Since most of the info I posted was on Twitter was in bits and pieces.
Quite a few people I know don't have Twitter.
So here is the photos and story in one place for those of you asking me to blog about it.
This is the link to Google Maps that I found that shows Max Flood Heights around the area if you are interested.
View Typhoon Ondoy Maximum Flood Height in a larger map
A Before picture of the street in front of the house from the second floor.
Second picture is close to Max Height of the Flood.
Around 5-6pm
A couple hours later the black lampposts on the gates were covered soon after that the rains stopped thankfully. When I woke up around 3am the water had subsided and was gone. I was planning to take a tour/pictures of the first floor at that time. Everyone was asleep and furniture and stuff was piled up against the doors. I was in no way feeling like I wanted to be moving furniture at 3am in the dark in the mud. So went back to sleep...
You can see in the first picture the vans in the driveway. Both of the vans were covered with enough water for me to swim over them to the guardhouse. Just about where the blue bucket is. (All cars drowned even the ones in the back parking area.) Yes I swam over them to fetch someone and bring them back to the house. After that I tied the front door shut with a hose I found floating around by the door to prevent stuff from floating to the street after and getting lost. Saw cockroach floating by. At that point I got grossed out and decided to call it quits.
Picture of back garage through Ckas window around 2:30pm. Room I was standing in taking the picture was flooded also. Decided to leave room after the small fridge toppled over with the planted aquarium on top of it behind me. Bed cushions were floating at this point too. Next time there's a flood I'll know that I can put stuff on top of the bed when I run out of time. So long as it's not too heavy and it'll stay dry!
At this point when I saw the bathroom lid covered with water I had a sinking feeling that this did not abode well.
This is pretty much the living room around 2pm. Couch was already floating. Another fine place to put stuff on when you don't have time to bring up everything.
Two of the staff in the house. Lucky for them their two kids were also with us that day. That evening as I looked out the windows from the third floor after hearing around 10+ explosions and, noticing the sky was kind of orange. Their whole area blocks away where they lived had caught fire. Ground level was flooded and second floor was burned. They lived on the second floor. Quite a few people died including their neighbor. That night I saw the tell tale signs of smoke in the sky from three fires. Theirs being the biggest. Some of the stories I heard involved throwing kids out of the window into the flood waters to get away from the fire... they lost everything except their lives.
Washing machine floated out of the laundry room into the living room. Was kinda weird swimming by it moving stuff. That actually caught me off guard as I really wasn't expecting to see it floating by there.
Picture of the guy's helping me rescue the flat screen TV around 3pm
Yard Sale?
Everything hauled into the yard the next day to get hosed down.
Pretty much everything was covered with icky.
Sadly all of Ckas books were unsaved and damaged.
Most everything was saved though.
Three days later Ckas and I were both in the hospital throwing up with fever.
See post (LINK)
I didn't really get a chance to take pictures of the streets after the storm.
As I was still feeling awful.
This is just a side street and only a smaller version of what I actually saw.
Garbage piled 6-7 feet high. One lane wide for 4-5 blocks.
Which took a week or so to clean around our area.
The river that we passed by on the way home from the hospital was chocked full of garbage.
I can only imagine how much of that stuff will be heading out the GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH!
The smell after a few days was quite the sniff wherever you went.
Picture of dump trucks used for shoveling garbage off streets
.
Close to a month later life is slowly getting back to normal. Still a lot of cleaning/fixing/sorting/replacing to do.
Must say not quite the way you'd want to do your spring cleaning!
Doors still don't shut all the way as we are drying them out, Nara wood takes a while to really dry.
Carpenters are in fixing all the water damage to the wood.
Electricians are in trying to salvage aircons, fridges, lights, washing machines and, anything electrical that was drowned.
Mechanics are fixing the cars. Three so far are working!
We have a profusion of snails around the house.
Those that know how many fish tanks we had around the house....
Less than half survived... of fish some were found stuck between the window and screens creating quite a smell also.
Our basement remains untouched since after the flood waters receded as we are still working on the ground floor and smells terrible!
1 dog and 2 chickens drowned.
3 other dogs died after the flood receded also.
The local Laundromat made a killing with our laundry.
Lola is traveling back and forth to Marilao staying at her house there.
Coming home during the day to fix up her room and office.
We've moved up to the second floor and attic for now.
Mind you it's quite cozy up their and roomier.
No complaints from this department.
Only depressing thing is we have to walk past the ground floor.
All in all it could have been worse.
It was only a few years back the house was renovated and lifted up.
A second and third floor was added. Had this not been done we would have literally been on the roof in the rain that night like so many others.
Sadly there are still pockets of areas where the water still has not receded and probably never will. People still stuck up on their roofs. Others were hit by another typhoon soon after and, even at the time of this writing a third one on the way.
3 Damns were released that day we got flood at once. What were they thinking population control and spring cleaning of the river ways and streets? Stupid.
Lastly thank you to those that helped us loaning cars, coming over to help us clean up the mess and, other things.
I remember when I was younger looking at flood pictures from North America. Florida or somewhere nearby there. There was one picture that really stood out, until this day I can still see it in my mind very clearly. It was an empty street with a street sign. The flood water just a few more inches from reaching it. I sat there staring at it for the longest period of time trying to imagine what it would be like to be there. The person taking that specific picture of the street sign. Now I don't have to wonder anymore.
I have my own street sign....
