Manila became Water World

Bus forcing its way through the flood

I woke up early yesterday morning to prepare for work and little did I know that it’s going to be a record rainfall day in the Philippines. The rain was brought by typhoon locally named Ondoy or known as Ketsana internationally. It touches down Manila early Saturday morning. I went to work at 7am and even before I’ve reached my office, rain starts to get heavy. I work at the 15th floor of a 40 story building and my desk over looking Makati Skyline so I can see the rain, the dark sky as visibility decreases. By 8am rainfall gets worst and I can’t see nearby buildings anymore.

I logged in on some online radio stations on the internet and heard that some areas were already heavy flooded. The sky really opened up and Ondoy unleashed its wrath by dropping 13.5 inches of rain in a span of 6 hours. This is the average rainfall in a month in Manila. To put this in proper perspective, Katrina, the hurricane that wrecked havoc in New Orleans dumped more than an inch of rain in 3 hours, yesterday typhoon Ondoy rainfall was 2.25 inch every hour or 6.5 times more than hurricane Katrina. I know Katrina’s damage was much worse but  just want to compare the amount of rainfall between two calamities. Working all day can’t take away the fact that even though I am safe inside the building right now, but how will I get home later knowing major thoroughfares  are 6 feet underwater and back streets are all submerged which some as high as 12 feet.

Videos and Pictures of the flooding starts to show up on my Facebook and Twitter later in the day and I see cars trapped in flooded streets, people on the roof of their houses with flood water keeps on rising. I have a co worker who didn’t manage to come to work, she’s texting us all day that the water is already inside their house and keeps on climbing and reaching the second floor of the house.

Around 4 in the afternoon the rain started to ease up and by 7pm it’s just a normal rain and stopped altogether by 9pm. I had to wait for another a couple of hours before going home because I want to make sure the water already subsided. Going home I saw dozens and dozens of cars, SUV’s, buses, trucks parked at the side of the highway. These are the vehicles that wasn’t so fortunate to get caught up during the floods. Good thing they can start to go home now because I saw tow trucks and flatbed picking up these vehicles. The road was also littered with dirt and thrash brought by the flooding and its everywhere.

Here are some of the images I gathered on the internet showing the flooding. Mostly are aftermath pictures.

Ondoy is the worst typhoon ever to hit the Philippines. There had been floods in places that never had water before. Houses situated on hills gets flooded. High areas that never seen a flood before submerged. A month’s worth of rain fell in just six hours over Metro Manila yesterday, triggering the worst floods in over 40 years, stranding people on rooftops, causing wide-spread blackouts and killing at least 70 people, leaving thousands stranded in streets and displacing a quarter million families. It was fortunate this happened on a Saturday and not on weekdays as people and vehicles on the street could be 200 percent more and it could have been much worse.

Now this is scary
[pro-player width='450' height='280' type='video' image='http://www.nothingbutrandom.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Girl%20submerged.jpg']http://www.nothingbutrandom.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Manila-Flood-09-26-2009.flv[/pro-player]

Watch as the van on the other side of the fence gets eaten by the flood at the later part of the clip.

This is the typhoon with most rains in so little time I’ve experienced.  How about you? What is your worst rain/flooding experience?

Update 09/28: Now it’s 105 Dead plus dozens missing and 400,000 individuals affected throughout the metropolis and nearby provinces.
Update 09/29: Dead climbed to 142 now.
Update 09/30: 256 people confirmed dead.

Last update: Officially there are about 450 dead and half a million individuals affected by typhoon Ondoy.