Flood water fills slum family home

“Please help, we’re drowning. Please help,” shouts Juliet Acantilado, 28, living in one of the slums in Karangalan village, Cainta, Rizal.

Juliet’s cry for help was heard in many villages by people clinging for their own lives. Desperation filled the air as flood waters steadily crept up towards the roves of the slum homes.

Typhoon Ketsana brought extreme rainfall, resulting in widespread flooding that affected 80 % of Metro Manila and nearby provinces, killing 240 people and displacing nearly a half a million.

“At first my children were enjoying playing in the floodwater then suddenly it was up to their chin, nearly drowning them,” she said. The rapid torrents of water charged through the community when a near by river overflowed.

Grabbing her three children with the help of her husband, Juliet started shouting while swimming towards their neighbor’s house which had a second storey for them to evacuate to. “We grabbed whatever small belongings we had. My first priority was our safety,” said Juliet.

For two days, Juliet and her family waited for the floodwaters to subside. She says she was filled with dread when she thought of the damage done to their home, only 4 sq meters in size, scraped together with pieces of scrap wood and old tin sheets.  

When the water retreated Juliet said: “I stared dumbfounded at what had been our house.  It lookes like a heap of garbage, as though it was part of a dirty volcanic mudflow,” she said. Her family had been living there for ten years after living in another slum area in Metro Manila.

Juliet and her family lived next door to ten families with nothing but a few feet between them. She said: “Though we live in slum with where there is no electricity, no available toilet, at least we had a house to sleep in.”

The family says they have been asked to leave but with no other place to go, they have not budged. The area is prone to flooding and disease but Juliet says there is no alternative. She has no job and her husband works as a barber earning less than 10USD per day.

Looking at me with such sad, despairing eyes, she said, “We have no money, no food, no water and our clothing is all wet and muddy including my child’s school things. How are we going to survive? Where are we going to stay with our children?”

“Your assistance is so timely. The water has subsided only today. World Vision is the first group to come and help us.  Your food aid will tie us over for a few days. We badly need this. Hopefully another group will come,” said Juliet as she touched her shorts which she has been wearing for three days now.

World Vision’s food aid consists of rice, several kinds of canned goods, pack of coffee and water among others. Juliet and her family are among more than one hundred recipients of relief goods distributed in her village.    

“I hope someday we will have our own house and will no longer need to ask food from our neighbors,” she said.

Juliet is among the more than 100 families in her village who received the relief goods. To date, 236 food packages have already been distributed. World Vision is targeting assistance for 20,000 families or 100,000 people in four areas namely Marikina, Pasig, Cainta and Rizal. 

Homepage image credit: Reuters