of floods and black-outs
Posted on October 4, 2006
I haven’t posted anything in more than a week. For lack of anything to post, I’ll give our own milenyo experience. The storm last week gave us (me, actually) a bad scare. Though in the aftermath, we realize that we were actually one of the lucky ones.
Being teachers, Ramil and I welcomed the announcement of no classes. We planned to spend Thursday doing nothing and getting a lot of much needed rest. We started the day on a lazy note, woke up at 9:30 am, had a late breakfast at 10 am and lied down on the sofa bed, savoring the cold weather. We both fell asleep and woke up again at around 1 pm to have lunch only to discover that the electricity is out. After lunch, we lied down (again!) on the sofa bed while the storm outside raged on. We can hear the branches and fruits hitting our roof (we have a backyard that has a lot of fruit-bearing trees). I remembered our atis fruits which are still hanging from the trees, I mourned for I know they will only be pulps on the ground after the storm. Several banana trees which are starting to bear fruit also went down. In other words, our backyard and garage is a total mess. We continued to rest (lied down again) in preparation for all the cleaning up we would have to do once the storm is gone.
At around 3 pm, the storm outside was finally settling down. We looked outside and saw water, lots of water on the streets. For those of you who don’t know, we live in Taytay, Rizal. Our place rarely gets flooded but other areas of Taytay can be flooded with waist-deep water during really heavy rains. Our landlady texted me to start arranging our things just in case. The water continued to go up along with the fear inside me. Ramil was totally calm, having experienced floods in his younger years. I was a flood virgin, my experiences with floods are limited to what I see on TV. Still, we followed our landlady’s advice and started putting things up. The TV and DVD player went on top of the dining table, our shoes were all packed in a big plastic bag, everything that can get wet goes up. The water continued to go up really fast and our next concern was the red car. Despite the car being pasaway and all, we love her and we were really worried because our garage is a few steps lower than our house. Meaning, if the water continues rising, the car would suffer before our house. Ramil and our neighbor decided to just stick a styrofoam in the carburetor to prevent the water from going in. Still, the water continued to go up. It seems that some people in charge of opening a pumping station that diverts water to floodway forgot(?) to do it (what timing, in the middle of the storm pa!).
Ramil started humming and singing, trying to divert my attention from all the water outside the house. I was close to getting hysterics so Ramil told me to go inside the bedroom to lie down, sleep, and forget about the situation. But try as I might, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept asking him whenever he would peek inside the room whether water is inside the house already. His answer was always no but after a few minutes, I felt the need to go to the bathroom and saw water inside the kitchen! Our kitchen and bathroom are an inch or two lower than other parts of the house. I looked at Ramil accusingly and all I got was a smile. With my bladder ready to burst, I grudgingly wore the rubber boots given by our landlady and went to the bathroom. After my bathroom break, I was broken down and resigned. I could cry and throw a tantrum but if water continues to go up and enters our house, I cannot do anything about it. I looked outside and saw that the street is actually thigh-high deep in water already. Some kids were actually swimming! (I wonder where their parents are?)
When the water was just a few centimeters from entering our house, it finally started to go down. By 5pm our electricity was back and water is going down, hurray! By 8 pm, all the water was gone. It went up so fast (because of the damn pumping station) and went down just as fast (because they finally opened the damn pumping station).
It was quite an experience for me mainly because of all the scare I had, hehe! The next day was again a no class day for us, yey! We woke up early this time and started cleaning up the backyard and garage. The house was spared except for the kitchen and bathroom and our red car was also spared (the water reached up to the edge of the carburetor). Sabi na lang ni Ramil after everything, charge it to experience! 
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grabe! scary experience nga…kami naman though di binaha, kinabahan ng husto kasi lakas talaga ng hangin na ramdam ang pag-tremble ng dingding. at buti maaga kayo nagkakuryente..kami we slept overnight in the dark.
what an experience ha Andrea! take care!
i’m glad you’re ok andrea!