Typhoon Gaeimi Floods Manla - News and Story

Photo courtesy of Emmie Abadilla, FB

 July 25, 2024: Because of Typhoon Gaeimi (or Carina in the Philippines), Manila is flooded. It is one of the worst floods, with several major roads chest-high with floodwaters. 

I am reading about the flooding there when I remembered this short story "Flooded" by Rogelio Cruz, which is part of the anthology GROWING UP FILIPINO: STORIES FOR YOUNG ADULTS (Ed. Cecilia Brainard). This is a more light-hearted look at Manila's flood. 

FLOODED

Rogelio Cruz

Manila was strange. It yielded not the usual parallel city streets and consecutively-numbered blocks, but triangles, circles, and other haphazard spaces that brushed at the ends of one’s nerves pleasantly. Fritz suspected that the original plan, a century ago, was affluence: sparse black-and-gray vehicles trudging narrow roads on a damp and drowsy Sunday morning, open-air orchestras, an aviary, the Sky Room. The skeleton of it was still there; but its once white and pastel flesh was now bloated with the sweet-rotten color and smell of poverty, of phlegm and urine in the open gutters. The dainty roads now proved to be traffic hell; the corner statues and whores were curses to each other — because of one, the other had too little space. Worst of all, when the rain struck it blind and flushed all the filth the cavities of its dying buildings never ran out of, the city drowned in a sick fluid the color of coffee and milk.

Fritz and Jan were caught in the flashflood. When they left Rizal Memorial after watching the basketball tournament, it was sunny and humid; then the sun died like a lighted match thrown into a ditch, and the slick, damp, rueful silver of rain clouds drained everything of all their color. The view from their windshield shifted quick as the next slide on a carousel, with a blinding white sheet of rain the intermediate frame: the next thing Jan knew, he was keeping his foot on the gas so the water wouldn’t get into the muffler as they trudged Rizal Avenue. Along its deepest portion they even saw a yellow kayak speeding past them. The chaos of the city and the chaos of the weather were one. It signified the nearing of the end, they thought, when God just might opt to destroy this pathetic place, and start all over again.

They ended up at Gov. Forbes. It was strangled with cars, and they didn’t move for an hour and a half. Jan decided to create a counterflow. He wedged his car out sharply from the gridlock and sped down the opposite lane, but to no avail: the intersection was impossible to pass, and he had nowhere else to go. He retreated.

This lane of Gov. Forbes was empty. It was the only road that was passable at all; and though it led away from Jan’s and Fritz’s destination, and to unlit, stranger parts of the city, it gave, especially if one did not stare out too far, the illusion that it was the way home. For a moment, Jan seemed to have given in to this illusion: he sped down the lane, until he reached the end of the paved part. Then he hesitated as he realized they were about to enter a colony of shanties, that seemed to be slowly sinking into mud, lighted only by whatever threads of blue moonlight could escape from the dense sky.

 

“Maybe we should just stay in one place until the floods subside,” Jan told Fritz.

Fritz sighed deeply and stretched inside the car. “Damn. Don’t expect us to be home before tomorrow, then.”

Jan feigned banging his head against the steering wheel. “I want to go home, man.”

“Me too,” Fritz said.

Jan calculated a possible route. The car, his homunculus he controlled with his hands and feet, skated around the deserted road, jutting its nose into this corner or that, while Fritz froze and frowned in his seat. If he were asked for an exemplar of a face that kept cool in any situation, he would give Jan’s: as he played the wheel, the pedals, and gears like a skilled instrumentalist, he kept his already thin lips terse, but not too tense; strength reserved itself in the sinews of his neck as he turned back to look or peer forward, while his almond-shaped eyes remained in their elongated state, as relaxed as his limp bangs. Fritz himself looked at the side mirror and saw his own face in the half-dark, eyes perpetually in shock, lips forever in an anxious pout. He was beginning to feel useless.

