My Typhoon Ondoy Experience by Rose Paterno

September 26, 2009

It was a rainy Saturday morning. Like any other ordinary weekend, my children and I watched cartoons early in the morning together in our house ar Riverside Village, Brgy. Sta. Lucia, Pasig City. At around 10AM, we started preparing our food for lunch. It surprised me when I went out of our house and saw flood starting to get high, which isn’t normal in our village. Some of our neighbors blamed the flood to the excavation of Manila Waters.

When I was preparing at the kitchen, the rug I was stepping on was soaked I though it was just a leak from the sink. I tried to replace it, but after a couple of minutes, it was damp again, so I checked out all the corners of the house. Just then, the flood began to enter. We try to mop it out so that it will not enter my children’s room, but when I saw water coming out of the comfort room, I immediately called my brother-in-law so that he could come over to get my children and bring them to their house where it was safer.

We put everything on our house’s high places. We thought that if flood will continue to fill our house, it would reach up to knee level. We left and had lunch at my in-law’s house. When we came back, the water had already reached our sofa, so we put everything on our bed but still the water got higher. My in-laws started to help us get necessary things such as my children’s milk and some clothes good for 2 days. Meanwhile, flood water continued to enter our house, so we put our refrigerator, washing machines, electric fan, and other appliances about a table high. In a minute, our refrigerator tilted and fell in water. The only thing we could do at that time was to get all the food we could get. I tried to get back to our room to get additional clothes, but my husband grabbed me out of the house because the flood was almost chest level. He told me to leave everything. In a matter of 2 hours the water immersed all the things that we had.


September 27, 2009

It was a terrible morning; I didn’t even get enough rest because of the fear that the flood might reach us at the 2nd floor. “2 steps na lang”, I thought. Thank God the flood stopped rising! All power was cut. It was hard to get cellular phone signal, so I decided to go up the roof of the 2nd floor, and it shocked me when I saw that all houses and vehicles around us were submerged in the flood. I tried to contact my co-employees just to inform that I might not come to work by Monday. I tried to keep calling until I reached Ms. Ynas, our company nurse. I asked her for a favor to tell our boss that I might not come to work that Monday due to flood. Ms. Ynas informed me that Metro Manila was totally devastated by flood. She asked me if I needed to evacuate or need any help. I told her that we’re okay. After that call, I tried to call my family at Bulacan but there was no way to reach them. I started feeling hopeless, fearing for my sister’s welfare who was 8 months pregnant, my father, and my 3-year-old nephew.

We stayed and waited for the whole day, trying to call all our relatives. At night, we prayed rosary.


September 28, 2009

On Monday morning, the flood subsided. We tried to go back to our house, but the door was difficult to open. My husband had to forcefully open the door and when finally it did, we were saddened when we saw our things. We didn’t even know where to start again! I tried to go outside the village to buy water for my children, then I saw that many of the families in our area were also waiting for relief goods, looking for open stores to buy food from. It was a terrible experience. I had to go back without anything. We waited until somebody came to our house, and asked them if they could buy us potable water. Kindly, they said “Yes” to our favor. Mr. Sam Suarez called and checked if my family was okay, and Ms.Ynas continuously monitored our situation.

After 2 days, Thursday, I tried to call my family in Bulacan. Finally, I got to talk with my sister and she said that they’re okay. Thank God, I sighed in relief.

In a blink of an eye, everything we worked hard for was gone. But we knew that we had to be strong and start again somewhere. So, we started by cleaning up the mess inflicted by Typhoon Ondoy, grateful for the safety of everyone we loved and hopeful for a better and brighter future.