POUR OUT YOUR MIND IN ENGLISH

A harrowing, uplifting tale of September’s killer flood

A few days ago, I was copy furnished this exchange of e-mails about the calamitous floods that struck Metro Manila last September 26. I think there are great lessons to be learned from the harrowing yet uplifting experiences and thoughts told in these letters, so I am taking the liberty of sharing them with readers of the Forum. To protect the identities of the letter-writers, I have changed some of the particulars about them and excised some of their raw expressions of wrath against government officialdom.

September 27, 2009
Somewhere in the United States

Dear Louie,

Yesterday, at the height of the floods, my sister’s husband Rey, whose family lives at Provident Village in Marikina, got a call from his brother. They were already at the roof of their two-story house—his brother, his wife, two kids, his sister, and their 85-year-old dad who just got out of the hospital last week.

Not wanting to rely on our government to rescue them, Rey went to Makati and scoured the stores for a motorized boat that he could buy. At around 6:00 p.m., he finally found a store at Reposo Street selling a 6-seater motorized boat for over 100,000 Philippine pesos. But since the water at Reposo was lagpas-tao [more than head-deep], he persuaded the store owner to just ride the boat and bring it to Greenbelt [a shopping center in Makati City] where he was.

Immediately after, Rey put the boat on his pickup and drove as far as he could en route to Marikina. The nearest dry land was the Sta. Clara Church [along C-5 Highway] which was still way too far from Provident. Suffice it to say that for somebody who was maneuvering a motor boat for the first time in his life, Rey arrived Provident at 12:30 a.m. When he entered the village, everyone was screaming thinking that it was already the government's rescue team. Rey was the first to brave Provident on a motorized boat with just sheer will steering him. Meanwhile, our useless government was holding a press conference announcing its relief operations and it kept on saying that it couldn’t get into Provident just yet to save people hanging on to their dear lives on top of their roofs because the currents were too strong for its staff! Hello! Please tell me why they couldn’t and why my private citizen brother-in-law could when he didn’t even know how to drive a boat before he purchased one?

Rey had to turn a deaf ear to people screaming for help as he entered their village because he had his family, especially his 85-year-old dad, in mind. The waters were so deep that he actually had to hold on to the Meralco wires! He had to shout his brother’s name because amidst the sea of mudwater, he couldn’t even locate where their house was. When he finally found the family, he had to keep himself from breaking down. His dad was at the apex of the roof, holding to a string of blankets just so he wouldn’t be swept away by the currents! He “parked” his boat on their roof gutter and first loaded his dad and 8-year-old nephew, who by that time was already chilling from the cold. They had been atop the roof since 1:00 p.m., all soaking wet and with no food or water to drink.

It took Rey two hours to navigate back to Sta. Clara church to drop off his dad and nephew, after which he drove the boat back top the house for his sister-in-law and another nephew. It was already 3:00 a.m. when Rey reached Sta. Clara Church again with his sister-in-law and nephew, after which he made a final trip to get his sister. By the time he got back to the church, media were already there and NDCC* people assisted his sister-in-law in getting off the boat. And an NDCC official had the gall to tell media that government rescue operations were now on-going, alluding to the footage of my brother in law rescuing his family! And the NDCC people even asked Rey’s sister-in-law to remove her life jacket and return it to them! Hello, everything was Rey’s—from the boat, to the life jackets, to the sheer will and determination to keep his family alive!

Rey wanted to keep coming back to save his family’s neighbors but his tired body couldn’t take it anymore. So he decided to take a rest at his sister’s house in Valle Verde [in Pasig City] till around 9:00 a.m. today. Then they went back [to Provident] only to find cars were piled up like matchboxes [by the flood]. His brother’s Patrol, Camry, and Galant were supposed to be safely parked at the main avenue of Provident, as it was historically the highest point of the village. Sadly, the cars were nowhere to be found; they had been washed away like toy cars... Even worse, he said, was seeing bodies floating around, including that of a three-month-old baby stuck in a car windshield!

As the sight was too devastating for them to take, Rey and the rest of the family decided to just lend the boat to others so it could be used to save more lives.

Rey had the presence of mind, sheer will, and financial resources to buy a boat on the spot and put matters into his own hands. But what if it were the other way around—what if he had to wait for the government to rescue his dad? We shudder at the thought of what would have happened to his family, especially Lolo Manny, if he had not taken the initiative to do the rescuing himself.

I love the Philippines and I do wish for a better Philippines for my children’s sake. But in times like these, it makes you wish that you were living in another country where you can dial 911 and help will be forthcoming.

Rizza

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*NDCC-Acronym for National Disaster Coordinating Council

A rejoinder of someone in the United States who was furnished a copy of this letter:

October 5, 2009

Dear Rizza,

In-spite of the fact that you and I could play golf almost every day there in the Philippines, had two or more maids to do the daily chores for us, and lived comfortably, you and I moved and settled here in the USA. Our reason/s that brought us here may be or may not be the same. But I would surmise that like me, you, too, had been unhappy for so long on how the Philippines is being governed. While living my life here in the US, I was somehow relieved of my intense frustration over the political shenanigans there (I was one of the nameless participants of the two EDSA People Power)—until Ondoy came.

You know that I used to reside in Marikina. Fortunately, my house where my youngest daughter resides is located on high ground. As the news of the flood reached me via an online Philippine newspaper, along with the description of the calamitous flood by the media, I tried hard to contact my daughter and my two sons, but to no avail. The news that the flood in Provident Village reached the rooftops gave me the jitters, and I was worried about one of my sons. He resides in a subdivision close to the Pasig River somewhat like the Provident Village, which is also beside the Marikina River. This son of mine who lives in Pasig has a two-year-old daughter, a fact that, of course, added to my worries.

To think that a few billion pesos could have mitigated the effect of Ondoy’s extraordinary rainfall! The Marikina and Pasig rivers could have been dredged so that the discharge of floodwater is not impeded, thus preventing the floods from rising to the level of the rooftops. This solution to the frequent flooding of Metro-Manila is actually a no-brainer—provide the money for dredging! But instead, pedestrian overpass structures made of steel sprouted around Metro Manila. Is the crossing of the street by the pedestrian more pernicious than the perennial flooding problem that besets Metro Manila? Has the MMDA boss forgotten the flood in 1967, that time when the flood waters also reached the rooftops in the Provident Village? Did he learn a lesson from that? Maybe he did to a very limited extent because while he was the mayor of Marikina, he had the so-called flood interceptors constructed. However, Ondoy has just proved that the interceptors are just good for small floods.

Construction of levees to hold water from overflowing the river is no-brainer, too. Why can’t the government officials concerned not ever think of doing this?

Louie

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