FAMY, Philippines (UCAN) -- When Emmanuel (Eman) Acomular sent off his wife Maila on Nov. 29 on what is usually a two-hour drive home, he did not know he would have to swim part of the way back not knowing if she made it.

The couple was in Infanta town, Quezon province, 70 kilometers northeast of Manila. Maila had dropped Eman off at her parents' home, from where he runs an agricultural supply store, and was going home to Famy. They live with their five children in the Laguna province town southeast of the capital.

Soon after the businessman said goodbye to his wife that Monday afternoon, the rains got heavier. Thick mud came surging towards her parents' home, "rising by the second," Maila told UCA News on Dec. 4. She was relating her and her husband's separate ordeals as what was called typhoon Winnie in the Philippines struck the east coast of Luzon, the main northern island.

Concerned for her safety, Eman tried to reach her by mobile phone but was unsuccessful, she said.

To escape the rising floodwaters, he climbed onto the roof with Maila's elderly parents, her sister, two boarders and a helper. They would spend an anxious night up there, waiting for the rains to stop and for daybreak.

"They were saved by a tricycle," Maila recounted. A pedicab, she explained, got wedged in the entrance of their store and blocked logs from entering. "Had those logs gotten in, they would have hit its posts, and my parents' house would have collapsed, killing all of them," the woman continued.

Her husband heard neighbors crying out for help, but she quoted him as telling her later, "Nobody could help them because we were on the roof -- it was total darkness and we, too, would surely have died with them." She added that her parents were "praying hard for assistance and mercy from the Lord."

By morning, Eman set off with a helper to swim southward to higher ground in Real, another town in Quezon. When they found land, they started to walk toward Famy on muddy roads strewn with rocks, furniture, kitchenware and garbage. Two coffins were afloat in nearby floodwaters.

He was terrified and tried not to think of landslides, especially after he overheard people talking about a blue jeep that had been washed down a ravine. He had last seen his wife driving away in their blue jeep. He plodded on, even as people warned him against going further. "Some wanted him to (try to) identify a dead woman's body, but he could not even glance at it," according to Maila.

She quoted him as telling neighbors, "I prayed and hoped these people were mistaken and that my wife was not in that ill-fated vehicle."

Eman recalled walking among townspeople searching for shelter and seeing women stuck in mud so thick that when rescuers pulled them out, some of their garments were ripped from their bodies. He and the helper finally reached a gymnasium in Tignoan village, Real, where they spent the night of Nov. 30.

Meanwhile, Maila had found herself southwest of Infanta, on the way to Real, when the storm hit. A landslide pinned her jeep, but she stayed in it. The next morning, she walked toward Famy, passing dead bodies along the way.

By 9 a.m. she had reached Maragondong village in Real, and by noon she was back in Famy. Dirty, thirsty, scratched and bruised, all she could do was pray that her husband and family in Infanta were safe, she recalled.

She said her husband told her he was also praying for her safety as he kept walking until he caught a ride the rest of the way to Famy on Dec. 1.

Eman told Maila that he forgot all about his flood-soaked clothes, his wounds and his fatigue when he saw his children, who told him their mother was home safe.

He was home only a day before another typhoon hit Quezon and six other areas in the northern Philippines on the evening of Dec. 2. As of Dec. 7, more than 1,000 people had been reported killed or missing in the two storms.

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