Climate Change or Common Sense?

The devastating flood of September 26, 2009 in Metro Manila and surrounding provinces brought by typhoon "Ondoy" (Ketsana) has hammered once again the question of preparedness.

But while the administration's 2010 bet for president, Defense Sec. Gilbert "Gibo" Teodoro, coordinated rescue and relief efforts, he was also blaming climate change as the overarching cause of people's misery and the great loss of lives.

However, the point is that the government was a miserable failure, especially the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) that Gibo heads. And it was only two months ago on July 27, when GMA boasted in her SONA that "[e]arly warning, forecasting and monitoring systems (for typhoons) have been improved, with weather tracking facilities in Subic, Tagaytay, Mactan, Mindanao, Pampanga."

As it turned out, people would have been prepared and lives would not have been lost if only the government did its job.

Indeed, 9 long hours could have made all the difference, the time the flooding in upstream San Isidro, Rizal, flowed down to J.P. Rizal Street in Marikina City.

"They had nine hours to evacuate, but there was no mechanism in place in which they could be warned of the coming waters," according to C.P. David, a geology professor at the University of the Philippines, in his presentation at a forum organized by the UP National Institute of Geological Sciences on Oct. 6.

He also pointed out that the peak flood happened earlier upstream in the Marikina River "like a big bulk of water rushing downward," and later subsided upon reaching low-lying areas of Marikina City.

David also stressed these timeline details:

• The heaviest rainfall happened between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.
• San Isidro residents had reported inundation in their area at around 9 a.m. to noon, and those in areas further downstream much later.
• At Wawa in Montalban, residents noted that the torrent swept in at around 10 a.m. to noon, and at the San Mateo Bridge, around 2 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• Residents of Barangay Nangka said there was flooding at around 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and at the last point, J.P. Rizal, flooding began at around 6 p.m. to around midnight.
• Lag time of four to 12 hours between the peak rainfall and actual flooding in several areas.

"We cannot stop the flooding because the volume of rain was really too much, but we could have done something if we had known the flooding in Wawa early on," David concluded.