I knew going to the Philippines that this is their rainy season so I took my rain jacket with me when I left on my trip last week. Little did I know just how useful the rain jacket would be and yet not really enough. At breakfast on Friday morning it was mentioned that there was a typhoon off the coast... by Friday night there seemed to be a pretty steady rain coming down. Saturday morning was our much anticipated project visit. It had rained all night and was still raining as we boarded the bus. The rain was a steady down poor as we made our way to the Compassion Philippines office to pick up some field staff going with us.
We arrived at the project and I could see that some sections of the road we were on were completely under water (kids were using the street as a swimming hole. The first thing we did when we arrived at the project was to go on home visits. We split up and due to the rain it was determined we'd take the motorcycles with side cars. Pretty exciting actually. On some of the roads the water was coming up into our side car because it was so deep. Our home was the closer one but it still took us 15 minutes to drive to the visit (I'll talk about in a different post). As we traveled back to the project we ended up taking a longer route on some of the major (6 lane) roads as some of the streets we'd taken earlier were now too flooded to drive through. We returned to he project soaked and found out the other home visit group had actually seen a house collapse. This is about the time I realized the typhoon and rain and flooding were serious.
We had lunch at the project and then it was time to head back. Most of the field staff did not get back on the bus with us as it was discovered the roads back to the office were already flooded and our bus would not make it there. As we traveled back to the hotel I saw people walking with bags of stuff who had evacuated and were trying to get to emergancy shelter. I saw abandoned cars, flooded roads (people wading through waste deep water) and waves in the water as we'd drive through. The rain had not let up yet and I didn't know how long it would continue or how much more this city could take. It continued to set in just how serious this was.
Back at the hotel I turned on the TV to see footage of just how the water was affecting people. The news station was showing live footage of people being rescued from the roofs of their homes and lots of footage of people wading through water who had evacuated and now needed to find a place to go. Some of the field staff was stranded at our hotel and I'm glad I had a chance to help them. I wasn't sure we'd make it to the airport in the morning and if we did, if our flight would still be running.
In th morning as we drove to the airport we could still see pools of water but we could also see how he rushing water had tipped over large cement road blocks and we saw 100s of people (4:30 a.m.) that our van driver told us had been stranded and likekly spent the night on the street.
I'm glad I was in the Philippines when this happened. Far too often I don't really understand what's happening through out the world and unfortunatley sometimes I don't take the time to understand. Being back makes me wish I was still there and could somehow help, but instead I need to pray. Please pray for the Philippines staff who had to evacuate their homes and the children/church partners who may be affected. Pray the next storm that seems to be coming somehow avoids the Philippines altogether I don't have such great pictures but here's a couple.
1 comment:
Oh, my, Carmen! I'm glad you got home safely but am sorry to hear of all those who had to evacuate. What an eye-opening experience!
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