(Surviving) Typhoon Ondoy

I originally planned a ‘dramatic’ post for our Typhoon Ondoy experience. I actually thought about using ‘Final Frontier’ as this post’s title. But since I’m over it, I’ll just tell you a little story.

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I live in Malabon. Streets turning into rivers is pretty normal. Knee high floodwaters is normal. And to top that, we (used to) live beside Tullahan River. That’s why Mom opted to spend a lot of money to get us an elevated house somewhere a little far from the river (but still within our baranggay).

I woke up last Saturday to heavy rain. I was supposed to go out and buy hay for my rabbit and meet up with my boyfriend. But with the heavy rain and flood forming outside our house,  I decided to just stay in.

Mom arrived from Monumento at around 12nn. She had to buy some groceries since it’s my brother’s birthday, and he’ll be having a little party with his choirmates. “Monumento looked like a  wild river” she said. Then, we noticed the flood slowly rising outside.

We had lunch at around 1, tasty chicken barbecue on hot rice. Yum! We didn’t mind the flood, our house is elevated by at least 3 ft from the street. Then we noticed the water slowly creeping into our garden.

This doesn’t looks good.

A few minutes later, we started moving our stuff to our mezzanine/2nd floor (we have an elevated area inside the house). The water’s near our front door. One of my brothers moved the TV, my grandma packed our shoes and slippers onto plastic bags, Mom and I moved all our food supplies to a high table, and my sister moved all other random stuff upstairs. We had to turn-off our power supply since some outlets might get wet. Later on, imagine me helping out in moving the fridge (yeah!).

Fast forward: late night pics, courtesy of my brother (using his Sony Ericssoncamphone)

Our sala. Our bamboo sofa’s nowhere to be seen. This ain’t the highest yet.

Mom moving some of our stuff. She won’t let me help since the water’s too high.

Submerged kitchen sink.

See that blue gate? That’s 5ft high. Also, it’s elevated from the street by at least 3 ft. After an hour, the flood submerged that gate.

View from our 2nd floor. Somehow, we were able to move the fridge, both our washing machines, the gas tank, and all other stuff to higher ground. See that little bamboo thing on the left side? Thats my brother’s bed.

Fortunately, we have an attic. We got most of our stuff up there. We were lucky to have some dry place to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I was worried about everything: what if the water gets higher? My dog, Cossette (who stayed downstairs on an elevated platform) might get sick. We might lose the ref since we can’t move it any higher. What about our old house near the river? Some of our important papers are there. Ramblings, ramblings.

I actually wished everything was just a bad dream. There were times when I close my eyes and force myself to wake up. Really, I was scared.

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The next day…

The water went down! Yay! I took this at around 1pm.

A nearby piggery donated a pig to our neighborhood. The menfolk gladly chopped the huge pig apart.

My rabbit. She stayed with us at the attic. She wasn’t very pleased about staying in her old cage, but she was pretty cooperative. I think she understands our situation. She lost her favorite toy though.

We had our house back by 3pm. My Mom and Grandma were cleaning furiously, scrubbing the walls and the floor.

Waterline on our second floor.

Sleepless me. I’m standing on the lowest part of our house. See that waterline on the wall? Yeah.

The rabbit cage outside. Muddy.

Some of my grandma’s orchids. She lost a lot of her beloved flowers.

The garden. Filled with trash from we don’t know where.

The doghouse lives! They were able to drag it back to its original position before moving the dog on top of her house.

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We’re still lucky. Other people had it far worse than us. We lost some of our stuff, but it’s ok. As long as everyone’s safe and no one got hurt. We haven’t checked our old house yet. We’ll probably throw out most of our stuff there. Gah, I can’t imagine what it looks like now.

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This will be crossposted to my ukay blog, Ukay-ukay Escapades.