After days of watching news coverage of the deadly Philippines typhoon and dialing and redialing her brother’s cell phone number, Dianna Schneider finally got an answer this morning.

Her brother, Kirkland resident Gregg Anderson, flew to the Philippines last week to celebrate his 50th birthday and to meet his friend from Alaska. He arrived in Tacloban City on Tuesday, Nov. 5 and drove to a beach house in Guiuan.

But when Typhoon Haiyan tore through the Philippines on Nov. 8 – killing nearly 2,000 people and displacing more than 600,000 – Schneider and her family were unable to get ahold of Anderson, as cell phone towers and Internet services were down.

Around 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Schneider received a call from a “friend of a friend” who contacted her brother via cell phone and found out he was alive and well in Cebu.

“I called him and it rang and rang and rang and rang and finally he answered,” said Schneider, who lives in Rochester, Wash. “It was really crackly and I wanted to make sure it was him and I started to cry when I heard his voice.”

She asked her brother how he got out of Guiuan and he briefly explained that during a mandatory evacuation on Thursday, Nov. 7, he rode a motorcycle to the east side of Samar with his friend and his friend’s girlfriend. There, the Filipino Air Force airlifted them to Cebu, where they were waiting for a flight to Manila on Tuesday morning. Anderson was waiting in line to get on a plane in Cebu when he spoke to his sister.

“It was so crackly and really quick,” Schneider recalled of the phone conversation. “He said, ‘Diane – it was horrific. It’s all gone. It’s all gone.’”

After the typhoon hit, Schneider and her family began searching for Anderson, who is a mortgage banker in Puyallup. She contacted at least 15 agencies, including the American Red Cross and even CNN.

“I told every single reporter, you get his photo to all the international people who are leaving for the Philippines,” said Schneider, hoping that someone who saw her brother’s face in the news would recognize him and tell him to contact his family.

She said knowing that Anderson’s villa he was staying in was on the beach, “and to know that these 20 foot waves are coming, you think the worse. It’s just awful.”

She said she was touched when some brothers from Anderson’s fraternity, Sigma Chi, at the Washington State University reached out to her and said , “We are here for Gregg. If you need us to send a brother to the Philippines we will send him today,” she recalled. “They were so awesome and they’ve called me several times.”

She said she looks forward to speaking with her brother on Wednesday – his birthday.

But her thoughts are still with other families who were affected by Typhoon Haiyan.

“My heart goes out to every single family out there,” Schneider said. “They’ve just lost so much. It’s heart wrenching.”