I'm a survivor --- this I’ve known for more than 40 years, having weathered so many storms in my life up until two Saturdays ago when I literally weathered typhoon Ondoy, and now live to tell the tale!

So many Ondoy stories have been told, mine is just one of them. I thank ABS-CBN for taking interest and featuring me on World Tonight and ANC. I just had to share my feelings of gratitude to those people from Barangay Tanong, Kalye Putol, Helen and Jojo, Mang Jimmy and his brother, Alwyn and those others who swam us to safety.

Through all this technology was in play, how? We all had cell phones! It was all I held on to. It was my only means of keeping sane and alive. Hearing my sister Jenny’s voice assuring me that everything will be ok and Ruffa’s constant calls saying help is on its way.

Thank God I had three cell phones. Battery life was so precious then. Many of us relied on our cell phones to communicate with our loved ones during the height and aftermath of Typhoon Ondoy.

But there were those whose homes and possessions were badly hit by the flood that lost all means of letting their families and friends know that they’re okay. Nokia did a good thing by answering their pleas. They facilitated this by helping displaced families keep in touch by deploying 150 mobile phones to different evacuation centers in Metro Manila --- for free!

In times of crises, true heroes and good Samaritans emerge. All the phones are powered by either Globe, Smart, and PLDT. Last I heard, charging stations will also be deployed so that other Nokia users can charge their mobile phones and contact their relatives.

Oh yes, when there’s a flood, one of the biggest issues is the spread of disease through contaminated drinking water. Essentially sewage and drainage water gets into the drinking water supply, introducing some particularly nasty types of bacteria.

There are several safe drinking water eco-friendly gadgets that use the process of reverse osmosis to extract clean drinking water from contaminated water. There are lots of ways to sterilize dirty water, such filtration, distillation, and through using chemicals.

There’s these flood rescue bottles designed by Ceren Bagatar that are extremely easy to use, as well as being relatively low cost. Using a highly concentrated dioralyte solution that contains basic nutrients, the bottle is able to provide 15 portions of 500ml (7.5 litres) of safe drinking water per refill.

The bottles are also fitted with removable mouthpieces, where you have one mouthpiece per person. The mouthpieces encourage basic hygiene as another technique of limiting the spread of diseases. These types of bottles would be ideal for us.

Since there’s usually plenty of water in a flooded area, there doesn’t need to be any infrastructure to get clean water to a flood hit area. The units require no additional energy or equipment, meaning it’s a very effective technique for delivering clean drinking water in a short space of time. If only the Flood Rescue Bottles are available here.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council was swamped with calls during the height of Ondoy. Dozens of people were stuck in homes or trapped on their rooftops as flash floods turned streets into rivers. Rescue from the authorities seemed very elusive based on experience and this heightened my contention that our government was somewhat unreliable.

So there were those who couldn’t wait too and took matters into their own hands. They made use of social networking sites. On Facebook, friends had to forego adding cherry trees to their Farmville or even removed their Mafia Wars updates in order to give way to emergency numbers to call for rescue, the names and addresses of missing loved ones, alternate routes that were not flooded, and drop-off sites for donations.

The same volume of information was passed on via Twitter and Multiply in fact, Ruffa Gutierrez’s desperate Tweets asking someone to help me and Christine Reyes who was also on top of the roof were followed by thousands and personal documentations via photos of the destruction left by Ondoy, as personal accounts of people who survived the flood, and missing persons alert.

YouTube was bombarded by videos of flooded streets even before they were seen on the evening news.

Every single person who could log onto the internet over the weekend was aware of the damage caused by Ondoy.