Ace Aguirre was just two bites into his oatmeal on the morning of November 4 when he noticed something strange: mud had seeped onto the living room floor of his bungalow in Cotcot, a village in the Philippines’ Cebu province.
The moments that followed will be forever seared into Aguirre’s memory. His living room furniture floating; the terrifying few minutes when he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pry the front door open; his son praying to God as the water rose to their chests; his daughter, who can’t swim, perched high on a pillar as water and cars gushed by, inches from her feet.
“I don’t know how we were able to survive. One detail that didn’t go our way and many of us could have died,”…