Jan turned to a side street, where a few men idled in front of a lit sari-sari store. He asked for directions; a skinny, greasy man told him that the road led to where they wanted to go. It would bring them, he said, to Felix Huertas, which would then bring them to Antipolo, then Retiro, then Amoranto, and they will end up sweetly redeemed at Araneta Avenue. The man waved to the direction in front of them, assuring them the flood on this street was only shallow.

 The two friends stared at the lake of brown water in front of them.

“What do you think?” asked Jan.

“It’s worth a try,” Fritz said.

“How deep is it there?”

“The man said it’s not that deep.”

A passenger jeep emerged from behind them, moved ahead, and plunged into the flood. It shook at the impact of the invisible potholes, and its tires completely disappeared into the water. Jan backed out frantically. They were driving on Gov. Forbes again, though they didn’t know where to go.

“There’s another street over there,” Fritz said, pointing to another dark alley, where another skinny, greasy man stood. When they reached it, Jan rolled his windows down again and asked.

“Saan ba kayo papunta (Where are you going)?” the man asked him back.

“Quezon City, ho.”

“Pwedeng Dimasalang (Dimasalang is OK),” the man replied. “Kaliwa kayong Elias, kanan kayong Blicera . . . Dimasalang kayo. (Left on Elias, right on Blicera . . . Go to Dimasalang).”

“You’re more familiar with Dimasalang, aren’t you?” Fritz said.

“Yeah,” Jan said.

“Diretso lang kayo dito (Go straight here),” the man said.

Jan looked intently out the windshield. “Hindi naman ho baha (It’s not flooded)?”

“Hindi naman (Not really).”

They thanked the man and moved. There was indeed, no flood. The end of the street, however, where they had to take the left, was blocked off, and men were signaling them to take the right instead.

There was water where they turned. “It’s getting deeper again,” said Jan, looking hard out the windshield, afraid to move on. He was revving the motor up again in fear.

“Probably won’t get any deeper than this,” Fritz said. “Look, all the cars are going that way anyway. Just go on.” A few other vehicles were trudging ahead of them, and one or two would appear from behind them, all going forward.

It was also true that there was no space for any of them to back out. Jan followed the queue of cars and when he turned right, the car sank deeper into water. “Shit,” he curtly exclaimed. The street was totally dark.

“Shit,” said Fritz. “But go on — ook, all of them can go through it. Don’t stop. Go on. Just go.”

In fact the queue roared on, and Jan stepped on the gas. The black car sliced through the black water, sparking froth at its fringes. After what could be no more than thirty seconds, but what felt like an entire long minute, the water subsided and they hit another intersection.

“There,” Fritz said.

The street was not flooded, but he didn’t know where they were now. The car in front of them held up only enough to get out of danger and now gave. They deftly overtook it and brought their own car to an abrupt stop. The two of them puffed air out their cheeks. Barefoot soaked men rushed to the broken car and tried to help the owner, inspecting it, shouting orders and signals to others approaching them, gesturing with their hands to guide the unstranded vehicles to another brightly lit intersection. The cars were lining up once more in front of Jan; there was another gridlock.

“Manong, ano hong kalye ‘yang nasa dulo (What street is that up ahead)?” he asked a man who had been barking directions to the motorists and shaking a can of coins in one hand. Jan pointed at the cars.

“Forbes,” the man said. He looked away and resumed his calling out and can-rattling.

“Putik (Mud),” Jan muttered.

“Ano bang kalye gusto ninyong puntahan (Which street is your destination)?” the man asked, returning.

“Dimasalang,” Jan said.

“Ay, dito puwede (This is fine),” he said, and motioned to another narrow side-street to their left. “Deretsuhin n’yo lang ‘to, Dimasalang na (Go straight and you’ll get to Dimasalang).” The muddy water in it sparkled under the car’s headlights.

“Malalim ‘yata ho ang tubig diyan (The water looks deep).”

