Katherine San Juan still has nightmares about muddy floodwaters that engulfed their two-storey house in Manila last year, forcing her family to scamper to the roof. The 42-year-old mother of six young children said she thought the epic floods brought about by Typhoon Ketsana last September 26 were the end of their lives.
"The water kept on rising and rising and we didn't know what to do," she said. "My husband had to break our ceiling so we could go to our roof. We stayed there for several hours." "We were blessed to have survived, but we know so many who didn't," she added.
"I still can't sleep at night when it's raining hard, and when I do get to sleep, I have nightmares of my children drowning. I wake up screaming." San Juan's husband Jose, a construction worker, said it took them a couple of months before they were able to clear their house of mud and debris. Stains of floodwaters are still visible on the walls and some furniture that was salvaged after the tragedy.
Like many neighbours, the San Juans had wanted to move out of their house in Manggahan village in the Manila suburban city of Pasig after surviving Ketsana's floods. "But we had nowhere else to go to," Jose said. "It's hard but we have to slowly rebuild our lives here."
Pasig City was one of the worst-hit areas in Manila, with many roads turning into waterways when Ketsana dumped one month's worth of rain in just six hours. The downpour caused rivers that stretch throughout Manila to overflow and inundate a large swathe of the capital. Clogged drainage and sewage systems aggravated the problem. Nearly 500 people were killed and almost 5 million were displaced by the floods, the worst in Manila and nearby provinces in 40 years.
Typhoon Parma struck exactly one week later, bringing more misery to flood-weary residents of Manila and northern provinces. An additional 465 people were killed and another 4 million displaced. One year after the back-to-back cyclones, relief agencies said many of those displaced were still struggling to recover and living in flood-prone areas. Minnie Portales, advocacy director of World Vision Philippines, said thousands of survivors from Ketsana and Parma continue to live in tents away from their homes and work.
"They have lost their jobs. They have no permanent land to live on. Their children are suffering from respiratory diseases," she said. "These people are losing hope that they'll ever have a better life."
"Much more needs to be done to prepare for disasters if survivors are to escape long-term misery," she added. Defence Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, chairman of the National Disaster Co-ordinating Council, said the government has taken steps to improve preparedness for probable calamities.
He said efforts were being undertaken to map out high-risk areas, improve the accuracy of weather forecasting and speed up the communication of warnings and evacuation instructions. Gazmin urged the public to help in efforts to mitigate the impact of calamities by protecting the environment and to prepare "for the unexpected" by learning what to do during disasters.
"In the event of a severe weather condition, there should be no balancing act between life versus property," he said. "Knowing your location is a high-risk zone, take the first step to evacuate and seek safe harbour." Luz Magallanes, whose family lives along a riverbank in the village of Bagong Silangan in Manila's Quezon City, knows very well the importance of evacuating as soon as possible in times of danger.
When floodwaters started to rise in their neighbourhood at the height of Ketsana's downpour last year, she told her seven children to pack up and prepare to leave. "I was hysterical already because the water was so high," she recalled. "But my children and husband were making fun of me and saying I was too nervous."
Magallanes added that one of his children, Muelmar, 18, also wanted to help some neighbours whose houses were located in a lower part of the village. "He saved about 30 people," she said. "The last one he saved was a pregnant woman." Muelmar died when walls of an abandoned house collapsed on him while he rested after swimming back and forth for several hours to bring people to safety.
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