June 27, 2008 at 11:11 pm
I woke up at 5 o’clock in the morning. My eyes were tired
from the evening’s work. I dragged my feet to go to the bathroom. The lights
were out. There was no electricity. The rain outside was pouring heavily. I
groped in the dark just to prepare for school. I have to rush because I have to
be in school before 7am. Wearing my CHN uniform, holding my bag in one hand and
my umbrella in the other, I went out of our one-storey boarding house. A strong
wind struck me. The rain’s been pouring non-stop. I decided not to go on duty.
I changed into my civilian clothes and waited for text messages from my
classmates that our duty was cancelled. It was Saturday. June 21, 2008.
I went back to sleep and caught my sister getting ready for
work when I woke up. I was hungry so I decided to go with her and have some
lunch. Armed with our umbrellas, we fought the wind and rain just to get out on
the streets and call a taxi. We ate our lunch in Iloilo Supermart Mandurriao an
hour past noon and bought some groceries. Afterwards, we went to her office because
she has to finish some articles for the Sunday and Monday issues of a local
newspaper. She told me that it would be fast and we won’t stay long so we can
go home early. While she was working on her computer, I skimmed the pages of
yesterday’s issue of the paper and constantly watched the time.
It was two in the afternoon when an employee knocked on the
glass window of the office and instructed us to turn off the computers because
the flood entered the first storey of the building and the workers were trying
to salvage the generator. Evacuees from the nearby houses climbed to the office
at the second floor of the building. The water has risen at an incredibly fast
rate. It was almost four feet high. The workers tried to move the chemicals and paper for printing to higher ground, but they weren’t able to save the
machines. The phone lines were dead. There was no electricity. There was no
food and water. The employees and evacuees looked outside the window as the
flood rose to another foot high. I heard heavy sighs and sobs. The neighbors
have abandoned their homes to save their lives. Cold and hungry, they cramped
in the common room. The employees gave out dry clothes for them to wear.
I took the 3-month old baby among them and changed his
clothes. His eyes were irritated so I wiped it with a clean washcloth and
handed him to my sister. I was relieved when my friend, who lives across our
boarding house texted me that the flood hasn’t reached our place.
My sister shared our groceries with the evacuees, knowing
that they were hungry. Cell phone
batteries and load were used up for emergency text and calls. Everybody seems
to worry about somebody despite the situation. I became anxious. I received a text
message from my classmate in Jaro. He was asking for help. The flood has
reached their one-storey house in Sambag and they evacuated to the neighbor’s
two-storey house. They weren’t able to save anything and he could barely carry
his brother who suffers from cerebral palsy and his mother who is hypertensive.
My heart sank as I replied that there is nothing that I could do because I’m
stranded myself and the lines were dead.
I tried to block my mind from imagining how worse were
things are. Then a message from my friend went through. It said, “Don! Gabaha
na gid d! (It's flooding here.)”. It was four in the afternoon. Worry registered on my face as I thought about our bags, shoes, clothes, books, my uniforms, and my 9-page
family assessment that I wrote last night ‘til twilight. I could see the same worry register upon my sister’s face. There was nothing we can do. Hopelessness overruled us.
As night crept in, we lighted candles. We tried to find our
own places for warmth. All of us were hungry and cold. Some employees brought
food for dinner from the main house. Our dinner was composed of steamed rice,
pancit canton and fish. We don’t have any plates or utensils in hand so we used
paper or plastic. My sister took some food for the both of us. Tears gathered
in my eyes but I did not cry. I was thankful enough that we had something to
eat. Most don’t have any. I was thinking of the people who lost their homes,
the children, the elderly and the pregnant women. Obviously, the city wasn’t
prepared for it and I kept asking myself what went wrong.
After dinner, I closed my eyes and wished that it wasn’t
real. By the time we woke up in the
morning, the flood has already subsided. The water was still a foot high but
there was no rain. We walked the path from the building to the main road. One
thing’s on our mind: Home. My sister kept screaming as we walked. There were
worms in the water. I lost a slipper when we arrived at the main road and I
walked barefooted to a hitched vehicle.
As we drove home, there was no sign of the old airport. It
was flooded. A truck blocked the road and trees were uprooted causing traffic.
The creeks overflowed. Homes were shattered and the people were standing at the
roadside begging for alms. There were cows, pigs and goats on the road. Mud was
everywhere, thick and brown. The sky began to drizzle. The clouds were still
dark. The city was devastated.
The vehicle dropped us to our street and we gladly thanked
him. We walked down to our place. As we approached our boarding house,
frustration, anger and desperation tore me into pieces as I muttered curses
under my breath. Cleaning up was the hardest part and recovery was a long-term
goal.
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