CALASIAO, Pangasinan, Philippines?As floodwaters rose in eastern and central Pangasinan Thursday and Friday, residents relied on their instincts to save themselves and others.

In San Jacinto town, Inspector Ryan Manongdo, acting police chief, remembered a Philippine Daily Inquirer story he read about how inflatable beds saved lives in Metro Manila.

When he saw floodwaters rising in front of his office at about 4 p.m. Thursday, he grabbed his inflatable mattress in his quarters and used this to search for town mates in need.

He saw two male teenagers doing the same so they joined forces as they trudged floodwaters up to five feet.

They prioritized children, women and the elderly. Their three inflatable beds saved more than 130 residents who were taken to a building behind the police station.

In Mangaldan town, farm owner Noel Jarabata used a rope to connect electric posts spanning 700 meters along the flooded Freaneza Street in the town center.

The rope served as a lifeline as he guided three families to safety when floodwaters and strong currents engulfed the town.

"The water came suddenly and the current was strong," said Jarabata, who saved some neighbors and moved them to his house and relatives' houses that were spared by the floods.

In Bolinao town, Margaret Celeste, civic leader and environmentalist, started pooling resources from her townmates here and abroad to help flood victims in eastern and central Pangasinan.

"We have received help from many people when we were hit by Typhoon 'Emong' in May this year. It's right that we help victims of typhoons in other places," she said

Bolinao and other western Pangasinan towns, battered by strong typhoons in May this year and in May last year, were spared from the floods.

In Barangay Puguis, La Trinidad, Benguet, the damage was so extensive that Inquirer photographer EV Espiritu could not frame the scene within his super wide 10-mm camera.

While the excavation of landslide victims went on, Espiritu saw the following buried bodies in Little Kibungan in the same barangay on Longlong Road: a mother clasping her baby; another mother holding fast an elementary school-age child; a man looking like he was covered by soil while in the act of running full stride; and a adult, whose gender could not be determined quickly, in a fetal position.

On Friday morning in Barangay Buyagan, also in La Trinidad, Espiritu described the fireman who was buried while rescuing landslide victims.

The victim's face was caught in a grimace of pain, half of the flesh torn off from his skull with only his teeth showing.

Espiritu saw the body of another rescuer, an engineer, found prone, his head flattened.

Whenever a typhoon signal is raised in Baguio City, businesswoman Wilhelmina Rimando has made it her company Tawid Silver's policy to let the silversmiths go home for the day and take all necessary precautions.

Oct. 4 was no exemption. Pepeng?s rains were beating the city when Rimando's assistant, Consuelo Tabifranca, visited some workers in boarding houses in the City Camp Lagoon to give them their cash advances that afternoon and warn them at the same time to move to higher ground, given the area's history of flooding, the last during Typhoon "Feria" in 2001.

Tawid's workers are all accounted for, but those who survived the nightmare of the lagoon's swelling said they underestimated the warnings.

Randy Dacoscos, who grew up by a river in Pangasinan, swam practically the length of that submerged area in search of his boarding house where he left behind brother Oliver. When he entered the water, he couldn't feel the ground anymore. His fear was his strength would flag because of the cold. He didn't get cramps nor hypothermia.

Rimando got word from the Office of Civil Defense that everyone in the area had been evacuated. However, at that moment, Oliver and some other boarders carefully moved from one rooftop to the next till they found shelter at the highest point, a three-story boarding house on Queen of Peace Road.

As their cell phones ran out of load, Rimando called them to look for a whistle in that house or a flashlight they could use so that rescuers could spot them.

When the waters subsided, the brothers were reunited and walked to Rimando's house in Mirador Hills where they ate and changed into warm clothes.

As a counterpoint to the tales of horror and survival, the concern of writer Luchie Maranan seemed puny. Hers reflected similar stories of other inconvenienced Baguio residents.

She had been down with flu when she noticed Thursday night water oozing out from the fringes of the sofa where she was curled on. The mini spring spewing clear water came from the space between the floor and the wall.

She mistook it for sewer water from Valenzuela Road in Baguio or maybe the garden water taking another route. Before long her children, niece and help were armed with rags, walis tingting, dustpans, basins, pails, trying to drain water out of the apartment. The silence of the efficient assembly line was broken by the question: "Tayo lang kaya ang ganito (Are we the only ones like this)?" They were oblivious to the greater, apocalyptic scenes around the city.

When the lights went out, they continued flushing out rising water from the floor. Maranan panicked when she thought that the retaining wall from the road would crash down on them.

Her older sister Wilhelmina was frantically calling out for help for her silversmiths awaiting rescue on top of their roofs at the lagoon. She roused her sons from sleep to bring sandbags over to help Maranan with the water problem.

Past midnight, the rains abated, the sandbags diverting water from the main canal to ease seepage.

By morning updates were grim. Maranan's problem paled in comparison with the harrowing night of the helpless others who lost lives and houses in a series of landslides in different parts of the city and neighboring Benguet.

Reports from Yolanda Sotelo and EV Espiritu, Inquirer Northern Luzon, and Elizabeth Lolarga, contributor