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Video records dramatic rescue of Sendong survivors in open sea
Unlike many of her neighbors that fateful rainy night, Elsa was awake past midnight, wrapping Christmas gifts in their seaside home for a party later in the day. In the blink of an eye, accompanied by the roar of water, she and her young daughter were ejected into the dark open sea, their lives suddenly at the mercy of the waves. 
There they bobbed for hours, clinging desperately to debris and joined by members of two other families. All of them were residents of Bayug Island, a coastal barangay in Iligan City, which is separated from the mainland only by a narrow tributary of the Mandulog River. Bayug Island was one of the communities hardest-hit by the flash floods spawned by Tropical StormSendong. Elsa (last name unknown) and her daughter clung to debris long enough to be rescued by the crew of a passing ship, the M/V Yang A carrying cement from Batangas to Iligan. Crew member Edberto Calungsod took the video which he posted on YouTube, which is now being widely shared, yet another addition to the thousands of dramatic stories from that tragic day. At least this one ended happily for Elsa and her daughter, and the six others rescued with them. But as can be heard on the video, Elsa was sobbing about her five other children who were separated from her when the flash flood struck. "Naiyak ako," Calungsod told GMA News Online in a phone interview. "Hindi ko maiwasan ang lungkot dahil pagod na pagod na sila nang makita namin." The video begins with several survivors already in the life boat as it navigates a sea full of debris, apparently the remains of hundreds of shanties decimated by the rampaging flood. "Marunong kang lumangoy?" a rescuer calls out in Bisaya to two girl chilren in the distance holding on to debris. "Hindi? Relax lang." As a ship officer is heard on a walkie talkie barking orders, rescuers pluck a teen-age girl from the sea. She boards and starts weeping about the rest of her family.
