Traumatic First Time - Sept 26, 2009

Coming from an offset vacation leave last September 25 and looking forward for a relaxed weekend, I stayed up late online in FB that Friday night. I was waiting for my husband to wake up for his 3am call time in the office. I slept afterwards when he left and I woke up late the following Saturday morning.

I remembered my husband saying before he slept that Friday night, that a typhoon is coming. I did not pay serious attention to him as what came to my mind is, "It's just a typhoon! It's normal!"

But the rain woke me up that Saturday morning of September 26. It was just a normal rain. There was no strong wind so there was nothing to worry about. It doesn't seem like a typhoon at all. It rained for almost an hour but I was not alarmed. Later on, I noticed that water down south of the street where our home is started to rise. Still, I was not alarmed because that area of the street is really prone to flooding. A 5-minute rain will make that area a shallow swimming pool. So flooding in our street is really normal for me.

However, hours passed by and the rain did not stop. Flood came rising to the street in front of our house. An hour later, the water rose to our carport. This time, I was apprehensive, as more rain will make the flood rise up to our home. I called up my 2 kids to come upstairs for us to pray together. We prayed for the rain to stop so that the flood will not worsen. We prayed for our safety, their dad's safety, safety of our friends and relatives in LB and safety of the people affected by the typhoon.

By that time, my husband was not yet home then. He said he can't get out of the office due to heavy rain and flood. Still, the rain did not stop. I was very observant and getting ready on up to what extent the flood will rise. Normal flooding in our area was up to a quarter of our carport only. But this time, the flood occupied about half of the area. By that time, my husband called up, using a colleague's mobile phone, and he told me that he was trapped in Evangelista Street due to heavy traffic and flood. He reminded me to turn of the power source main switch, just in case flood goes inside the house. Hours passed by and the rain has not stopped yet. The flood water came almost near our front door. I noticed that the cars parked in front of the the nearby townhouse was already halfway submerged with water.

I started transferring our things from the ground floor to the second floor then--- all the photo albums and magazines, the kids toys, the throw pillows, the picture frames, the kids' school bags, the water dispenser, the rice dispenser... things got heavier and heavier. The television, DVD player and component was placed high enough not to be reached by possible flood. But my God! I was not able to lift the refrigerator! I only had my house help ready assist me. And so I left the refrigerator downstairs. After a few minutes, water was inside our house!

In less than an hour, the flood water came up to half of the lower leg. I sneaked from the window to check our neighbors, water already came inside the car.

The two kids were not so worried as they still enjoyed playing with the water. But I made sure they rinsed off well after.

After rinsing off, Kaira was so worried about Clifford, our pet dog. This dog left our home when the water was up to our carport but he has not returned yet at late afternoon.

Meanwhile, there was no electric power. There was no water from the faucet but I was always ready for it. I always have 2 big pails and 1 big drum of reserve water for emergency purposes.

It was so difficult to move around a flooded house. It's like living in a swamp wherein you need to step on muddy water everywhere you need to go. We all took a bath with our feet submerged under flooded water. It seems not 100% clean at all!

When I had already cleaned myself up, here comes Kaira shouting, "Mommy, si Clifford!" as she saw the dog swimming towards our gate. Clifford normally can squeeze his body off to enter the closed gate. This time, since half of the gate was submerged with water and he was so tired of swimming around 50 meters far to get to our house, he had no enough energy to go through the closed gate. He clung his front feet into the railings of the gate instead and tried to catch his breath. Pitying the dog, I went out to the gate, submerging myself up to the hips, and opened the gate for him. I watched him hurriedly swam towards the door and when he finally had his feet on the floor, I saw the poor dog panting. Touched by what I saw, I led him inside the house and fed him. It's nice to save the dog but I suddenly realized that I was wet with flood water and I needed to clean myself up again! :(

When I went inside the house, it was an entire mess! Garbage was everywhere! The things in the house that I ignored to transfer upstairs were floating...plastic jars, glass jars, cleaning materials, etc. But despite the mess, I reserved our center table for Shadow, our Rottweiler, for his bed and our sofa to the two other "askal" pet dogs we have. Bearing everything, we managed to deal with the flood. We ate dinner upstairs at 5:30 pm and I asked the kids to sleep after washing up.

Not used to sleeping that early, we played shadow-making from the candle light which served as our illumination. We then had story telling until the kids fell asleep. In between, I exchanged SMS to friends who were also affected by the typhoon---some stranded, some were safe back home, some telling stories about their experiences with the flood but there was no sign of my husband. Thinking that he had empty mobile phone battery, I just sent him an SMS not to force himself to go home and just stay in one place where he could safely stay and rest until the flood subsides.

Thank God, the rain did not worsen that night. We all had good sleep despite the terribly messy bedroom we had.

Morning came and the water inside the house subsided. All it left was mud, garbage and picture I can really call a "hurricane"! My househelp and I started cleaning up when my husband came. He had his own story of his experience and he struggled on the road with typhoon Ondoy.

We cleaned the house the whole day---an unscheduled, mandatory general cleaning happened. More than the general cleaning, my husband replaced all sockets submerged in the flood water for safety purposes. When all were settled and when we safely turned on the television upstairs, that was only the time I realized that we were much, much more lucky than those people living in Marikina area. News from all local television channels showed footages of how our countrymen struggled with typhoon Ondoy. Many people died. Many people were homeless. Many people were hungry, wet and feeling cold. Many people stayed on the roofs of their houses. Many people tried to survive using improvised boats of empty mineral water container. Many people tried to make a way over Meralco cables---that's how high the flood was! Cars were floating and bumped onto each other. Many people were missing. But on the contrary, it was a good news to see on television that more and more people start volunteering to help and rescue the victims. Many people are trying to gather donations for them.

Meanwhile I consistently received SMS from our IT Heldesk informing us that our Unilever office was affected by typhoon Ondoy. The office and factory area were totally submerged. Office files, furnitures, lab equipments, and even our server were totally wet. Colleagues who when to work overtime that Saturday were also trapped inside the building but the Management were responsible enough to take care of their needs.

Typhoon Ondoy was really remarkable! The street where our house was located is flood-prone but we never experienced flood inside the house in the past 5 years! This was a traumatic first time for me. I just hope and pray that there will never be a typhoon worse than Ondoy! But still, I feel blessed that all of us, our friends and relatives, were safe and surpassed the typhoon, except for my one colleague whose house was totally submerged under the Ondoy flood. Much support from our team was given to him and his family but still, we are thankful that all his family members were safe. And another good news?! ... My refrigerator which was submerged in water for almost 8 hours is still working! :)

Dear God, please don't let this happen again. Please hear our prayers!

-maron-

28-29september2009

23:34 - 01:55

Please click link to view video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfWip_PY5Ag