Typhoon Ondoy

I'm in a coffee shop and the guy behind me just said, "My mom's house was under 8 feet of water."

I went to work this morning and the desks were gone. And the computers. The only thing that was left was the smell. We stood outside, my colleagues and I, searching through soaked back issues of our magazine, rags in hand, looking for anything we could salvage, when someone asked me if it was as bad as Katrina. My initial reaction was to say no, but really, it's hard to tell when thousands of people are displaced, sleeping on top of each other in schoolrooms, huddled around candles looking tired and bewildered.

We went last night to one evacuation center in Marikina. There were people everywhere. You could see their shadows moving, crouching around candles, on the second and third stories of the school.

One water truck there from the government of Pampangas had arrived. People were gathered at the back of the truck, washing the mud off their feet before they settled down to sleep.

I approached a man who had taken refuge with his family of nine. Chito Garcia and his family were heading into their second night sleeping under the covered walkway of the school. (They didn't even get a classroom because there were too many people taking shelter there already.)

I asked Chito who was in charge here: What group? government agency? relief agency? He shook his head. "Nobody's in charge right now," he said gesturing around. "There was a calamity - everyone just came to the school."