How about sharing your experience with Ondoy?

Hi edu, I'm from Cainta, so I guess by this alone you would already have an idea how severely affected I was. On the morning of Saturday I wasn't a bit worried even when the rain was pouring so hard because I knew that our place was flood-free. By noontime I noticed the water was slowly rising and it has covered the wheels of my car(it's an AUV Mits Adventure - a bit taller than a sedan). Still I didn't panic, then in a matter of minutes the waters were already inside the house, and that's when we hurriedly brought upstairs the things I thought were the most important - some groceries, fruits, noodles, water dispenser, rice dspenser, rice cooker, microwave oven (these last two proved to be useless as the electricity was cut off just a little later). Two hours running and the water was already waist-deep inside the house. I heard screams asking for help, and when I peeped through the terrace I saw my neighbors, about 11 people= 5 adults (1 was an old woman), and 6 kids, 1 of which was about 4 yrs old. They asked if they can come to my house, to which I readily obliged. By this time the water was over 5 ft deep, they actually had to swim to reach my gate, they placed the two smaller kids in an ice cooler while the adults and to swim with difficulty - they said the current was so strong. Their house was a bungalow, that explains why they have to flee (on the following day only the roof of their house was visible). I learned later on that they were composed of 2 families. Food was scarce. We had enough if only there were us - my 2 kids, my helper and my niece, but there were 11 mouths more to feed, so everything we had was consumed right after two meals. The following day was even more gruelling - the water has risen even higher, my car was submerged and I can no longer see even the top of it, and there was nothing to feed the kids. All means of communications were cut off, and my cell phone was out of battery. I can't ever send a message to my husband (who works in another country). We were lucky that there were some who were "boating" around the area (they said that near my house it was 8ft deep, a little further it's 10ft). We asked them to buy food, but they were only able to find biscuits (fita, rebisco, skyflakes), none for the adults. We gave everything to the children, while all adults suffered the day without food. I was thinking, are we gonna survive another day? This went on until the evening of Sunday. I worried about so many things - my kids, my car, the families who joined us, food. But there was nothing else to do, I was helpless. Fortunately on the following day, Monday, the floodwater started to subside. We still went on with very little food for the children, and us adults lived on water mostly. By the afternoon my "visitors" were rescued by their relatives, I and my kids opted to stay. When finally I thought it was safe to go downstairs, I checked my kitchen and the living room, and everything was a mess. My fridge apparently floated during the flood and it was lying sideways. All the things in the living room were soaking wet and covered with mud. Nothing has been saved, even my wedding album, but this one I intend to preserve at all cost (I still have to find out how). It was a terrible experience, the first and hopefully the last in my lifetime. I'm just happy we survived, coz I've learned later on that so many people didn't.

Mine was not as worse as yours, our place is not really a flood prone area. I experience lots of rains befell our place and we never experienced any flooding at all but this Ondoy was quite different from all of these. The night was like a regular family bonding with my kid and wife. The rain was heavy during the whole night and nothing happened at all. There was no flooding and we as a family just enjoyed the night like any other nights we had. Morning came and we wake up late since it was a Saturday, the rain still pouring and there was still no flooding in our area. We enjoyed our breakfast without our maid since she is attending school in Mandaluyong. We contacted our father in law via web and had about an hour of chatting with him and still no flood came in our house nor the streets. By ten in the morning, we were planning of going to SM centerpoint to do our weekend grocery but then the rain just got stronger. We decided not to go and just wait for the rain to subside and go on later in the afternoon. Only then we realized that the roads outside started getting flooded already. We still ignored that since it usually gets flooded in the streets so we enjoyed the day playing around with our laptop. About half an hour later the power got off and there so we decided to cook lunch downstairs. We discovered that the water from our terrace was coming in our room. I decided to check on the drainage since it usually gets clog, I unclog it and the water subsided and discovered that the water downstairs was already knee deep already and down the road it is half body already. We went down to check and saw that our first floor was like the one outside. We were not able to put many of our appliances, books and everything downstairs from being saved. One of our neighbors ask to get their daughter through our second floor. There were about 1 family that pass through our second floor to get down. By then we decided to evacuate as well since the rains seems not stopping any sooner. With the help of our neighbors we were able to put the ref outside the house and transferred to the house just across the street which is ironically not affected by the flood. We decided to bring light cloths and put it in the bag as fast as we could and transferred to the house in front of us. After I was able to get my son across the street I tried helping my wife get across our house then we transferred to my wife's house several houses away from our house. They were never affected by the rains at all and we stayed there overnight and waited for the rains and the flood to subside. By Sunday Morning the water was subsided already. Actually it was 7 pm last night that the water subsided. The power was already restored and we saw the house was in a mess. Everything was all muddy and dirty. We started cleaning the house as our maid also arrived only that morning for she was stranded in Kalentong and stayed in their school the whole night because the flood was really deep in that area.

When Ondoy hit, we were still able to watch the news at noon at how high the flood waters were in Manila. But the full destruction of the storm was unknown yet at that time. By 2pm we lost power, then our phone, then water. We had none of these for 48 hrs and we could only listen to what was going on through the small transistor radio that we had. I could not go to Manila since we have to pass Marikina and it was unpassable the following day, Sunday. I had to get batteries for the transistor radio since all of the batteries were gone here in our place. I guess the scary part for me is listening to all the destruction knowing that Marikina is so near my place.

Oh my... seems like you were able to use your swimming prowess because of the flood brought by typhoon Ondoy... and good thing your house has a second floor... i am now decided that if ever i have a house built... it will have three floors and a roof top just in case something like this happens in my area... We did not get flooded here... the worst i experienced with my daughter is going home on a tricycle... and flood water went inside it... so the two of us got soaked... and when we got home... there was no electricity... but good thing there was running water... I am glad that you, your family and your car are safe... others were not as lucky...

i feel very sorry for the people affected by the typhoon. many lives killed and millions of properties were destroyed. i hope that those people will recover from the lost.