MANILA, PhilippinesDeadly floods that have swamped nearly all of the Philippine capital are less a natural disaster

and more the result of poor planning, lax enforcement and political self-interest, experts say.

Damaged watersheds, massive squatter colonies living in danger zones and the neglect of drainage systems are some of the factors that have made the chaotic city of 15 million people much more vulnerable to enormous floods.

Theres no stopping natures wrath, but theres such a thing as disaster preparedness and mitigation. Some of the measures can be implemented immediately, such as the acquisition of more rubber boats for rescue operations in flooded areas. Others need long-term implementation, such as flood control. With the torrential flooding since the start of the week, people are again wondering if the capability of weather forecasters to predict the amount of rainfall has improved since typhoon Ondoy devastated Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon in September 2009. Since the catastrophic flooding spawned by Ondoy caught everyone including weather forecasters by surprise, the government has acquired Doppler radars to improve the accuracy of forecasts for the amount of rainfall. But with the massive flooding in the past two days, many residents of Metro Manila and neighboring provinces surely feel that the forecast for this weeks monsoon rains has been less than accurate. People are also wondering about the flood control program, which is supposed to continue being funded by the amusement tax in movie houses. Certain parts of Metro Manila are lowlying and easily flooded during high tide. In northern Metro Manila, the problem has been aggravated by the construction of a housing project in Dagat-Dagatan over the natural water catchment, with no provisions for alternate water routes. Modern pumping technology can ease the problem, ensuring that floodwaters will at least subside quickly. Instead residents in that part of Metro Manila are complaining that the P5.9-billion megadike in Camanava, or Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and Valenzuela, has been useless in easing the regular flooding in the area. The Camanava Flood Control and Drainage Improvement Project was declared 99 percent finished in 2007 the target date for its completion by the Department of Public Works and Highways. To this day the project remains unfinished. Camanava barangay officials complain that flooding in their communities has worsened since the project was started. There are at least two more months to go in the typhoon season. Perhaps with many more monsoon rains and typhoons ahead, flood control and mitigation will get urgent attention. (Philstar News Service, www.philstar.com)
AFP - Torrential monsoon rains flooded half of the Philippine capital on Tuesday, killing at least 16 people as rampaging waters swept away homes, destroyed bridges and triggered a landslide in a shanty town.

Some residents were marooned on their roofs as parts of Manila were submerged in waters above head height in the worst flooding to hit the chaotic city of 15 million people since hundreds of people died three years ago. "Right now we're on a massive rescue operation," Office of Civil Defence director Edgardo Ollet told AFP, warning the death toll would rise after people had ignored warnings to leave their homes. "We are positive we still have more dead because there are some who won't evacuate." Bad weather from seasonal southwest monsoons and Typhoon Saola had already pounded Manila and nearby areas for over a week, soaking the ground and raising dam levels to capacity. Meteorologists said more than half the amount of rain normally seen in August then fell on the city in 24 hours, and warned the deluge would continue overnight and into Wednesday. Rescue workers on rubber boats and military trucks were deployed in the flooded areas to pick up stranded people on Tuesday. But they could not reach all areas and residents took to social media to appeal for help. On Twitter, #rescuePH quickly gained currency as the main hashtag used by people to send or gain information about the floods. In the worst reported incident, nine people from the same family died in a landslide on a mountainous area of northern Manila near the city's reservoir that is populated by thousands of mainly illegal squatters. "They were buried alive. It happened suddenly. We heard a crash, and then people crying out in pain," Honeyleta Ibrega, a neighbour of the landslide victims, told AFP. A bus driver drowned in central Manila and six other people were confirmed to have drowned in surrounding areas, according to a government hospital and the civil defence office. Tuesday's deaths brought the number of people killed by the monsoon rains across the Philippines over the past week to 69, according to authorities. Another 80,000 people in and around Manila were in schools, gymnasiums and other government buildings set up as evacuation centres, according to the government. However countless others were seeking shelter with friends or relatives, or hoping to wait out the crisis in their homes. The Philippines has millions of people living in shanty towns, and the scale of a crisis such as Tuesday's flooding often means people have to fend for themselves. Angie Angeles, a 33-year-old housewife, who had moved her family of nine and some of their salvaged belongings onto their roof in a lower-class southern district of Manila, said she intended to remain at home.

