Typhoon Ondoy came through the Manila area last weekend and caused a lot of flooding and damage in the city. Sadly, many of our Filipino colleagues at the Embassy suffered significant flooding as the rains continued, and some folks got stranded away from home but we stayed dry where we were. I didn’t realize until later that the storm had made international news and people back in the U.S. were concerned about us. Although one of the parking lots here had some deep water in it and a couple of cars got flooded out, we and all our possessions stayed dry. The compound has backup generators that remained online the whole time so we didn’t even lose power. The water purification system may not have been able to keep up with contamination introduced by the floodwaters, but testing is still underway to verify. I kept drinking the tap water for several days after the storm and nothing bad happened, but I’ve switched to bottled water until the taps are given the all clear. The baby’s formula has always been mixed with bottled distilled water, so I’m a lot less concerned than I could be. Incidentally, the day of the heavy rains marked the least fussy day she’s had her whole life, with proper naps and everything.
There’s another storm on the way that’s scheduled to pass north of Manila, but might bring significant rain to the already waterlogged city. We’ve talked about which items to grab first to move up to the second floor if the water gets deep, but that’s more about me being paranoid than about any real worry right now. Our townhouse has three floors and the drainpipes work well to shunt water off the upper balconies, so there’s plenty of room to move upward to stay dry. There’s not enough high ground for every car in the compound to have a dry spot if it gets too deep, but the VW has 150,000 miles on her and has certainly had a good run if it comes to that. In any case, I’ll post updates sooner after the storm this time.
