The Philippines in the Eye of the Fury of Nature’s Catastrophic Blows

Twenty-five and twenty-six September, 2009, Metro Manila and most of Central and Southern Luzon got a disastrous whipping from a storm locally given the name Ondoy. A few days later, came another one—this time named Pepeng—that didn’t almost want to go away and in the process heavily devastated Northern Luzon. It was not the last as another followed suit—Quedan. Then, the last which was called Ramil came rushing down to wreck havoc over the provinces of Cagayan and Isabela. Hundreds of human lives were lost along with the massive destruction and ultimate loss of properties worth billions of pesos.

The common and typical response of the religious Filipino to tragedies of such magnitude brings to mind the notion that God is behind it—that it is a demonstration of God’s chastisement. But the thinking ones retort with a query: Why would a God, generally regarded to be full of compassion and pity, punish a country whose majority of its population have long been suffering in intense poverty—a people who have long been experiencing the exploitation and oppression perpetrated by an opportunistic government whose unilateral goal is solely the enrichment of them who run it as well as their subservient minions? The truth of the matter is, God—for those who believe in God—did not punish the Philippines in the calamities that have befallen it. Events like these should have been seen in the context of Nature. And we Filipinos have long been suffering because we haven’t actually learned to properly deal with Nature which we, in reality, cannot resist, fight with and defeat. In other words, we Filipinos, as we deal with Nature, are a bunch of stubborn and imprudent people. We have never learned and as time goes on, we have continuously ignored certain undeniable realities. And this is the very reason why we have never been able to master the ways of Nature by way of our intelligence despite our humanity that is supposed to be uniquely endowed with it. It is one thing to be gifted with intelligence and it is another to be able to use this intelligence in real life.

First: We Filipinos know that the Philippines is an archipelago amidst the Pacific Ocean and China Sea. That being the case, the Philippines is storm- and typhoon-prone, and this we know very well. But the six-million dollar question is why have we failed to make significant steps to protect ourselves against the constant threat of storms and typhoons year in and year out? Thousands and thousands of houses are devastated time and again when storms and typhoons enter the Philippine area of responsibility. Yet, we have never learned to build houses that can stand the fury of a storm or a typhoon. (Excluded from this consideration are the people of the Batanes group of islands because they have learned to cope with the typhoons that regularly visit them by constructing abodes that cannot be whipped and toppled by storms and typhoons.) A great number of Filipinos in places visited very often by storms and typhoons are thick-headed enough to put up their houses right along the seashore. However, city-dwelling squatters rationalize their poverty to advance the notion that it is almost next to impossibility for them to construct houses that can stand the fury of typhoons. The most fundamental question we ask is, Why, in the first place, are they in the city? They are originally from the provinces and the most basic decision they should make at this most crucial moment of their lives is to go back to their respective provinces of origin and restart to make the best of what they can and transform the farmlands into an immense source of agricultural bounty.

Second: Cities like the ones in the Metro Manila area get flooded even when there is no storm or typhoon because of the very grave defects in the drainage system that has been malfunctioning since time immemorial. What has caused the defects and the malfunction? Enormous mountains of garbage whose major sources are the very localities where there are concentrations of squatters, specifically those found along the banks of vast rivers (e.g., the Pasig River) that flow towards the sea. The joke that circulates around is: The drainage system of Metro Manila is so terribly clogged, it only takes ten dogs to urinate simultaneously and the metropolis gets instantly flooded. The majority of Manilenos are still ignorant of the fact that the city of Manila is below sea-level. And despite the succession of administrations that have run the city government, not a single one has seriously taken yet the determined initiative to get focused on the city’s drainage system.

Third: Filipino stubbornness is yet an unbroken barrier as none has really critically considered the risk of putting up houses in places that are actually impossible to be housing areas like in places made into housing subdivisions in the city of Marikina. Marikina is a valley—an area surrounded by hills and mountains from which the waters that flood the city originate. Why, in the first place, does it happen? The hard reality is: the surrounding mountains have long been denuded forests that have lost the natural formations to barricade the onrush of waters during heavy downfalls. In this consideration, the local city government should have constructed first a series of waterway systems to divert the waters away from the valley before whatever plan to transform portions of it into housing areas was implemented.

Fourth: Since time immemorial, the utter fear, unqualified stupidity and sheer lack of principle of many Filipinos located in and proximate to uplands and mountainous areas have led to an outright neglect of large-scale criminal operations of illegal loggers under the patronage of unscrupulous politicians to devastatingly rampage the forests. In many instances, these irresponsible Filipinos are even “allies” of these wicked politicians and illegal loggers. This is the most primary factor why formerly lush mountain forests in the Philippines are now generally denuded. This, in turn, is the main cause of massive inundations not only in urban but likewise in rural locales.

Filipinos, often in a condition of mourning due to the ferociousness of calamities that recurrently hit the country, have not essentially learned their lessons. The general aftermath consistently creates a scenario of mendicancy where queues of calamity victims are common as people have become habitually too dependent on relief goods in evacuation areas where they have been hoarded: A people who wants to be pitied by the rest of the world.

The most important questions that linger now are these: When will the kairos of the Filipino be realized as s/he ultimately becomes the master of her/his states of affairs? When will s/he be able to learn to be in harmony with the motions and flows of Nature without getting into a futile battle against her for the absolute reason that Nature is formidable and hence a horrendous adversary? When will be the ripe and imminent time for the individual Filipino to develop a courageous disposition to stand on her/his own two feet without depending on the mercy of others? These are questions that challenge the sanity, intelligence and tenacity of the individual Filipino. It is of the essence here and now to face the challenge at hand and put an end to a kind of showbiz mentality of the Filipinos which is the premier culprit why we have consistently failed to see, analyze, evaluate and act on the present and real circumstances that have long been besetting us.


© Ruel Pepa December 2009