🇵🇭 VIGAN • Typhoon Goring: Floodwater Musings

Stuck inside our house with floodwater encircling our now-island house, I was ironically enchanted by this hardship to write down my musings.

• The flood lake stays at the vacant lot near Ayusan-Paoa boundary for...

• 10 years ago, I only had to think about my self. It's amusing how time flies so fast. I'm now in a crossroad where I have to...

🇵🇭 VIGAN, ILOCOS SUR

I find it interesting that instead of blogging about my previous travels, I've found myself again blogging about a super typhoon. This is the second super typhoon to hit my hometown in a span of a month. Stuck inside our house with floodwater encircling our now-island house, I was ironically enchanted by this hardship to write down my musings.

I'm that type of person whose spring of ideas and introspection disgorge when I'm faced with challenges. From an idle pool of thoughts that occasionally oozes out of random triggers, some serious events that break normalcy give me mental diarrhea of words and introspections.

 ►  Habagat Season and the Airport Road

I'm trying to compose my thoughts, while I am watching ASAP Natin 'to. Regine Velasquez-Alcasid is singing while I'm typing these words. The rain has stopped momentarily, but the flooding continued. How long?—that, I don't know. The floodwater has never left us for more than a month now since the onslaught of super typhoon Egay.

The habagat season is also the flood season in our residential area. I said "in our residential area" because we are victims of a particular circumstance that involves the road and our location.

It seems like this will continue for months—our annual problem every rainy season. Well, we've been used to it. I just wish that a public engineer would assess our situation. I don't know whose jurisdiction is this. I'm not sure who is tasked to study our problem. Is it DPWH or our City Engineering office?

The Vigan airport road running through Ayusan Sur was elevated, and it followed that the accumulation of rain water east of this road gets stuck with no quick escape route. The elevated road has obstructed the natural flow of water. Our barangay's name "Ayusan" means "channel or a place where water flows." Rain water from the hills of Tamag and Paoa (Mira Hills and Silang Hills) flow through Ayusan on their way to the Pantay River. Our barangay is a gentle slope between the hills and the river.

🇵🇭 VIGAN • A month after super typhoon Egay, typhoon Goring followed.

This situation is no longer reminiscent of being an "Ayusan." It's now "Layusan." Only fellow Ilocanos could understand the latter quoted word.😅 The flood lake stays at the vacant lot near Ayusan-Paoa boundary for weeks to months; but during rainy season, it becomes a permanent lake. It overflows when there is habagat or a new typhoon, then enters our residential compound—affecting 7 households and about 40 people who are all my relatives (from 3 month-old pamangkin to my 80+ year-old lola).

We only wait for this flood lake to dry through "evaporation." It's the only escape route of the floodwater—natural means, no engineering intervention. 😅⛅️

 ►  Egay versus Goring

What makes typhoon Goring different from Egay is the heavy rainfall. Typhoon Egay was stronger and abrupt. Typhoon Goring was slower but with heavier rainfall.

Fortunately, we didn't have to deal wih power and internet interruptions for typhoon Goring. The only challenge was the overflowing of the floodwater from the flood catchment few steps away from our back door. Floodwater enters our residential area when the catch basin could no longer handle the volume.

🇵🇭 VIGAN • The floodwater that entered our residential area was above ankle deep.

🇵🇭 VIGAN • This photo shows the flood lake that was created since typhoon Egay's onslaught. This flood lake never emptied since. The entry of typhoon Goring made the situation worse.

🇵🇭 VIGAN • Flooding in our area (east of the airport road) has been our yearly encounter for as far as I can remember.

🇵🇭 VIGAN • Our front yard literally looked "dinaanan ng bagyo."

🇵🇭 VIGAN • The floodwater has already entered our terrace with random floating objects.

 ►  Ending Thoughts

On this day, I would say I was dead tired from family responsibilities: looking after my sick mom on dialysis, braving the strong rain to buy food supplies from the market and medicines for my mom, and dealing with floodwater.

I started writing this blog earlier at 12 noon while I watched ASAP Natin 'to. I had a lot of stories to write that time, but the momentum was cut when I realized that we've run out of food supplies and medicine stocks for my mom. You know, I plan my mom's diet. Her situation is delicate, so I have to purchase foods that are suitable for her. I also do the cooking. I'm hands on in nursing my mom, but the continuous rain has made me unable to buy for supplies.

As I write this line, it's now 10:51 PM. I have lost all the things I wanted to say, but I'm glad that I was able to write one blog entry tonight.

10 years ago, I only had to think about my self. It's amusing how time flies so fast. I'm now in a crossroad where I have to plan the future ahead of me while looking after my ageing parents. It's a reality that I am not yet ready to face. However, I have the moral duty to face this. Bagyo man ng buhay o bagyong may dalang ulan, kailangan kong kayanin 'to! • END OF STORY

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UPDATE HISTORY FOR THIS BLOG POST
• 2023-September-03: This post was published.