whapakk.

(This is part of a long journal entry I made over the weekend, being part of the areas critically affected by the storm Ondoy. I couldn’t post it right away because we had to shut the electricity down before the flood got in.)

My morning started casually, with me rolling out of bed to go online and do my usual morning routines: checking my mail, firing up my online messengers, checking my blogs, etc. There was nothing unusual about the morning. Not even the heavy rains. I figured: it’s late in September, and it always rains at this time of the year. It’s a normal Saturday morning.

But there was nothing normal in the hours that followed. You see, our house has two floors. The ground floor has the basics: the living room, the dining room, a gaming area, a two-room office, the kitchen, and our helper’s room. On the second floor, you’d find my room, Jason’s, and my parents’. By six in the evening, everything: furniture, appliances, sentimental items, and even our pet fish faced one of two possible fates: be displaced, or be destroyed and lost.

1.39PM. We didn't know how by much the water would rise; we thought this level was bad enough.

About the only time I felt the floor dry today was when I got myself a cup of coffee, around eight or nine in the morning. About an hour later, my mom asked me and Jason to carry pails of water from a flooded shower room downstairs, and to throw the water into the lawn outside. Apprently, the rain outside was pouring so hard that the water was already started to flow into the shower room.I found it troublesome, but looking back now, I guess it gave me some warm-up to what we had to do in the afternoon.

1.44PM. We thought propping objects up on tables was enough.

By noon, the living and dining rooms were flooded with water that was about three to four inches high from the ground. The storm outside was showing no signs of stopping. and while it’s definitely not the first time we’ve experienced such whipping from a storm, it was certainly our first time dealing with flood entering this particular house. And we weren’t prepared.

1.46PM. Part of my dad's workspace before the flood wrecked the room.

We started off by unplugging all the appliances, lifting things from the floor to table-tops and the stairs. These were CPUs (we had quite a few), voltage regulators, wooden ornaments, and shoes. Everything on the first floor stayed on the first floor. But, the water started rising rapidly in the afternoon, and by six in the evening, it was already waist-high (I’m 5′9, go figure). We were very frustrated with the damage the floor has inflicted on our property, but we were more afraid of what it could potentially do to us.

4.57PM. The flood messed up my A/T car; it switched on the headlights and the radio by itself.

By that time, we have already carried our most important properties to the second floor. However, we had to accept the fact that we could not carry the refrigerator, all our furniture (which I had to push outside the house and let float on the lawn because it’d hinder escape should we need to; not my idea, though), many of the documents housed in the office, some monitors, a lot of food, all the laundry outside, and other things, both important and not-so important.

Right now it’s seven-thirty in the evening and looking down the stairs, I say the water’s probably up my neck by now. The storm’s still hitting our roof hard, but you don’t hear it, because you mostly hear water splashing against water. Outside, you see cars fully submerged, as my own probably is now. It can’t be helped. This is nature at work.

Since afternoon, I’ve been trying to gauge how much the water level’s been rising, how hard the rain’s falling outside, imagining water running down from the nearby mountain and washing down to where we are right now. I imagine the Marikina River, and how dangerous it is now; it’s a very depressing feeling to know that it wouldn’t be a surprise if someone drowned there today.

4.13PM. The muddy waters started washing around our furniture.

I don’t know how everyone else is doing. I fear for my life simply because, as today proved, it will only take another day of such heavy downpour to drown this whole house. I’d say the house is 30% underwater now. It’s scary because it’s been less than 12 hours since the water started getting in.

(Will the rain ever stop? Will the flood ever cease? Will the water ever stop rising? What is the government doing about it now? When will we need to be rescued? How many more people needs to be rescued?)

I packed my things as I would for the worst possible scenario. All of my most important possessions were in one bag. I had good reason to be afraid. More than ever, my resolve not to die today was being tested.

(An Account of a Terrible Weekend: Part Two / Part Three.)