Approximately six years ago, on one of the Saturdays of September, my family was eating palengke-bought lunch. Later that evening, we were on the roof, with neighbours we’ve never met, watching our village become part of the Marikina river.
_____________________________________________________________________
Ondoy devastated most of my city and a great chunk of Luzon. It was the super typhoon of 2009. Our country suffered billions of pesos of lost and destroyed properties and the government reported 500 or so casualties nationwide. Personally, I think those numbers were grossly deflated. We also lost things that couldn’t be counted.
I live in Provident Villages, at that time, one of the worst places to be. The storm was supposedly just like any other. Metro Manila was only placed under signal number 1, and for a city that meets at least a dozen storms a year, you only cared for signal one if you lived near Taft or España. My family fell prey to complacency like most did. This caused us major trauma and great financial burden. I hated the rain for a year. Thankfully, all of my family members survived, including my unborn nephew and my lola in her late eighties.
The worst part of Ondoy wasn’t the rising of the waters. During the actual flooding, it was a mad scramble to get the televisions, laptops, and other appliances up the second floor. Even if it were possible to get some of the cars to higher ground, my dad wouldn’t risk leaving us behind. There were only a few moments for some panicked tears before we had to get as much food and drinking water out the windows, with us following through the fire escape.
We safely escaped being trapped in our home. An hour or so after sunset, everyone in our house was now on the roof with some neighbours who were swept towards us from the other street. This was the last place I expected the Filipino spirit to show, but there it was, and it was bright. Any sort of pretence was dropped and there was no need for introductions. Those who were grieving were consoled and those who were worried were comforted. Of course, we shared all the food we had, and later on even some jokes. Maybe it was a defence mechanism, but there was something funny seeing our cooler floating down the street. Ondoy taught me many lessons, one is that Filipinos are the best people be with during a storm.
We had to stay on the roof until morning. During the times when none of us were talking, after the initial relief, the sound of the slow moving river was eerie and discomforting. We were in the middle of a disaster, true, but outside immediate danger. I did not lose any family members, so the worst part of my night were the idle times. It made me think. I thought of how my dad worked all his life and how he must have felt seeing his property underwater. I thought about just how unsure I was about everything at that time. Worst, was how I wondered why the people who were asking for help were no longer shouting.
When the water levels went down, it left tons of knee-high mud. It was possible to wade through it, but my pregnant sister and my grandmother needed as much help as they could get. Soon enough, military men had stretchers to bring them to the military truck. It was a little bit of the Bayanihan spirit again, which we all needed.
The immediate aftermath was, as expected, widespread destruction. It was also the worst part. What was extremely unnerving was how the people wading towards the village exit were just so lost. There were military trucks filled with children, the elderly and injured survivors. Everyone else just walked dazed. They literally did not know where else to go. It looked exactly like a disaster movie, but it felt like how a kid was left in the supermarket after he cried and cried and couldn’t cry anymore. For some who lost their family members, it was a desperate search and for those who found them, it was either a slow funeral procession or a tearful reunion in each other’s arms. It is a feeling you will never forget.
Recalling Ondoy, as a whole experience will never be a happy one. But it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. It is done. Perhaps people have moved on, and rightfully so, but I believe things like this should never be forgotten. There are so many lessons to learn looking back at past experiences especially after I’ve grown a few years older. Which is why I tried to blog, and with more stormy days ahead, I’ll share more of the lessons I’ve learned since what happened 6 years ago in a second post.