“Hindi, mababaw lang (No, it’s shallow),” the man insisted. “Eto, o (There).” He pointed to his companion emerging from the cavernous, totally unlit side-street, the water reaching only up to his ankle. “Kaya ‘yan (The car can make it).”

“Sigurado ho ninyo (Are you sure)?”

“Oo (Yes),” said the man, his voice lilting in reassurance.

The men helped Jan maneuver the car into the small space and manage the sudden rocky decline at the start of the sidestreet. While Jan was busy he asked Fritz to produce a five-peso coin, or something, to give to them. As the two started to advance, Fritz dropped two five-peso coins into the man’s can.

Halfway through the water deepened again; Jan clicked his tongue in ire and stepped on the gas, and Fritz unconsciously clung onto the overhead hanger on his side. The street was an excuse of a passage between two endless firewalls, a suffocating channel almost too narrow for the size of their car. If someone came from the opposite side, they were dead. The farther they got into it, however, the clearer it was to them nobody was with them here.

“Where’s Dimasalang?” Jan said gravely.

It was possible that Jan saw ahead what Fritz would himself in a second. “Dimasalang’s at the end of this,” Fritz said, “the man — “

And then they were stunned: “Puta!”

The revelation was both majestic and frightening: getting out of the alley, they had entered the sea, its darkness one with the sky’s, its surface quivering in its depth. The stone buildings were but islands; the water seemed to stretch a thousand kilometers. A distant glow of headlights to Jan’s right urged him to steer there; but he didn’t have any choice.

“They fucking said it wasn’t flooded!” Fritz cried.

“He’s going, Fritz, he’s going,” Jan said, referring to the car. They turned the air-conditioner off and opened the windows. The engine bellowed like a half-slaughtered beast, then finally died. “There you go.”

Jan turned the keys to click off the already dead vehicle, and sighed; and the two froze, unable to look down, only too aware of the water’s surface already tickling their waists, the innocent yet vulgar smell of earth and sewage.

“Fuck,” they recited again in unison. The car rocked gently to the undertow. They could hear only sea-sounds: the absolute stillness of the air around a stranded boat, the collected swish-swash of vehicles sailing far away. For a moment they heard the solitary laughter of some street-children playing in the muck, coming their way; this faded as they swam on and left them. A second set of splashing sounds came nearer as another drenched half-dressed man appeared in front of Fritz’s window. “Boss tulak natin (Boss, shall I push it)?” he offered.

“Tutulak din kami (We’ll help push),” Jan said. The two abandoned passengers opened their doors heavy against the water and stepped out.

“Huwag na, ako na lang (I’ll do it),” the man said. “Baka mapasma pa kayo (You might get sick).”

“Tangina,” Jan said, “para naman kasing di pa kami basa (It’s not like we’re not already wet).”

The two pushed from either side, holding the arch of their doorways, while the man pushed from behind.

“Liko natin d’yan sa kanan (Let’s push to the right),” the man told them, “bababaw d’yan sa may St Jude (It’s shallow over at St.Jude).” Jan did as he was instructed and steered to the right at the corner of Dimasalang, waiting for the promised end.

“Jan,” Fritz called soberly. He flashed at him. Jan stared back, held his gaze, his eyes still the narrow slits that looked like they were closed. “Do you know what’s happening?” 

Jan looked away and laughed. He laughed through his windpipe, laughed like he was almost choking. His laughter made Fritz feel light, with both gladness and fear: that what had happened to them was not as fatal as it seemed, that it could have been his fault, but he seemed forgiven anyway. As they approached the corner of Dimasalang the water subsided, the heavy resistance against their legs gradually being dispelled until Fritz was merely kicking diluted mud out of his way. The dry strip was filled with stranded vehicles like theirs; they won’t be able to get out of it -- not until tomorrow, probably -- but compared to the thought of drowning, it was an oasis, and they probably would want to stay there. ~end

You can find Growing Up Filipino: Stories for Young Adults in Amazon and Barnes and Noble.