Burmese community hit in Manila floods

by Salai Pi Pi
Thursday, 01 October 2009 21:51

New Delhi (Mizzima) - The Burmese community in the Philippines also had to bear the brunt of the floods that inundated Manila after it was lashed by a tropical storm the ‘Ketsana’ on Saturday.

The storm, which struck Manila and flooded the city, home to about 12 million people, in 12 hours of incessant heavy rain, claimed the lives of over 200 people.

Lin Lin, a music student from Burma, told Mizzima that on Saturday he packed all his belongings, including stationery items and computers and shifted to the entresol as the water level rose to his chest in his room in Quezon City, north Philippines.

“I held up my passport with one hand and swam to a safe place,” Lin Lin, who is studying in the Asian Institute for Liberty and Music in Quezon City, said.

Lin Lin and his two Burmese friends managed to move to a higher place in Quezon, where they found thousands of other local people, who had evacuated.

“We stayed there the whole day and night and waited for the water level to go down,” he added.

Though the water level is falling, Lin Lin said, he and his class mates are apprehensively waiting for another storm, which is said to be coming soon.

The forecast of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) today said, the Super Typhoon known as PARMA located approximately 520 miles southeast of Manila, has tracked west-north westward at 16 knots over the past six hours.

There are around 300 Burmese living in the Philippines, of whom about 200 are studying in Manila, according to Lin Lin.

“Right now, it is very difficult to contact each other as telecommunication lines were disrupted by the storm,” another Burmese, who lives in Baguio City, about six miles from Manila, told Mizzima.

He said, though the hill station, where he lives, is not affected by the floods and the storm, some of his Burmese friends’ rented houses in Manila were inundated.

“My friends told me that the water had flooded their homes and destroyed all their belongings," he said.

According to disaster management officials, the homes of some 2.3 million people are affected, and 390,000 are seeking shelter in relief centres in what is being called the worst flooding in the Philippines in four decades.

The Philippines National Red Cross (PNRC) said it continues to maintain 192 evacuation centres in the storm affected areas and has assigned several volunteers to serve more than 7,418 families.