Last June 21, Typhoon Frank (international name: Fengshen) hit and battered Iloilo City, heavily affected the province’s 42 towns. Around 80% of the city went underwater affecting 48,836 families and the district of Jaro (where I, my sister, and my cousins live) was submerged because the water level reached a height of 2 meters.
Everyone has his or her own version of "Baha" (Flood) story... and here goes mine (I hope the pictures reflect the calamity that we had overcome):
We were having a good sleep when somebody knocked on our door. It was one of our boardmates, she said: Ate, may tubig na sa kwarto! (Big Sister, the water has entered our room!) My sister (Aying), my cousin (Rophe) and I immediately jumped out of our beds and grabbed the things that we can save. However, the rain didn't stop and the water reached the second floor of the house.
Fortunately, the house had a ceiling. Thank God, it didn't collapse. Imagine...all the things that we were able to save were placed here and 11 of us stayed here for almost 3 days and 3 nights.
On the second day of the flood, we checked our rooms and we found some clothes, shoes, and slippers that were soaked in the mud.
These are the things that helped us lived through that traumatic experience...the well and the stove..
Frank destroyed some parts of the house. We can't even use some of our kitchen utensils.
Here is a picture of the ceiling during daytime. It's good to have some spare clothes... shoes... slippers even though they don't have pairs now.
When the water subsided, we immediately wash our clothes and clean the house.
P.S. I appeared only once in these photos because I was the photographer.
Comments