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| Our eskinita becoming a river. (no these are not my motorcycles) |
A lot have happened since my last post, which was about a month ago, which was about some roots on rock bonsai blah, blah, blah. Typhoon Gener entered the country bringing along rain and wind but Gener did not cause that much damage compared to the habagat (the tagalog name for the southwest monsoon) that brought with it almost ten days of non stop rain that inundated the whole metro-manila area as well as the other parts of Luzon.
What was troubling about the flooding caused by habagat was that there was never even a storm that entered the country yet the magnitude of the damage caused by the incessant rain was comparable, if not worse than the flooding caused by typhoon Ondoy. Of course, looking back, typhoon Ondoy sort of change the paradigm of weather broadcasting when this quiet typhoon gave the Filipinos a lesson about a new way of appreciating hmmm...well...typhoons. Instead of bombarding Luzon island with hurricane like wind, to which most pinoys prepare about whenever typhoon signals was announced, the quiet typhoon which was classified with storm signal number 1(wind velocity a little higher than an ordinary person's fart) showered the island for about twelve hours, non stop, causing flash flood that broke the divide between the poor and the middle class (well, to the rich, the flood was just an inconvenience).
The middle class with their installment houses and cars submerged under water and the poor with their barong-barongs and their caritons floating...for just this one day, it was not only the poor who was ravaged by the typhoon. It was not only the poor who had their tin roofs blown away, their plywood walls torn; the moneyed also got a taste of nature's wrath when flood water submerged their beautiful landscaped and tiled homes short circuiting their thousand dollars worth of fancy appliances and entertainment systems.
Anyway, we Filipinos are waterproof and learn-proof. Yes, we did survive Ondoy, but; yes, we also did not learn from Ondoy. The garbage, the squatters along the waterways, the DPWH asphalting drainage manholes...
To paraphrase an urban planner's words:" The flooding in metro manila was not an act of God; it was the product of the Filipino's lack of...hmmmm..."
The middle class with their installment houses and cars submerged under water and the poor with their barong-barongs and their caritons floating...for just this one day, it was not only the poor who was ravaged by the typhoon. It was not only the poor who had their tin roofs blown away, their plywood walls torn; the moneyed also got a taste of nature's wrath when flood water submerged their beautiful landscaped and tiled homes short circuiting their thousand dollars worth of fancy appliances and entertainment systems.
Well, well, well...according to the experts, Ondoy was a freak of weather of some sort that was not supposed to occur again...hmmm... well, at least not in the next fifty years. so counting the probabilities...it happened again after three years, this time there's not even a wind to speak of, just water. That's why I never did like math, the figures are wrong...
Anyway, we Filipinos are waterproof and learn-proof. Yes, we did survive Ondoy, but; yes, we also did not learn from Ondoy. The garbage, the squatters along the waterways, the DPWH asphalting drainage manholes...
To paraphrase an urban planner's words:" The flooding in metro manila was not an act of God; it was the product of the Filipino's lack of...hmmmm..."
