I never really got around to posting about my family’s Ondoy experience. I spent the first half of last week cleaning and taking care of things at home I didn’t have time to plug in my laptop and get on the interwebz. The 2nd half I was at work and found more important things to blog about other than my story (read: Donate to Philippines from Abroad and Project 100 and Oregon for Ondoy).
So here is my tale.
Let me start first with the fact that it NEVER used to flood here in our street. In our village, yes. In our street, never. We’ve been living here for the past 20 years and not once have we been threatened by flood. Add to that the following facts:
- our house is higher than street level
- from the garage there are still steps to get to the porch
- from the porch it’s one big step to get inside the house
- from our living room and dining room there are two steps to get to the rooms
- our house has practically two floors except that it doesn’t hehe
Anyway, Saturday, September 26, my dad woke us up telling us to charge our phones and that there’s water in our street. We woke up in a hurry, curious. We charged our phones and watched the water slowly rising, confident that it’ll never rise enough to get in. We saw people walking to get to higher ground (well to our area), with bags filled with their things, we assumed. It wasn’t an unusual sight. Water was slowly getting into my dad’s clinic. We called 5 guys from the street to help us raise my dad’s dental chair, table and couch on a makeshift elevation my dad made. We thought that would be enough. So we had lunch and took a nap.
By afternoon, power was out. Globe signal reduced to zero. Water was rising. It was creeping up the first few steps to our porch. Worried about the car and the clinic, we didn’t know what to do. So we decided to just save items from our living room and dining room.
It all happened very fast. We were carrying books, food, clothes, a matress, papers, laptops, cameras and other things that we could save up to our attic (good thing we had one). Water in the living room and dining room already up to my knees. We carried the fridge and the rice dispenser to our elevated hallway. We couldn’t do anything about the piano. Then my sister started to shout from her room. It was still rising. We rushed to our rooms trying to save what we could by putting them up on our beds. More books. More clothes. DVDs.
Our two dogs were inside the house. My sister’s pet dog we took to the attic since he was a wee one. The other big one we placed on top of a tall enough table and hoped for the best.
By 11 the water in the lving room/dining room was waist high. In the porch it was a bit higher than that. Inside the rooms the water was knee deep. We heard from our neighbor the next day that the water in front of our house was neck high. Outside, our cars have become submarines, and my dad’s clinic an aquarium. It was bad.
We went up to the attic, prepared to go up to the room in case we need to. It was still raining. The water was still going up.
By 1, the water level stopped rising.
And by Sunday, all that was left inside the house were silt, puddles of water and ruined furniture. My dad’s clinic was much worse, and so were the cars. It took him til Monday to see the clinic’s state and to open the cars to see what needs to be done.
It was devastating. But after hearing what happened to other people on the news, I couldn’t complain. Material things are easy to replace. We still have a roof. We managed to keep our beds dry. We still had food and dry clothes. And we had each other. Others weren’t so lucky.
I didn’t have time to take pictures. I quickly secured my camera to keep it dry. So here are some photos from other people.
Our house basically looked like the pictures Judd took of his. But we were all ok. There was nothing we could ask for. Of course I’m saying this because we managed to save a lot of stuff. My books were ok too. :p
Amazing the things that the storm brought in. Bayanihan has never been so alive! Celebrities were braving the water to save their neighbors (Hello Ryan Agoncillo, Gerald Anderson, Jericho Rosales – let’s not mention the other guy). People were risking their lives for strangers! And people were dying to save their families. The private sector worked overtime to send relief goods, help, rescue to the families who were most affected by the storm.
And even ex boyfriends/old “friends” managed to emerge from the dredges of mud to ask how me and my family were doing and if we needed help.
And have I mentioned how great my friends are?
Special shout out to Loren, Oshti and Weak. For helping keep me sane during that really long weekend.
Pepeng is veering away from the Philippines. Let’s hope it goes away for good. There’s so much to be done. Lives to restart. People to help. And a nation to rebuild.
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