What was the worst calamity/natural disaster that you went through?

Philippines
September 28, 2009 8:22am CST
I just came out of Provident Village after the tropical storm Ondoy submerged my village. I have lived in Provident Village for about 30 years now and this is the fourth flooding that we experienced. As you can guess, we are use to it by now. But this one was the ginormous and mother of all floods. The government, in their infinite wisdom (please note the sarcasm) did not announce that they were going to open three dams. So the water rose quickly and inundated most of Marikina. My family, including my mother who has only 2 functioning heart valves, spent 17 hours on top of our roof, surrounded by a sea of flood. I could see my neighbors unprepared and without food, water or protection from the elements, exposed and shivering from the cold and the torrential rain. We did not see any rescue boats pass by for over 12 hours. From the time that the water reached our roof and we evacuated there, only one helicopter made the rounds and waved to us. The water finally receded the following morning. A resuce boat first passed by around 7am and an hour later returned to pick up my Mom after I pleaded to the resuce personnel. I was not an invalid and able to walk and so was not allowed to ride with my mom. I waded through chest-high water with debris and mud on the floor. I removed my slippers because it only got stuck. I met my mother in the gate of our subdivision where there was more chaos. Nobody appeared to be in charge. It was every man for himself. My mother gave her slippers to someone else and so I gave her mine and I walked around barefoot looking for a ride out of that place. Some policeman took pity on us and asked a personnel from Manila Water to give us a ride out. The guy was kind enough and we rode at the back of his pick-up. I went down barefoot and we were able to take a tricycle to my cousin's place. After 24 hours, I was finally able to take a bath. The water turned brown after my bath How about you, what was the worst natural disaster or calamity that you experienced?
2 responses
@goldeneagle (6745)
• United States
28 Sep 09
Hurricane Ivan...
• Philippines
28 Sep 09
Wow, Ivan the Terible! Pretty impressive. How did you live through it?
• United States
28 Sep 09
Actually I evacuated LOL but I came back the day after the storm hit and witnessed first-hand the destruction and devastation it caused. Hurricane Dennis was no fun either.
• Philippines
28 Sep 09
my heart bleeds for all of u there in manila. here, in central visayas where i am, we can even feel the strong winds and rains, i could only imagine what u went through. we also felt the typhoon as i heard our rooftops seemingly trying to get free from the fastening nails. the worst that i had gone thru, however, was typhoon ruping in 1990. it was so devastating in our area. a portion of neighbor's roof flew and landed on our rooftop, destroying our own house. water came inside our house but only a little above the ankles. the worst was that we had no power and water supply for a month (other areas for over a month). we have a manual water pump and it really helped us and we shared water to our neighbors.