YOU and I have never personally seen anything like it. But seeing it on TV newscast was like being in one of those flooded areas in Metro Manila and Central Luzon in the two to three days nights thereat that residents fought to keep their nose above water.
“It’s a repetition of Ondoy,” a housewife in Marikina lamented, remembering the 2009 typhoon Ondoy that had similarly submerged her house in ten-foot flood.
Yesterday’s weather advisory from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) was hardly comforting: A new low pressure area off Batanes might enhance anew the southwest monsoon or habagat today.
Considering that Iloilo had experienced similar killer floods – no thanks to typhoons “Frank” in 2008 and “Yolanda” in 2013 – we Ilonggos can imagine the despair and frustration hounding the current flood victims.
I despaired because I lost a camera and a typewriter to “Frank.” But that was nothing compared to the losses of others.
Imagine an owner of a flooded real estate. He would naturally want to sell it. But would he still be in position to sell it at a good price? Oh nooooo!
I remember that as a 10-year-old child on vacation with my parents in Manila in May 1960, I had my first experience of flood. It had rained the whole night. And so I woke up wading in knee-deep water on the ground floor of our apartment on 23-A Dapitan Street, near the University of Santo Tomas. It was such a rare two-foot flood at that time that it merited world news coverage.
By the late 1960s, floods surrounding Manila’s university belt had already become so common that they hardly raised eyebrows. Outside of that belt, there was no problem.
Those floods pale in comparison to today’s floods that rise in unexpected places above human height.
Why must floods rise so high as to alert authorities into clearing the river banks and esteros of squatters who clog the waterways with garbage?
With due respect to contrary opinion, squatting in the cities – which is in fact theft of real property – should have been disallowed by law because of its multiplier effect. A family occupying an estate belonging to the government or to a private person could lead to two, three, four, five, six, seven families and so forth, in effect bursting out of control and polluting the environment.
But, of course, it is not surprising that politicians “care” so much for these poor constituents as to keep them there forever; they are his richest source of votes. It is also not surprising that disaster victims are receptive to their generosity. Survival is man’s most basic instinct.
Floods, earthquakes and many other natural disasters are inappropriately called “acts of God.” It is a misnomer because it paints the picture of man struggling to survive God’s punishment which could be in the forms of typhoon, flood, earthquake and tsunami.
It is also wrong to say, “God would never give us a problem we are unable to solve.” That would make God a sadist. More positively appropriate would be, “God gave us the capacity to surmount problems.” It comes closer to the famous expression, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
As the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once admonished, “These are not hard times; these are more challenging times.”
Let us come to terms with this reality as a wake-up call. It alerts us into accepting that we are not owners but just temporary custodians of our lives, the earth and all materials possessions thereat. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
