After the Flood (Oct 02 09)

Note that the title that I chose is "After the Flood", not "After the Typhoon", because there was hardly any typhoon. All we had was flooding due to the release of water from Angat, Ipo, and La Mesa dams, resulting in more than 300 deaths (not counting bodies that have not yet been found), massive destruction of property, sickness, and despair. And the culprits continue denying their culpability. If man does not judge their actions, God will.

All the houses in Kingsville suffered the same fate. Water entered into at least the first floor, wetting everything inside with semi-muddy floodwater, killing all electrical appliances, and wetting all books and clothes and documents. All wood appliances like pianos and composite wood cabinetry, absorbed water and bloated, making it difficult to take out the wet stuff inside. Composite wood cabinetry are useless after a flood, and must be thrown away. Narra sala sets are exceptions, since water hardly affected them. Plastic drawers in plastic cabinets retained 100% of water that entered, each drawer holding nearly five gallons of dirty floodwater.

Outside, on the driveway or on the street where floodlevel is deeper, water got into all vehicles parked there,. getting into every possible hole in the vehicles, including the air-filtration system, and replacing the fuel in the tank with the heavier floodwater. Also outside, where the pet dogs and pet cats are kept in their specially made dog and cat houses, many of them simply drowned, except those that you were able to bring inside the house.

You clean out the sala first, and then realize that you should have clean out the rooms first, because cleaning the rooms require that you bring out stuff from the rooms, through the sala, and out of the house onto the pingpong table in the driveway, where you transferred everything to dry, since you can not move them to dry out in the sun, because there is no sun, but only a steady drizzle. You can't imagine how heavy a King size mattress is when soaked in water - three muscled men are needed to drag the thing out of the house, not even lift it. Then you clean out all electrical outlets on the ground floor, in preparation for Meralco power, which you expect to come soon. When you went out to buy food, water, and other basic needs, two kilometers from your house, you got signal on your Globe mobile, which, by some magic trick from Globe, such Globe mobile signal is absent from the entire Kingsville Subdivision. Then your friend who lives in New Manila, whose first floor also got flooded, calls you and tells you not to turn on electricity to the outlets, because he did that and got a short, and now he has no power for several days.

Next you need to attend to the laundry, but you have no electrical power, and your washing machine and dryer are all flooded. So you bring some wet clothes to the cleaners, who promise you that your laundry will be ready for pick up in 12 days time, because they are full of other people's laundry. Fortunately, you have a son, who gives you his washing machine, and now wait for power to be restored. Finally after several days, power comes, and you spend hours spin-drying all the wet clothes. Now find out that you do not have enough clothes lines, and your problem never ends.

So you go out again to buy food, and you discover that your favorite Robinsons Supermarket also got flooded and will not be selling for the next several days, so you go to Sta Lucia, where food prices have miraculously gone up by 30%?

Next you try to see if you can have your Honda City towed to Honda Quezon Avenue, and find out that the queue is three cars deep all along the entire length of their service center, and if you bring your car in, they can attend to it after se3fveral months.

God have mery on us. God have mercy on those murderers from Angat, Ipo, and La Mesa!