I was comfy in my motel room with wifi access. Monitoring the radio stations over the internet. Monitoring the tv news. Blogging and contacting friends to help report my wife and kids’ situation in the mad flood waters brought by the Marikina river caused by storm Ondoy which poured the highest recorded amount of rainfall in a day.
All people in our household survived. 2 yayas, 2 maids, my mother in law, my youngest sister in law, my wife, our 3 kids.
Re-telling their story, it had rained the whole night. So just before lunch the maid went to riverside street to check on the small dike and see how high the marikina river water was. Just like we always do. She says the water was just touching the lion statue’s foot. That is still a good 25 feet high wall / dike level to climb. No worries. The household had a nice fat lunch. Complacent as in the past, that was still a safe level.
Then the waters started rising in the street outside the house. Then started getting into the house. As experienced in the floods of 1988 and 1979, my mother in law commandeered people to start moving stuff up the 2nd floor if the first floor got flooded.
Sure enough the first floor got flooded. Then the maids heard a load ROARRRRR…. bam, the main door flung open and torrents of water rushe d in. The water was fast climbing the stairs.
The maid shouted: We have to transfer to the neighbors who have a 3rd floor! This 2nd floor is doomed! Something like that in our language. She called out to the neighbors and 3 strong men trotted the almost joining roof tops and the water was already neck deep while walking on the roof top for the ladies. The men carried the 3 children to the safety of the 3rd floor of the neighbors’ house. The rest of the women walked / swam in the rain and the roaring river waters.
Finally all were in the safety of the 3rd floor of the neighbors. Lucky for the neighbors, our household thought of bringing food and water.
While on the 3rd floor they watched as our 1 story house got engulfed by flood waters all the way to the top of the roof. The whole family with the 3 little angel kids were praying to God to let the flood water subside for all the reasons in the world. Cars were floating. A refrigerator floated up and got entangle on electrical wires 30 feet high. Neighbors screamed dying last screams for help.
There was nothing anyone can do but hang on an hope they can go high enough in wherever they were. It was pointless trying to swim to anywhere in the RAGING flood waters. I was monitoring the rescue teams attempting to reach provident but all chickened out at the prospect of raging flood waters. Nature is extremely powerful and we are all at its mercy.
I warned by text that they should not sleep as high tide happens at almost 3am. And that reports say all the dams are expected to release even more water they cannot contain.
I fell asleep in my motel room. Woke up before 6am. Texted relatives. Waters were subsiding as the rain has stopped.
The family found a way when the flood waters were low enough, there was just mud all around. EXODUS! They walked and walked and walked on bare feet in knee deep mud out to the village gate and into riverbanks where I met them with a borrowed 4×4.
We are now housed temporarily in Fort Bonifacio in a condo.
Seeing them you think everything was all fine and dandy. Hear the stories and see the cell phone photos an videos and be amazed at the life threatening ordeal they just survived.
Of course we lost everything… EVERYTHING in the house. Please Donate something. We will appreciate it.
http://www.myhealthblog.org/donate/
