Showing posts with label sampaloc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sampaloc. Show all posts

After a tornado, it's a fire...

20 August 2016

The last thing that you want to hear in the middle of the night is someone shouting "Fire! Fire!" at the top of their lungs.  And that's exactly what happened last August 20 in Sampaloc, Manila.  We've had similar experiences with fires in Sampaloc.  That time when a tanker blew up in the street fronting our compound and when there was a fire across the street from us.  This time, our house was flanked on two sides by a huge fire  - on our left and in front.  Let me tell you how it went....

Disaster strikes in the New Year

This is not good.  What would you feel when you were coming home feeling all content and happy because you've just celebrated the New Year with your family and then all of a sudden, a commotion happens right in front of you as you're parking your car.

That's what happened on January  2.  We came home to people running around, shouting and screaming just across the street.  At first, we thought there were gang members rioting or neighbors fighting.  I then asked Patrick and the kids not to get out of the car in case we need to make a hasty exit from.  Then we started to hear people shouting, "Fire! Fire" and that made me nervous.  I automatically looked into the sky to see traces of smoke and sure enough, just across our car and the street, there was a blazing fire in one of the buildings.  By then, people were running around looking around for the fire trucks.  We immediately parked the car in the garage because we didn't want to hinder the passage of the fire trucks.  I learned from Patrick that fire trucks have every right to blast their way on the street and if you don't want to get out of the way, then good luck to your car! They've actually done it before too wow!

Patrick took some pictures of the commotion from the street and from our room in the house.  Here's a picture of the first fire truck making the scene. It's funny that there are a lot of people hitching a ride on the truck thinking they can help the firemen out.  But what firemen want is for them to leave them alone so they can do their job better because sometimes, these people simply get in the way and may end up getting hurt because they don't know what they're doing.




Here's a picture of the fire from our room.  It was really scary because I kept remembering that it was the same time last year that we were also in the middle of a scary fire.  Remember?  A tanker truck blew up in front of the house and for a while we couldn't get out because there's a huge wall of fire outside our gate. whew! really horrifying and even Dana still remembers that night..





The street across the house looked like a parking lot of fire trucks.  I pity the vehicles who got caught in the middle of this event because they got stuck in the middle of the fly-over and they couldn't back out.









The fire was put out after 30 minutes maybe but the firefighters stuck around for a lot longer than that.  It was really scary but it also made me thankful that it wasn't us and that there weren't any injured people in the accident.

Flooding in Sampaloc

Never in my life did I think that the water would rise so fast. It was a Saturday morning and Dana had classes. So we brought her to school. It was raining a little so it was still okay, otherwise I wouldn't have thought to bring her to school at all. Anyway, around 10:30, we were heading out to get her from school and the rains were stronger, visibility was very poor but we managed and we even went to our favorite store so we can buy lunch but the water was high already and we were scared it might get into the car. We didn't think it was going to be bad at our place.

When we got near the house, we noticed that the garage was open and my cousins were bringing their cars out.. Look out! Water was in the garage and it was ankle deep in a span of 15 minutes!! we parked the car outside, brought the kids in and checked the status inside the house. Mel's room was flooded, there was a leak in the window.. got that fixed with sealant. Den's room was leaking, got that fixed too, the roofdeck was flooded, the drain was blocked. Our room was leaking.. the ceiling was flooding.. man, i can't fix that so our room had buckets of water LOL

You won't believe it, but the water in the garage rose to as high as chest-levels. On the streets, they were probably at thigh-levels. and the rain wasn't stopping ... At least, we didn't lose power.. Our neighbors houses were flooded. Our house itself wasn't flooded but we couldn't get out.. We just had to wait it out and keep vigil on the buckets of water inside the house LOL

Now we're waiting for the water to subside for the clean-up.. oh what a joy! LOL

Here are pictures, if you're so inclined:

On the streets:


Inside the compound:
If you look at the water level behind Tito Ernie, you'll see how high it reached.


Water in the car: