Missing Picture

Here’s the photo I was trying to show you. I used my tab to upload it since it was the one I used to take it. It is in my media library, it loaded yesterday, I wonder why it is missing now. Look at the muddy water all around.

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Saturday Night

Not really inclined to read nor blog but I have to do something before I go to sleep. So tired fixing things when we went back home this morning. We had to transfer the car to a higher place and elevate  those things that we feared would be caught by the flood.

I told you in my blog yesterday that I hate it when it rains non-stop. True enough, flood waters reached our garage. We  left the house at about 7 pm and spent the night with  our neighbors’ house together with Mom, Josef and Jovy and Oreo of course. Since typhoon Ondoy left  Metro Manila flooded for days back in 2009, I have become afraid of floods.  It used to be when this place was just rice field all around when we had the house built in 1995 but today, it is filled with buildings and houses some of which even have third floors.

Metro Manila and surrounding provinces got flooded again, some even reaching their rooftops.  Some families are still in evacuation centers especially Marikina residents which got the most flooded areas in the metropolis.

Saw this evacuation center in Marikina on Facebook. a wonderful change from the usual crowded places of basketball courts and classrooms  with not so much amenities for the evacuees.

I asked Josef not to report to work tomorrow if this rain continues which PAGASA says until  Tuesday.  It is really alarming when the rain comes. Report says that yesterday poured a half-month amount of rain in the metropolis.  So many  people were stranded. Some malls were open so the shoppers could use their parking spaces and the malls to pass the night.

That fearsome feeling,  watching the night while the flood subsides. I am grateful though that it did not enter our house.

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Lawin, Go Fly

You know that feeling of being helpless because you can’t stop the typhoon from reaching your shores.  I am tuned in to the radio for the hourly updates and at the same time following PAGASA’s updates online. Typhoon Lawin has intensified into a super typhoon as it  moves closer to Cagayan and Isabela which are now under typhoon signal #5.

Strength:  Maximum sustained winds of up to 225 kph near the center and gustiness of up to 315 kph.
Forecast Movement: Forecast to move West Northwest at 24 kph.

Metro Manila is under signal  #1. I am praying that it would weaken somehow during landfall. Our friends and family  in the Northern part of the country have suffered enough. I am so worried how they will cope once the typhoon lands in their place. Every time there is a typhoon coming (even if it will not directly affect our place), I am  reminded  of typhoon Ondoy back in September 2009.  It always gives me the jitters. Imagine your house submerged up to your neck  and you have to renovate and replace almost all of the furnitures  and appliances which were destroyed by the flood. Imagine your books  ( a collection that started during your college years) submerged in water and much as you want to save them, the pages have glued together.  Three yearbooks  (mine, Josef’s and Nissa’s) completely destroyed. I cried seeing those because they were our only reminders of our university days in UST.  Imagine your worry that your scheduled visit to your oncologist and chemo treatment won’t push through because your car was also submerged in flood waters.  I can still remember it all vividly.

You learn your lesson and you learn it well but when natural calamities are your enemies, you can only cling to God and pray hard. I am praying hard that super typhoon Lawin would not be that strong when it hits land. Oh please, move a little faster and get out of our way.

Do you know that Lawin is a Tagalog term for the bird hawk?

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It Pains Me To See This

My cousin posted this on her FB account, a picture of the bridge going to our barangay in the province. The river is overflowing and so many people in some areas and barangays are trapped in their homes needing immediate rescue.  I talked to my brother early this morning and he said that they could not go down  to the town proper and cross this bridge to buy drinking water since their water supply was also cut-off due to the massive and destructive flood which has not yet subsided until now.  I could no longer contact anyone there. Our barangay is high up the mountain so luckily they are free of flood but they need help with food supply and potable water. It’s a good thing the governor has put up a page asking for list of places in the whole province where rescue is needed.  Our town have so many barangays submerged in water.  It reminds me of typhoon Ondoy, the pain and heartaches of losing lives and properties, the hardship of going back to your home which was full of mud and the price of renovating – replacing  cabinets, repainting walls, cleaning everything and disposing appliances and hundreds of books  and mags which were flooded. We have opted for built-in cabinets which won’t topple down in case of flood or earthquakes.

They need help ASAP.

The bridge is as high as a four-storey  building from the floor of the river so you can just imagine how high the flood water is.

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The Day Metro Manila Stood Still

A week before “habagat”  (southwest monsoon)  wreaked havoc in Metro Manila, it rained hard causing flash flood in some areas of the metropolis. Who would think that even without a typhoon signal, flood waters would rise  again? Those three days that we stayed in our neighbor’s house reminded me of typhoon Ondoy which destroyed most of our belongings  three years ago.  There are several factors that caused the flood but I won’t go into details about it since this is a perennial problem in our country every time the rainy season sets in.  Our mountains especially in the areas of Montalban are now bare causing rain waters to flow freely, inundating  rivers that in return overflows to low-lying areas like ours. The problem with informal settlers who are near bridges and waterways hasn’t been solved yet so with high-rise buildings (built by influential people) which should not be there in the first place. Palakasan or lagay?  One of the major factors that among us Filipinos are probably guilty of is how we haphazardly throw trash everywhere. A few months ago, I blogged about this. It’s a case of “as long as it is not in my backyard or in front of my house”, who cares? Discipline is the key and it is never too late to change our ways. Believe it or not, this contributes to flooding because the water canals are clogged.

MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino in an article posted by ABS CBN news said that Metro Manila can never be flood resistant but it can be flood resilient. I hate this feeling of always being afraid every time it rains hard. It’s as if  one would always have that feeling of insecurity when the rainy season sets in, more so when there is a typhoon signal.

I took pictures of the flood in our vicinity not because I’d like to be reminded of the pain it brought  me and my son and our neighbors affected by it but I just like to share that when nature’s wrath is at one’s door, you are helpless to do anything but pray.

This was at the back of the house, flood waters kept rising past on the first day and 90% of Metro Manila got flooded.

Our small pond was inundated so we lost the Koi fish (all of them) which we took care of for three years.

Notice the rising waters on day two. It reached knee-high inside our house and about ankle-deep in our bedrooms and since we have to save everything, it took us a while to transfer and put them in higher places. Until now, my back aches because of so much work, putting back everything where they used to be and cleaning the house- read – scrubbing the floors  with disinfectant.

It was like a ghost town…

Ang layo pa ng umaga!  Taken at dusk – no electricity, no radio and the world was just so gloomy.

Notice that red mark on the Meralco post? That was where we gauged if the water level went up or down.

Another week in history is over. Thank God for the gift of sunshine. Thank God for the gift of friends who are always there to cheer us up.

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It’s Nice To Be Back

Why do I get the feeling that I don’t know how to start blogging again? It’s been one stressful week. Rain, rain go away and don’t ever come back. Every time it rains, it gives me the shivers and I remember typhoon Ondoy all over again. We’re still lucky though that the water only reached more than a foot high inside the house.

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Our Brush With Typhoon Ondoy

September 28, 2009

I would not really know how to begin because this story is another milestone not only in my family’s life but also in the lives of our neighbors, our community and our own town, Cainta, Rizal.

In all of my fifty two years of existence, this is the first time that I encountered such an experience.  For the last two days, I felt that the world stopped all of a sudden.  Have you ever imagined that kind of helpless feeling and just cry your heart out in frustration?  When all you can  do is pray and hold on to each other because you are not sure if you’ll still see each other tomorrow or the following day or the next?  This happened to us at the height of typhoon Ondoy.

September 26, 2009. Saturday was supposed to be another family day for us.  Hubby and my daughter left early to do our weekend marketing. They arrived home at around 8am and we spent another hour of storing the food that they bought.  Hubby and I were scheduled to go to Sto. Domingo Church in QC upon our friend Lovell’s invitation to visit Mama Mary at her Shrine (La Naval) before they prepare her for the procession on October 11.  Although it has been raining cats and dogs the previous night, the Saturday downpour left us unaware that flood waters could reach our place in a few hours.  We’ve been staying in this place for the last fifteen years and even at the heaviest downpour, rain waters only reach our gate.  There was something unusual at the speed of water coming in so we spent the next two hours trying to save most of our possessions from being drenched and destroyed.

Nobody thought of having lunch although my daughter prepared one.  At around 1pm, flood waters inside the house  reached my waist so I told hubby that we should vacate the place. I was the first one to leave guided by my son Josef carrying a change of clothes for each one of us, cellphones which come in handy in times of disasters like this. We sought refuge at my neighbor’s house across the street.  The water outside was up to my neck when we crossed the street and I only realized I was not wearing any slippers.   My son painstakingly carried the contents of our freezer on his shoulder thinking  that we would not have enough food if the flood goes for long.  They stayed for another hour knocking on our other neighbors’ doors and helping them into safety.  We were five families who stayed in that place for about three days, helping and comforting each other, sharing the meager food that we had and trying to contact the outside world for help.

When you are tense and stressed, sleep wouldn’t come that easy.  I remember our neighbor Jomarie who went back to their place just to retrieve the favorite doll of his 3-year old daughter.  We thought he was carried away by the raging waters because he was not answering our shouts.  According to his wife, that doll that he saved was his daughter’s security blanket and that she could not sleep at night without it.  The love of a father to his child.  Silent tears were flowing freely when I learned about it.

We might have lost most of our material possessions but we gained extended families in our neighbors who went through the same ordeal with us.  I am so thankful that my own family is complete.  It might take sometime for us to have our normal lives back . It is an experience I will never forget.

The brush with typhoon Ondoy taught me many things.  Your faith in God should never waver in times like this, it’s the time that you need Him most.  It taught me that one could live simply from day to day, without worrying about what tomorrow brings.  You are just thankful that you are given another day to survive.  Thank you Lord for keeping us all safe.

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