Today is the 1st year anniversary of Ondoy – the flood that submerged Metro Manila. For the first time I’m seeing footages of the flood on TV. Why for the first time? Well, we were in the middle of the disaster when it happened. We know first hand how deep the flood was but that’s all we know. Since we were one of the most hit we didn’t have electricity for 14 days. We had no idea about what was happening in other parts. How stranded people braved the flood just to get home to their families, the act of heroism shown by strangers, and the like.
Seeing it for the first time makes me feel grateful how really lucky we were. I’m glad we were spared even if we were living in one of the hardest hit areas. It also makes me sad now that I’m hearing stories of how some families were torn apart. Some people even lost all their children.
I’m glad this year the storms are not that frequent. Still I can’t help but fear that in a year or more another Ondoy will come again and ravage our country. I want to be optimistic but I’m a realist. There’s a saying in Geology that goes if it happened once, it will certainly happen again and if it hasn’t happened in a while, it will happen soon.
