The Worst Flood in Marikina History

Sept 26 has historically been a bad luck day for me. Its actually my deceased brother's birthday. In the past 10 years, I've had major problems that coincidentally seem to be falling on that day -- from my previous company's altercation with a major telco; to working overnight to get a client's link up; and now this!

It was raining hard the whole night. But since the weather has been like this for weeks, we did not really pay much attention to it. We woke up this Saturday morning and went about doing our usual things. Well, I couldn't go to the gym because the rain was a bit hard, so I did some work at the den. At around 11am, Cols called my attention to the lanai as the water seem to have risen to an alarming level and our fish pond was threatening to overflow.

When I went out, I saw that the entire backyard was already submerged! Since we only moved here to LGV last December, we've never really been through a major typhoon here and were not aware how usual flooding here is. So I called up Tita Lucy and asked her if this is "normal". She said 'no' and that this was the first time in 20+ years that they've been here that water has submerged their garage as well.

From Typhoon Ondoy at LGV

The water has risen to cover the first step of our small stairs leading to the backyard. And it just kept going up and up. Our accent mound (see photo above) already looked like an island with the grass surrounding it completely invisible under the dirty flood water.

Our back gate, which normally has a large gap from the bottom frame to the ground that can fit our kids' toy ball, was already touching the water. Below is a photo of a person wading through the water outside showing the water is already knee level along Paraguay Street.

From Typhoon Ondoy at LGV

At around this time, I received an SMS message from our Store Manager saying that flood has already reached critical level also along Sumulong Highway and that the water has already entered the store. Sumulong Highway is also not typically a flooded area so I wasn't that concerned. I figure that the water would probably go into the at most up to ankle level. Little did I know that it eventually went on to go as high as 5.5 ft INSIDE the store effectively submerging all our kitchen equipment.

This turned out to be the worst flood in Marikina history as Typhoon Ondoy unleashed the equivalent of one month's worth of rain within a 24-hour period. It left 80% of Metro Manila under water. LGV was flooded heavily for the first time. Several commuters got stranded in front of our house as Soliven III Ave. was flooded about 100 meters further with water reaching up to neck level.

Amazingly, electric power at our house never went out. While brownout was widespread across the Metro as the electric company shut down power to avoid shortage, electricity and water was never interrupted at our house. This was unusual since power always seem to go out at our village whenever there is a big thunderstorm.

By around 5pm, a sizable crowd has already gathered outside our house as all the cars were parked there and could not proceed. By this time, the rain has already stopped but the water has not subsided. Many people just left their car parked on our street and waded through the flood to reach their house on the other end of Soliven III.

From Typhoon Ondoy at LGV

Caitlin slept over at Ilene's place last night so she did not witness the happenings here at our village. By around 8:30pm, we decided to fetch her since there's no power over at Speaker Perez and she was complaining that its hot. But alas, we got stuck along Quezon Ave. as Araneta was impassable with flood water also rising from the creek there. So we had to take a U-turn and come back home without her.