This is the continuation of my Typhoon Ondoy Story…. click on this link to read part 1 of this story:  We Survived the Flood! (My Typhoon Ondoy Story Part 1)

Sep 26 (Saturday). Sometime early afternoon.

By this time the water inside our house was already above our ankles. We locked up our rooms so if things inside would get displaced they would at least stay inside our rooms. The screen door of the house was very heavy when we opened it to get out, as there was water inside and outside. It felt surreal as my mom locked up and we all walked towards our gates. My mom was able to grab our dog, who had fallen off the tabletop and was wading around in our garden. We were able to attach a collar and leash on him. When we left our house the water outside was already mid-calf high, and the current outside was strong.

As we waded to a neighbor’s house (where we had parked one car), I noticed the cockroaches and insects floating on the floodwaters around me (Yuck! Another image I will remember). Our neighbors graciously let us stay in their living room. There were also other neighbors there. We stayed there, not really talking much, just waiting… keeping vigil. We noticed that the waters at our gate were already above the knee. We stayed there for hours. Time passed at a crawl, and the cellphone signal was intermittent at best so I couldn’t make or receive calls.

It was still raining hard. It started getting dark. The neighbor lighted some candles. The water outside got even higher, and started coming into our neighbor’s house as well. Their house was also a bungalow. I began to wonder what we would do if their house got flooded as well. Where would we go??? The water made its way inside our neighbor’s house and rose to 4 or 5 inches. We all sat on the sofa and kept our feet elevated on monoblock chairs to keep from getting wet. I started feeling hungry but didn’t really have much appetite. My head started to ache as well.

10:00PM  

Around this time the rained started to stop, and the floodwaters started to recede. We stayed on the sofa, not really able to sleep or rest. And that’s how we passed the night.

Sep 27 (Sunday)
3:30AM  

The candles burned out. The flood had receded from our house already. We made our way back to our house with flashlights to assess the damage. We hardly recognized our house anymore. It smelled heavily of the flood. Even in the dark, we could see the thick layer of mud on the floors. There were still pools of water on the ground. The furniture and appliances were strewn all around. Everything from my hip down was soaking wet. By this time we were all so tired already. We did our best to clean one bathroom via candlelight, and then we collapsed on a bed (whose top was dry but bottom was wet), and fell into dreamless, restless sleep.

The Aftermath

On Sunday morning with the daylight we could see the devastation more clearly. We had to check-in to a small hotel for week because the house was not livable. Thankfully, we had help from from my fiance and my sister’s boyfriend. They sent over supplies and their maids and hired workers for a few days to help us with the cleaning. We would take a warm shower at night and sleep at the hotel and return to the house during the day to clean and sort through what was left of our belongings. We weren’t able to go back to work for a week. We were sore all over, and got scrapes and scratches on our hands and feet from all the cleaning, carrying and sorting. It was not a pretty sight. Thankfully, after a week, on Oct 3, we were able to move back into our house again. I think it will take months to fix up the place again. Our things are still strewn all over the place. But it still feels nice to be home again.

 Read Part 1 of this story: We Survived the Flood! (My Typhoon Ondoy Story Part 1)