"Save my baby!"
By Lanie Carillo, Communications Specialist

Lucia and her baby girl, Gelyn. Photo by World Vision Philippines.

“Save my baby! Save my baby!” The piercing cries of Lucia Pormentera, 44, echoed as Typhoon Ketsana flooded Metro Manila and its nearby provinces.

“The water was rising rapidly, and I had to raise my one-month-old daughter to keep her from the murky water. When the water came up to my neck, I hastily climbed to the roof of our house to seek help. Looking back, I don’t know how I had managed to do it while carrying my daughter,” she describes.

In the middle of the ravaging storm, Lucia noticed that almost all her neighbours were on their roofs, and some were desperately jumping from roof to roof as the water rose. Frantic herself, she began screaming for help. “Please help me! Save my baby! Just my baby!”

At the same time, thinking no one could have heard her cries for help, Lucia, with her shivering baby, got ready to make a jump to another roof. Fortunately, two of her neighbours had noticed her and quickly helped her get to a nearby chapel.

“I am so grateful that we got saved. I thought we would not make it. I was sorry that my daughter had to go through such a disaster at her tender age, and apologised profusely to her. In those frightful moments, I wondered if it was retribution, and that it was God’s punishment for all the wrong things I have done. I remember saying ‘Lord, punish me, but spare my baby, please’.”

As she spoke of her baby, Gelyn, she revealed feeling guilty for giving birth to her when she is unable to give her the love and care of a father. “He never came back when he learned that I was pregnant with Gelyn. I thought then that if he was around we would not experience what we had experienced. I was blaming him,” she said, disappointed, but not elaborating further.

Upon returning to her house from the evacuation center days after the flood, she saw that everything they owned was destroyed – just like the many other houses in Barangay San Juan, Cainta, and Rizal.

“It would be difficult for us to continue living here. In my 44 years, I have never experienced a flood like this. We’re planning to move in to a new house, far from here,” she says.

Currently, Lucia, her daughter-in-law, and her two grandsons, together with Gelyn, are living in a small cramped makeshift room measuring 2 square metres on top of their house as a temporary shelter.

Despite their seemingly dire situation, her face lit up as she carried back to their home the relief pack that World Vision handed out. “Thank you for helping us,” she gratefully says.

 “The most important thing for me now is that Gelyn and I made it. I thank God for everything. I knew He still loves me and He wants me to start a new life,” she shares.