‘Ompong’ leaves 1 dead, spawns twister in Metro Manila

Metro Manila was left largely unscathed from strong winds and floods after Typhoon “Ompong” (international name: Mangkhut) crossed northern Luzon on Saturday.

A typhoon-related fatality, however, was reported in Caloocan City on Saturday while a tornado ripped through two villages in Marikina City, also leaving two persons injured and several structures damaged on Friday.

Police said security guard Domeng Porras, 58, was killed after a concrete wall in a demolished building where he was stationed in Caloocan was toppled  by strong winds and crushed him on Saturday.

Responding policemen had to pry Porras’ mangled body from the rubble on Galino Street at Barangay 120. The impact entangled him with a plastic chair, where he was sitting before the wall collapsed.

Porras was the first reported typhoon-related fatality in Metro Manila as of Saturday afternoon.

Marikina tornado

In Marikina City, a twister hit the villages of San Roque and Santa Elena at 5 p.m. on Friday, uprooting a more than century-old acacia tree and damaging several buildings, including the 200-year-old Kapitan Moy Residence, the Our Lady of the Abandoned Church and the old Philippine International Footwear Center (Otto shoes building).

Paul John Campos and Janet Juanzo suffered from electric shock after a high-tension wire near the Marikina Shoe Museum snapped and fell near where they were standing. They were taken to Amang Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center for treatment.

Several videos of the tornado were posted online by Marikina residents, including footage of a wedding reception at Kapitan Moy that was disrupted when lights suddenly went off inside the building, causing panic among guests.

River rising

On Saturday afternoon, Marikina disaster response officials asked residents in riverside communities to evacuate as water level at the Sto. Niño monitoring site reached the 17-meter mark.

“We are now on alarm level No. 2. We conducted a pre-emptive evacuation last night (Friday), bringing more than 400 people to evacuation centers,” Mayor Marcelino Teodoro said in an interview with Radyo Inquirer.

Once water level reaches 18 meters, or the third alarm, the city government will resort to forced evacuation of residents, especially in low-lying districts.

Evacuation

In Navotas City, residents in the flood-prone village of Tangos followed a familiar, if inevitable, drill: as soon as typhoon signals were hoisted in Metro Manila on Friday, the fisherfolk community fled their makeshift homes  along the city’s shorelines.

It’s a routine perfected by years of exposure to threats of storm surges, said Virginia Rivera. It’s also a life hazard they have come to terms with just to stay close to their livelihood.

“It’s part of our lives,” said Rivera, a 68-year-old fish vendor, who evacuated to Tangos Elementary School with eight relatives. “Even if we have changed mayors, changed presidents, this is the one thing that hasn’t changed.”

Rivera’s family is among the 270 families who sought refuge in the school as soon as Navotas Bay rose 10 meters above sea level, said Tangos village councilor Gaga Trangia.

Danger zones

Like the others, Rivera and her family spent most of their lives in a makeshift home built on stilts along the danger zones. They were used to evacuating at least twice a year.

Navotas City Mayor John Reynald Tiangco has repeatedly asked residents of his coastal city to apply for resettlement.

But the process is “too long and too difficult,” said Desil Barquin, 23, also a fish vendor in nearby Malabon. “We cannot afford to stay long away from our jobs just to apply for something that isn’t even certain.”