Thank God For The Empty Coke Bottle - A True Testimony

A true testimony of Douglas Garcia during the Tropical Storm Washi (local name, Sendong)

It’s been 12 days after typhoon Sendong directly struck Cagayan de Oro and Iligan Cities last December 16, 2011 and left our house with mud & damaging our properties such as books, electronic items, etc. due to flash flood that overflowed from the two baslayan creeks in our area in-front of Gaisano Mall.

I remember that the said creeks no longer overflowed since another deep and wide baslayan creek was excavated beside the Abu-Caltex gas station at Tibanga towards Canaway shoreline and divided the water flow coming from Tibanga, Del Carmen, etc towards Gaisano Mall and Philamlife areas.

But since typhoon Sendong with warning storm signal no. 2 directly hit Iligan including Lanao del Norte as aired at ABS-CBN TV Patrol on Friday evening, Dec. 16, 2011, practically almost all areas of Barangay Poblacion, the heart of the City, were flooded.

I recalled that at around 2:00AM I was awakened when the empty Coke litro fell down on the floor. Immediately I took the flashlight because it’s so dark and checked the area to see any rat that may have caused the bottle to fall down. But when I picked-up the bottle, I was shocked to step on the floor with water moving inside the house.

Immediately I woke up everybody: my wife, my son and his wife, my daughter and her husband and hurriedly advised everyone to go out of the house with our grandkids and leave our belongings. But when I opened the door I was surprised to see the water rushing into our house and for few seconds it already rose up to our knee.
And when we get out of the house the water continued to rise up to our waist. I tried to stay in the middle as a link and ensured that my family especially our two-year old grandson and seven-month old granddaughter are safe at the 2nd floor of our neighbor’s house.

With my son-in-law we went back inside our house and tried to pull out our TV set and other clothes especially for the grandkids. Not so long, we decided to go out because most of our properties were already floating including our refrigerator when the water increased higher.

We waited for an hour and when the water subsided by more than 12 inches, my son-in-law strongly suggested that we transfer the kids to Gaisano Mall overpass because the rain started to pour again that may cause the flood water to increase even higher.

I embraced my daughter carrying her baby girl and we slowly crossed the creek with the guidance of my son-in-law who just felt the edge of the concrete bridge that we had not seen due to the overflowed muddy water. Then I went back and carry my grandson with my wife and again crossed the creek on the same manner.

I noticed that my grandson was so afraid because before the flood I used to let him walk on the concrete bridge in crossing the creek and he always tell me: Lolo Boy, it’s dirty canal. And in the morning when we transferred to our sister-in-law, my grandson had a high fever, probably due to his traumatic experience of the flood for the first time.

Upon meditating on what happened, I also remembered the news I’ve read during the 1991 Gulf War by the Allied Forces against Iraq. One evening some soldiers of the Allied Forces were sleeping in their tent in the middle of the desert. Incidentally, one soldier was awakened by a rat and tried to follow it outside and brought the soldier to a quite distance from his tent.

To his amazement, there was a big explosion on the place where their tent were located and found out that it was hit by a bomb. The news reported that the said soldier thank the rat for saving his life from the explosion.

I do not own this piece of writing. However, I have his consent and authority to publish his story. If you want to know the authenticity and verification of publishing, contact him here.

© Content Copyright Douglas Garcia 2011. All Rights Reserved.