Brief spot of sun gives people respite from rains

The brieftest break of sunshine after a day spent submerged in floodwaters was all the residents of Barangay (village) Damayang Lagi in Quezon City needed to know to say that the worst was over.

By 11 a.m. Wednesday, residents of the barangay along E. Rodriguez Sr. Avenue had started cleaning up, as floodwaters began to subside. Others in the community returned to the sidewalks to resume their livelihood—selling vegetables.

Still others dug into heaps of water-logged clothes on one side of the street, looking for pieces of garment they could still use.

The only signs of the flooding that hit the village were the mud and debris on the street and two mud-caked taxi cabs, one on top of the other, abandoned  by their drivers when floodwaters from the swollen San Juan River swamped them the night before.

On Araneta Avenue near Talayan Village, a bus and several cargo trucks stood on the roadside, where they had been abandoned by their drivers. Big as they were, they stood no chance as the heavy downpour on Tuesday night sank the road.

On Wednesday, the break in the weather enabled the drivers and their coworkers to return to restart the trucks, working in knee-deep floodwaters.

On Wednesday morning, the floodwaters in Barangay Damayang Lagi reached thigh-high, and Marines and Coast Guard rescuers had to use amphibian vehicles and rubber boats to ferry people across Araneta Avenue and E. Rodriguez Sr. Avenue.

Submerged hospital

One of the amphibians had to ferry a 77-year-old stroke patient across the flood from the submerged De los Santos Medical Center on E. Rodriguez Sr. Avenue.

The patient’s wife told the Inquirer that the hospital had no water and it was drawing power from a portable generator, as its heavy-duty generator in the basement conked out.

“I could not take the risk. We need to transfer,” she said, waiting anxiously for the ambulance that would take her husband to the Philippine Heart Center.

De los Santos Medical Center facilitated the transfer to other hospitals of most of its patients who required close attention. On Wednesday, 70 patients remained at the center, according to its executive director for administration Ivy Marvin. The hospital’s emergency room was submerged in chest-deep floodwaters.

Temporary shelter

In Barangay Bagong Silangan in the the 2nd District of Quezon City, a covered basketball court had become home to thousands of residents driven from their homes by fast-rising floodwaters.

On Wednesday morning, the evacuees lined up for hot food as rain pounded the plastic roof of the basketball court.

Some of the 2,339 families evacuated at the height of the flooding on Tuesday night returned home yesterday, but those who remained in the shelter expected them to come back.

“Give it two hours of heavy rain and our houses will be underwater again,” said a woman breastfeeding her baby.

According to rescuer Emmanuel de Jesus, floodwaters in Sitio Clemencia, a low-lying community in the barangay, reached  the third levels of some houses in the area.

Shelter in church

In Barangay Roxas, Holy Family Parish Church became a shelter for 600 families. The evacuees occupied the pews and the entire floor, leaving only the altar free of people.

“Most of them came from Gumamela and Waling-Waling. The floods were terrible there,” said Cecil Lozadas, a volunteer emergency worker. With reports from Michael Lim Ubac, TJ Burgonio and Julie M. Aurelio