By Herman Lagon
(This article was published 13 years ago with the author narrating his and his mentor’s ‘death-defying’ experience during the Typhoon Frank tragedy in Iloilo)
The first block was just a breeze although I had to use a bamboo stick just to make sure that I was stepping on pure mud and not on sharp edges.
Then the crossing came. I needed to pass through it while walking sideways. My body was streamlined to the direction of the strong current while I walked perpendicular to it. Few others who passed the same way needed to do this while holding hands just to make sure that they won’t be literally swallowed by the furious flash flood.
The other intersection near Fajardo was, for me, the most trying part of my journey. Chest deep, the muddy water moved like small lines of raging bulls. They were so fast and so strong that local Tanods needed to place a 1 ½-inch thick nylon rope across the street just to keep the few but daring passers pass through it unharmed.
Before even going to the starting point of the line, I felt like I was strongly pushed by the water to the nearby concrete wall. Good thing I was given a hand by a similarly struggling Tanod just to cling through the rope.
Just as I thought that the worst of it had passed, I had to cross the 6-meter street turned kayaking area with only my bare hands and the improvised cable. Although the Tanods were there to “cheer” us, I was left by myself to do the crossing and before I knew it, I was already “floating” horizontally with my hands holding the rope as if it was the last day of my life.
Inch by inch I tried to move to my left while in a prone floating position with a strong current of mud water gushing through my body. My floating body is paralleled at about 1 and ½ meters from the ground. Halfway through the rope, I almost lost my grip but I braved it nonetheless for losing my hold might mean my early death. When I eventually completed my daring ordeal, I was greeted with a big tap at the back by a Tanod on the other end telling me that I did it really well. I didn’t care anymore to bother him and ask what he meant.
And so, I proceeded straight to the lower portion of Fajardo Street where I have to pass through the side fences of the houses ala Spiderman-Aquaman. The water was already nose-deep and I couldn’t pass through the middle part of the road for it has turned into a death trap due to the mad current. I was left with no choice but to start swimming through the edges of the road where cars were already floating like logs. People in their second-floor houses watched me, perplexed.
Then I reached another crossing near the Jaro I Elementary school and the Brgy. Cuartero Outpost. They’re just under the roof of an almost drowning beauty shop, I already started to think of going back and waving the white flag. But the worsening condition strengthened more my resolve to proceed to my target. I told myself, I have come this far, I must not give up. Ma’am Au may need my help (by this time I didn’t have any idea what kind of help I could give her) all the more in this kind of Bangladesh-disaster-like situation.
The current was already too much for me to handle. I could barely move an inch from where I stood (or swam, I didn’t know exactly what I was doing by then). I clutched at the window grills of the “sunken” parlor and waited (buoyed) my way for my next plan while looking at the cabinets, small snakes, wooden planks, and plastic containers floating (or swimming in the case of cold-blooded vertebrae) through the river-like street.
Then I saw a group of residents sheltered at the other side of their elevated house rummaging through whatever items they could see drifting in the virtual stream. I made a sign for help and, after minutes of waiting, they threw me a rope for me to at least get into their place (which is just an eskenita away from Ma’am Au’s house) for quick refuge. I asked them about “the way to the white Korean building,” my best reference for my target’s house. They told me that the area, which is only 100 meters away from where I was, was already two meters deep.
After a few minutes of rest, I started swimming through the narrow passageway towards Ma’am Au’s house. This 100-meter stretch of deep, flowing mud water is one of my most unforgettable and closest encounters with the Grim Reaper. Exhausted already, I used all the possible swimming styles I could just to make a few centimeters forward. I tried the backstroke and laughed at myself for doing such (and for drinking mud water in effect). All the years of my life, I thought that the fancy dog style ridiculous, but that situation proved otherwise.
Along the way, I had to freestyle-dog style myself from place to place where I had nothing to cling to. Most of the time I clung to walls of many kinds—bamboo, concrete, galvanized iron, grills, cactuses, and bougainvilleas. One time, I had to move using the floating tricycle as my life vest of a sort. While doing this, I saw small houses with only roofs left to be seen, and luckier people in their second floors just staring at me, perhaps confused about the senselessness of what I am doing.
After drinking a glassful of mud water and while chilling in the cold afternoon, I reached the house of my principal with only the other half of the house (upper portion of the windows and roof) visible. Only an inch of the concrete fence is seen. I perched on it to rest for a minute while Labrador Jake barked at me. Then it rained anew.
I called Ma’am Au up and she was there at her grilled window, equally surprised with my presence amid the flood. Swimming through the screened pane, I saw her bobbing with barking Jake at her side. In the downpour, I thought I heard snatches of her voice telling me to pass through the back door. Little that I know that from where I was, a lot of cacti were barricading so I had to take them out and swim through the back door which really, I did not know where.
I realized that the slippers that I tried to use as mini oars have been useless since the start so I placed them in one of the windows of the house before I proceeded at the back portion of the house only to discover a day later that that pane where I placed my tsinelas is about nine feet high.
Looking for the back door swimming was a great struggle for me. The place seemed to be like a small kitchen of sort and many pointed things like corrugated steels greeted me like hideous teeth of beasts from hell. I thought to myself, what if I will step on these sharp things or get snagged by pointed kitchen wares.
Finding the back door had been difficult already but when I realized that the door was locked from within, I thought that Hades was making fun of me big time. Suspended on an instantly improvised Styrofoam floater, I kicked and banged the door hard just to force it open. The water and the floating refrigerator made it more difficult to let loose. But persistence ruled and eventually the wooden door slowly gave way.
As I entered the house, only then did I realize the gravity of the damage. Everything floated—TVs, refs, computers, tables, cabinets, vases, books, and whatnot. The bungalow house was half-filled with water, including the two-step higher mezzanine floor where Ma’am Au’s room is.
I gaped when I saw my principal indeed on top of the bed with Jake still woofing. Only this time the bed was also floating. Ma’am Au and Jake did a balancing act on a bed half-soaked with mud water. The bed was then the third-highest place where she can be; the second is the top of the frail cabinet, and the third is nothing else but the rooftop.
It was already about 3:30 p.m. that I came to “rescue” Ma’am Au. She seemed happy to see another member of the homo sapiens species with her, but like me, she was equally clueless about how to get out from the area amid the awful condition.
And so, while Ma’am Au was doing her balancing act, I looked for a place where I could “sit” near her just to dry myself off. Lo and behold, a three-inch horizontally wide baluster which was still submerged in water was there for me. I placed a thick book on one side of the plank and a soaked square upholstered chair seat on the other just for my butt and feet to rest lest sit in the same fetal position for hours.
I told my “floating, bed-balancing” principal, who is also texting her family and friends for rescue, three available options. First, I will go back and tell the rescuers the better way to Ma’am Au’s place for help. Second, we will swim through the route I took using an improvised floating device made up of blue mineral water containers. Third, we will just buy our time and wait for the rescuers to come or stay and wait for the water to settle.
Hours came and the water is settled very slowly. I was trying to use my science to provide an answer to our condition but the most that I could do was to measure the rate of falling of the water level by approximation.
The author, Dr. Herman Lagon, is now the Principal of Ateneo de Iloilo-SMCS, the position that was previously served by his mentor from Brgy. Cuartero, Mrs. Aurora de la Cruz. The latter is now retired but the mentoring goes on as both continue to communicate with each other via Messenger. Their death-defying, God-graced Frank experience will forever remind them how fleeting yet providential life is.
