,” he said. “It reinforces to all of us here that we are friends and allies and partners.”

    “I, as a commander, am watching Marines and sailors that make up this MEU, go do these things, and people like Cpl. Avila-Castro, who’s a finance guy and is out there doing something that is completely outside of his wheelhouse,” McDonald said. “He’s like the personification of the MEU, something that’s very fluid and can adapt and overcome and just change to perform whatever mission. He’s a real clear picture of what that means in human form.”

    ​ Orange County Register 

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