Tropically depressed: typhoon tales
While they were bickering about indecency the obvious problem went unnoticed.
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There was a flood in Jackie’s apartment yesterday. Yes it was the height of typhoon Pedring and many areas were underwater—Roxas Boulevard rejoined Manila Bay—but Jackie’s apartment is on the 42nd floor.
She wasn’t at home when it happened. In the morning the owner of the apartment below hers reported that his ceiling was leaking. Then a friend from the next building texted Jackie that her balcony door was open. When Jackie left her apartment that door was stuck and she couldn’t lock it. Apparently the gale-force winds had flung the door open to let in the rain. Hence the flooded 42nd floor flat.
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This evening we were in a taxi turning right on Ayala at Edsa. Even in the dark we could see the giant pothole the floods had left on the side of the highway, but the taxi driver must not have been eating carrots and green leafy vegetables because he drove right into the pothole and got the taxi’s front wheel stuck.
After some futile attempts to extricate the wheel he waved to some guys at the bus stop and asked for help. A couple of them tried pushing the cab, but it wouldn’t budge. Then three more guys came along and before I could say, “Stop, the engine is on and no one’s driving!” the five helpful pedestrians and the taxi driver had pushed the taxi out of the pothole and into the oncoming traffic. There ensued much jumping up and yelling at oncoming vehicles, then the driver jumped into the moving taxi and hit the brakes.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
September 29th, 2011 at 11:23
Wow. I’m sorry to hear about Jackie’s apartment. I hope there was only minimal damage to furniture and appliances.
Based on experience, living in a high rise building is not an assurance against flooding. I lived on the 15th floor once. Some pipes in the building leaked and our unit was the only one flooded in the whole floor. We could have been zapped by electricity because the flood seeped silently into our unit while we were sleeping. The extension wires were soaked. We took the day off just to clean up and dry things out.
September 30th, 2011 at 06:14
oh my, i hope no one was seriously injured or killed by that thing. was the driver of the red car ok?
September 30th, 2011 at 07:57
I am surprised that no one is calling PAGASA out on this. Two years ago, when Ondoy hit, PAGASA complained that they didn’t have enough instruments to forecast something like Ondoy. Now, after the installation of several Doppler radar units at considerable cost, Pedring. They should all be dragged out of the PAGASA building and continuously bitch-slapped for at least 2 hours.