Finally after almost a week, the electricity is back is Mandurriao! A devastating storm had just swept across Iloilo (and the rest of Panay). For a moment, all activity in affected areas stopped as flood waters ravaged farmlands, homes, and urban areas. Right now, the rains have stopped and the flood waters have receded leaving a thick layer of mud inside homes, buildings, on roadways, and open spaces.

Almost everyone had lost property because of the storm … even their lives. The city currently looks like a war zone, many homeless families have turned the roadside into a big shelter and resorted to begging for money because it is their only hope for survival. I’ll blog about the relief effort tomorrow after I do a bit of research. For the meantime, I still got to clean our house, which got flooded for the first time since it was built 20 years ago.