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The former First Lady of the Philippines, now the Ilocos Norte Representative in Congress, has lost one of her precious gems \u2014 her beach front mansion in Tolosa, Leyte. <\/span><\/p>\n What used to be a vacation house of the Marcoses was reduced to rubbles by tsunami-like 3-storey waves caused by typhoon Yolanda. The beach front property occupies 42 hectares.<\/span><\/p>\n The destruction of the controversial estate came nearly three years after the Supreme Court allowed her to retake the property, one of the assets of her husband, the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, which the government had sequestered, on suspicion it was ill-gotten. <\/span><\/p>\n Save for a couch and a few mud-splattered wooden sculptures, one can barely picture the grandiose 17-room residence that used to house the once powerful family. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt took me a while to recognize the house,\u201d the late dictator\u2019s namesake son, Senator <\/span>Ferdinand \u201cBongbong\u201d Marcos Jr., told the Philippine Daily Inquirer when he visited the property after the powerful storm.<\/span><\/p>\n The senator dropped by the mansion before proceeding to the distribution of aid donated by Marcventures Mining and Development Corp. at a village named after his mother.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat I immediately recognized was the area where the volunteers placed the relief goods because that was where we used to eat. It also had guest rooms,\u201d he said, pointing to a damaged structure where a group of men placed boxes of bottled mineral water. <\/span><\/p>\n Marcos said he had so many good memories of the place, recalling that he spent most of his summers as a teenager in the beach house facing the Pacific Ocean. <\/span><\/p>\n He maintained that the property, which also had an 18-hole golf course, originally belonged to the paternal side of his mother, the Romualdezes, one of the oldest political clans in Leyte province. <\/span><\/p>\n Ironically, Leyte, which bore the brunt of the most destructive typhoon recorded this year, is one of the poorest provinces in the Philippines. <\/span><\/p>\n Leo Acejo, the mansion\u2019s caretaker, said he and a co-worker almost gave up their lives guarding the Marcos estate, which lies between two hills. <\/span><\/p>\n His voice breaking, he recalled the moment when a wall of seawater swallowed the entire property. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI saw the sea level drop, as if gathering power and momentum. I got more scared when I noticed that the clouds turned very dark,\u201d he narrated. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThen I saw what looked like a tornado. A giant tidal wave was coming. We immediately ran to safety inside a room in the staff house,\u201d he continued. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe wind sounded as if it was an airplane coming down.\u201d He said he drank about 2 liters of seawater as he held on for dear life, clutching the window grills. <\/span><\/p>\n The mansion, a testament to Imelda Marcos\u2019 wealth and power in her home province, is now gone. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to see the mansion like this. I cannot imagine this could happen.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut I am happy to be alive. I just want to move on. I don\u2019t know if we can still rebuild the mansion,\u201d the caretaker said. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The former First Lady of the Philippines, now the Ilocos Norte Representative in Congress, has lost one of her precious gems \u2014 her beach front mansion in Tolosa, Leyte.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
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