I have not used this account before now. I signed up for it while Howard Dean was speaking at the Yearly Kos convention in Chicago two years ago, which I attended with my husband, who uses the name Seneca Doane here. He is helping to edit my language here. I think this is a good time for me to start my writing.
I have just gotten off from phone conversations with some of my relatives here in the States. My husband told me this morning that a terrible storm had hit the Philippines, but I know that we always have strong typhoons this time of year so I didn't think much about it. Typhoons usually last for a week before there is flooding, not half a day, and they are never this bad. Tonight my cousin called. She is worried about her daughter, who didn't return home from work in Quezon City last night. She said that her house in Marikina is flooded. Marikina is where my son and his family live. I asked my husband where the flooding had been, and he said it was worst in Rizal province. He thought that Rizal was further south. He didn't know that Marikina was there.
For a long time tonight I could not get in touch of my parents, who live in a house in Quezon City with my almost year-old grandson. Phone service has been mostly out. I still have not talked to my eldest daughter and her husband and 3 kids who live in Pampanga near Clark Air Force Base. But I have been most worried about my 24-year-old son and his wife and almost 2-year-old daughter.
My husband called me over to his computer a little while ago. We have been watching online local news and video that were posted on this web site. I know the area in Eastwood from this first video and of course I know Marikina well. (I am repeating videos from the other diary here because my husband says it looks like it will not be on the Recommended list for long.)
The sight of the river is amazing. It is triple the size of how it usually is. When we were in Chicago, we went on a river tour. The Pasig River, which joins the Marikina River in Marikina in Eastwood, was just a little wider than those rivers. Now it looks like the Mississippi.
In the long video, there was a shot of a big house on the near bank. That was one of a line of houses that were there. All of the other houses are gone. Those houses had not been right on the river. There was a walkway, like a park, between them and the river and the river was much lower. On the other side, though, it looked like several rows of houses were completely washed away. Those houses that you see on the far bank were probably three or four lots back from the water. There is a slope on both banks of the river, so the houses closer to the river were lower. They would have been about two stories above the level of the river, though. That far side got hit worse.
The man in the video was explaining in Tagolog (our language) as he drove his car out from the basement parking that the back of the big condo from which he was filming had been eroded. He said that in the back they had a 24-hour Fitness -- that's what I heard him say, but I don't know if it's the same company as we have here -- and he said that now it was totally gone.
The only time I have seen anything like those people floating down the river in the next video was when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in Zimbales, next to my home province of Pampanga. Pinatubo erupted just before another typhoon hit the area. At first Pinatubo spat out stones and ash and toxic gases that people in my home could smell from maybe 100 miles west of it. After the eruption came the heavy rains in the middle of the night, and washed all the lava down the slopes through the towns, in a flow of hot mud that we call lahar, which eventually dries into a prized white sand. My secretary evacuated from her home town in the middle of the night when they heard the sirens. Towns were entirely buried by the lahar; in one town all that you could see left was a church steeple. When the lahar came down, some people who hadn't evacuated were carried down these streams of hot mud on their rooftops, but the lahar eventually engulfed and killed them. That was what I thought of when I saw those people floating helplessly down the river today.
One video from the other diary was of the hospital where my husband and kids and I had gone for medical treatments when we were there almost a year ago.
The hospital is near my former college. My older sister and brother and I were actually stuck in a flood there 25 or so years ago, but that was only knee-high.
The mall in the next video is the one where we would shop while staying with my parents and where my cousin's daughter (the one who didn't make it home) works. The flood waters have receded from there, according to my mother, who often goes to the Trinoma mall nearby and was able to get there today.
I want to explain something in the video of the shuttle bus from the other diary -- why people were laughing. Filipinos take it lightly when it comes to this kind of disaster. While the disasters are going on, they still have the energy to laugh and make fun of things floating all around them. Then things sink in and we deal with the sorrow.
I have talked to my younger brother, who works for the top Philippine television network, which is in Quezon City. His condo, which is on the 7th floor in a fancy part of town, got flooded too. His windows leaked, they could not stand up to all of the pouring water. He told me that today he is drying his whole condo -- he is worried that his book collection is ruined -- but he still feels fortunate because so many people have lost everything. He told me that the house near him where I grew up was flooded to knee level.
I finally talked to my mother and she told me that the creek near their house had overflowed and the small bridge over it just caved in. No one could leave their area for half a day. She lives in a nice townhouse which has lots of poor people living in ramshackle housing nearby. Those poorer houses were flooded by the creek. People from the poor neighborhood walked up to a church and convent at the higher end of the street where they were safe and dry. My mom is friends with the nuns there, she is a parishoner, and they came to her asking for donations of food and blankets. She gave what food she had, but she had no blankets for them, and the supplies were not enough.
My mother gave me what news I have about my son. My sister-in-law's brother lives near him and came to visit my brother and sister. My mother asked him what he knew about my son. He said that the electricity is out, but no flooding on their street, and that he should be OK. There was no transportation there, people had to walk anywhere.
I have just told my 10-year-old daughter how lucky we are because we don't get to experience this. I can still remember when a typhoon hit our town and ripped our house's roof halfway off. Water flooded the second floor and streamed down to the ground floor. We had to clean and dry the house for weeks and we lost half of what we owned, including all of my artwork that I had been saving for years. Then the next day we had to help our poor neighbor with food and some clothing because, they had lost their entire roof. We had no electricity for more than a week, lost all of our food, and still considered ourselves luckier than most.
At times like this we Filipinos gather what we can give for those who have nothing. This is when all people, whatever their nationality might be, lend their hands to help. This is when we realize that there is good in each and every one of us. This is not the first crisis that we in our country have been through. We Filipinos are strong; we survived Pinatubo and our national hero now is Pac Man Pacquiao. We will fight and survive. The hard part is that after this flood will come disease, and our hospitals are not likely ready to handle it.
I am talking to my brother about where people can best contribute if they want to make donations. His station, ABS-CBN, has a satellite office here in California and he thinks that they will have the best information about where to send donations. There is a big problem with corruption in mye country, as everyone knows. I don't even know who is in charge of the Red Cross, which didn't do a good job after Pinatubo, and if it's government appointees I have my doubts about them. For some reason ABS seems to be able to reach more families and they've seemed to me to be the most legitimate. I will continue to post information as I find it.
If people want to post new videos from the Philippines where people are speaking Tagalog, I will try to translate them later today if people are interested. Tulong tulong tayong lahat kaya natin ito -- "hand in hand, if we help each other we will make it." Thank you to Cpt Robespierre, who wrote the original diary last night, for doing the hard work of collecting all of these videos, which I am glad that my family and I got to see even though they are so mortifying.