I got a text about 12:50pm on Friday night here US Mountain time from Von Soriano, one of our staff in our Morong, Philippines office.

For the last four years, PerspectX has been both a US company and had a dedicated staff in Morong, Philippines which is about 20KM Southeast of Manila, in the Rizal District.

You may have seen the news, the Rizal district is among the hardest hit areas of the flooding caused by Tropical Storm Ketsana, where over 17 inches of rain fell in less than six hours, causing dams to overflow and low lying creek and river areas contained entirely submerged towns.  At the time of this writing, rain continues to fall and people remain stranded on rooftops nearly 48 hours later as the death toll rises and rescue and recovery operations are still hampered by dangerous conditions and the continued threat of landslides and dam failures.

These photos (from AP / Getty) are apparently taken in the metro Manila area and not the Rizal province where our office is located.

Our first concern is with the safety of our staff and the well being of their families.  We don’t know what is going on right now as power was cut off early in the flooding, and cel and data networks are completely down still.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to the familes of Allan Soriano, Von and Rafael Soriano, Jojit San Juan, and Raymond Jovellanos who worked for us for some time.  Equipment, furniture, and data can be replaced or fixed. 

Whatever the material damage there we will survive and rebuild.  I just sincerely hope the human losses are not great.

As we impatiently wait for news on their well being and condition please if you are a religious person keep them in your thoughts and prayers.  If you can give to an appropriate relief effort please do so as well.

Our staff in Morong, including Allan, Von, Rafael Soriano, Jojit ‘Pidiong’ San Juan.