There was a time the sound of raindrops falling on the rooftop seemed to me like syncopated melody. A time I loved the occasional rainfall, because it freshened the earth and made staying home feel cozy and comfortable. A time the rains triggered happy memories of foggy school days spent in the cool mountains of Baguio City.
No longer. Rain, for me, has acquired a sinister personality. Instead of bringing comfort, it now incites panic and fear.
Rain pounding on the roof awakens me in the middle of the night and sends me scurrying outside to check if the water has started inching up.
Instead of feeling nostalgic for the good old school days, I start wondering if it’s time to dismantle the computers, drive the cars out of the garage and haul the furniture and appliances upstairs.
Cruel deluge
It all started in 2009 with tropical storm “Ondoy” and the horrors it brought.
Although heavy rainfall and typhoons would sometimes cause flooding in some areas of Magallanes Village, the deluge would be confined to a few streets down the block.
Ondoy changed all that. Without warning, waist-high floodwaters inundated the entire ground floor of our house. The garden looked like a lake and the refrigerator started floating around, like a lost boat trying to find its anchor.
Our neighbors, too, were similarly afflicted. It took us weeks afterward to clean up the mess and repair the house.
Just when we were beginning to think it wouldn’t happen again, tropical storm “Maring” and the accompanying monsoon rains dumped its own cruel deluge on Metro Manila.
At first it seemed our neighborhood would be spared. At 4 a.m. on Aug. 20, with no flooding and with the rain stopping intermittently, my husband and I felt confident that this would not be another Ondoy.
Knee-deep
How wrong we were. By 8 a.m., the water started inching up. Then it sneaked into our garden, our garage, the patio, and it rose higher and higher, until the living room became knee-deep in water. By this time we had turned off the electricity and hauled whatever we could carry upstairs.
It was also upstairs where we took refuge and from where we monitored the water level on the street.
When the flood showed no sign of subsiding, and fearing that the water would rise higher still, we decided to leave the house.
Thanks to our alert barangay captain Armand Padilla, to Raymond Martin, to MVA acting president Davic Balangue, to the volunteer groups, and to the Magallanes Village security and maintenance personnel, rescue boats were roaming around the village to transport residents to safer ground.
To this day, my husband and I still don’t know the name of the kind man who pulled us aboard a yellow boat to safety. The distance to the rescue center must have been only a few hundred meters, yet the trip seemed so long and agonizing.
I felt so sorry for the gentleman who was pulling the boat. It couldn’t have been easy, what with two senior citizens onboard. Yet he seemed so strong and capable that he reminded me of St. Christopher.
As he trudged along, all kinds of thoughts raced through my mind: It’s a good thing I didn’t have breakfast or I’d be even heavier to pull. Oh, why hadn’t I started on the diet I’ve been meaning to try? Did we extinguish the candles in the living room before leaving the house?
Rescue efforts
Finally, we reached the house of the Consunjis, who had allowed their garage to be used as the center for rescue efforts and drop-off point for the evacuees.
Immediately, we were offered coffee, crackers, sandwiches and hot soup, which was very kind of them. Then we saw Mayor Junjun Binay driving an amphibian truck to help rescue the residents. He seemed so young for such an enormous task, but he went about it with a cheerful smile.
When my brother Tony arrived to fetch us in his pick-up truck, it felt like Salvation Part 2.
Thankfully, the roads leading to his house in the suburbs weren’t flooded. Lunch prepared by my sister-in-law Papoose and an afternoon nap afterward did much to soothe our wrenching, drenching trauma.
Another source of comfort were the text messages from friends who expressed concern for our safety. Knowing that our village is prone to floods, many of them asked if there was anything they could do to help. Just hearing from them, I felt, was help enough.
Returning to our house the next day, there was that sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t we seen all this before—the overturned sofa, the damp dining chairs, the piano, silenced now more than ever, in its state of disrepair?
I wish I could say that cleaning up the mess, after having gone through Ondoy four years ago, was easier this time. Perhaps only a little. But the feeling of dread and displacement, of helplessness in the midst of nature’s fury, remained the same.
Looking at the surrounding chaos, I knew that the return to normalcy would have to be earned diligently, painstakingly. Like the gentleman who patiently pulled our boat to the rescue center, we must trudge along until we reach our own zone of safety.
