Surviving the Wrath of Ketsana

by Ma. Aleah Taboclaon

Being a tropical country, the Philippines is not a stranger to typhoons and other natural disasters. Approximately six to seven storms hit the Philippines annually, and the people have learned to take such things in stride.

When Ondoy (international name: Ketsana) entered the Philippine area of responsibility, it did not seem threatening. The weather bureau PAGASA had issued the standard warning a day before, giving a Signal no. 1 in Metro Manila and neighboring provinces. When I left my house in Montalban, Rizal at 5am on September 26 to go to Stairway in Puerto Galera, there was just a bit of rain and no wind. Three hours later, however, when I arrived at the Batangas pier, I was greeted by the full fury of Ondoy. No small boats were allowed to go to Puerto Galera and the last ship for Calapan City had already left. From there I could have taken a two-hour jeepney ride to Puerto Galera.

Dripping wet from the rain (my umbrella withstood the wind for less than a minute), I immediately boarded the parked bus going back to Manila. What should have taken a 3-hour trip to Manila took 14 hours, and on the way, we could see stranded cars, people wading through the flood, and floating debris. 

Inside the bus, it was not any better. We were wet, cold, hungry, and worrying about our loved ones. One passenger received a call from his teenage daughter, crying and asking for help. She and the other members of their family were on the roof, watching the floodwater rise even higher. Helpless to do anything, the passenger could only ask the driver to go on despite the threat of the rising water on the road.

I myself had left a teenage sister in my house. Confident that Montalban was in a higher ground, I was shocked to learn that our street was already flooded. My sister was crying and did not know what to do. All the neighbors had left and she was all alone.

Elsewhere, other Stairway employees were not spared. Nancy and Amihan, CSAP advocacy officers, were stuck in Pasay waiting for another staff member. They were supposed to go to the police training school to give a Child Sexual Abuse Prevention (CSAP) orientation, but floodwater suddenly inundated the streets right before their eyes. Amihan walked in waist-high floodwater to get home, worried about open manholes and leptospirosis, and disgusted with the cockroaches and rodents swimming past her. Fortunately, she lived close, and got home safely albeit wet.

Nancy, on the other hand, waded in the floodwater for over six hours, which ranged from waist- to chest-deep. She had left home her two minor children without an adult companion and although she did not worry that they would drown, she was nervous about fire (there was a power blackout and her children used candles) and electrical accidents. Constant communication with them revealed that water had already gotten into the first floor of their house and the children had moved some of their things to the second floor. This made her all the more determined to get home. She and some people walked in the middle of the highway, sometimes holding hands to keep from being carried away by the strong current. In some parts where the water reached chest-deep, she had to raise her backpack over her head because she was carrying two laptops and one LCD projector.  Along the way, Nancy somehow sustained wounds in her feet and legs, which were bleeding by the time she arrived home. She was tired, wet, hungry, and scared that she would drown without anyone knowing, but in the end, she was grateful that they were all safe.

Donna, Stairway’s residential social worker, was the most affected. She was living with her family in a flood-free area, and they never thought that they would experience a flooding that has never happened before. When they saw that the water was knee-deep already, they tried to move their things to the second floor of their house. Unfortunately, the water level kept on rising, so much so that her whole family (including her year-old son and 5-year-old niece) decided to leave the house via their and their neighbors’ roofs, clutching the children and the few pieces of clothing they wanted to save. Water level was over 6 feet and rising, and the current was strong. One misstep, and they would be carried away.

It was a very emotional time for Donna’s family. On the street, they could see cars spinning like clothes inside a washing machine, and the water continuing to rise. They had already entertained the possibility that they would not survive the night. From 4pm of that fateful day, they stayed until dawn, hungry and scared, but thankful nevertheless that they only lost material things and not their lives.

When the Philippines was able to take stock of what happened, over two million people were affected by the floods, with infrastructure and agriculture damage about PhP5 billion. Pictures and videos from all over the metro show people walking on electric wires or swimming in over 10-feet of water, cars decorating tree branches, and whole communities submerged in mud.

If the Filipinos were used to natural disasters, what made Ondoy different? By themselves, the pictures were nothing new; other typhoons had killed thousands of Filipinos. For Ondoy, there were “only” hundreds.

What made it remarkable was the fact that the flooding happened in places where it never flooded before. Montalban and Quezon City were geographically higher compared to its neighboring Manila and other cities. When Ondoy came, it took the people completely by surprise, for in just a span of a few hours, the amount of rainfall was equivalent to one month’s worth, making it the worst in Philippine history. More, it made the people aware that they were not as safe as they thought they were. With Ondoy, no one was spared; people in squatter’s areas as well as in affluent subdivisions all similarly suffered the storm’s wrath.

As a volunteer psychologist to one of the organizations doing disaster management work in Rizal, I hold small group sessions with traumatized children identified to need specialized interventions. In one session, an 8-year-old boy who lost his father and their home to Ondoy included a tree in his drawing. “Kapag di po pinutol ng tao ang mga kahoy, sana di namatay ang tatay ko (If people did not cut trees, my father would not have died),” he said.

While it is good that children as young as he is have already realized the need to take care of the environment, it would have been better if he had learned it before Ondoy.

It would have been best, however, if everybody realized that fact now, when we still have an environment to save. For in the destruction of our natural resources, the children would not be the only one to suffer, but so would all of us.