"We have no place else to go. There is no place to sleep at the evacuation centres," Angeles told AFP as the water was waist deep in her home around lunchtime on Tuesday. Schools, financial markets and most government and private offices were also shut on Tuesday, while power was turned off in some parts of the city as a precautionary measure with the waters seeping into electrical facilities. The breadth and ferocity of the floods brought back memories of tropical storm Ketsana, which killed 464 people as 80 percent of the capital was flooded in September, 2009. Government weather forecaster Glaiza Escullar told AFP that Tuesday floods were close to the levels seen during Ketsana. However she said the 2009 floods were more dangerous because they were more sudden.
The United Nation's humanitarian co-ordinator has compared the destruction in two of the Philippines' worst affected southern coastal cities to a tsunami, after more than a thousand people were confirmed dead in the wake of last week's tropical storm. "It was as if the cities [Iligan and Cagayan de Oro] were hit by an inland tsunami," Soe Nyunt-U told reporters in Manila on Thursday. "Entire areas were completely flattened. Only a few sturdy buildings remain standing, and these had sustained a lot of damage.'' "Debris from houses, buildings and other structures that had been destroyed by the storm was all swept out to the sea, leaving huge areas devoid of all traces of habitation,'' he said. Soe raised concern about disease outbreaks among the thousands living in evacuation centres after their houses were washed away when Tropical Storm Washi unleashed flash floods last weekend. The UN is appealing for $28m to help the Philippines respond to the needs of half a million affected people. Soe said the funds would be used for water, food, shelter and essential household items for the next three months. Officials on Thursday put the death toll at 1,010. More than 45,000 survivors are now living in evacuation centres. Hundreds of thousands more are without shelter, as centres are unable to cope with the number of homeless. 'Desperate' situation

Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas reports from Cagayan de Oro

"For a lot of people, the situation is incredibly desperate," Matthew Cochrane, regional spokesman for the Red Cross, told Al Jazeera on Thursday. "For people in evacuation centres, for people who haven't been able to get into evacuation centres who are trying to rebuild homes out of salvaged bits of walls - the situation is incredibly critical and incredibly severe. "There is a concern about the potential outbreak of diseases in evacuation centres, so we are working to get clean water in and hygiene kits to give people information they need to be able to protect themselves and their families from opportunistic infections," he added. The Red Cross has also made an appeal for $2.8m to help flood victims in the country. Benito Ramos, Philippines civil defence chief, told the AFP news agency that coast guard and navy vessels had been drafted in for a huge rescue effort to find bodies floating amid debris up to 100km away. "By this time, there will be no survivors, just dead bodies," he said. Scores still missing Gwendolyn Pang, of the Philippine Red Cross, said that at least 900 bodies had been recovered and she confirmed that some 400 people have been reported missing. However, she said the exact toll may never be known as some of those reported missing may in fact be among the dead, and there could be many more whose disappearance was never reported. "Many will never be found and we don't know how many are really missing. No one will report them because entire families were swept away," Pang added. Ramos said the maritime search could continue for two more weeks, but warned that many bodies may have sunk underwater and would never be found. The main priority now was finding permanent shelter for the 309,000 people displaced by the floods, and those still housed in cramped evacuation centres, he said. The Red Cross' Cochrane told Al Jazeera: "The rebuilding process for a lot of people could take a long time and we need to be planning for that now and not waiting for the critical situation to subside.

"The game has changed in this part of the world now. The risk mapping that everyone presumed was true has been proven wrong. We know that now there can be catastrophic floods in northern Mindanao. The onus is on the government, with the support of the international community, to be able to use that information to make sure that people are safe."

Worst floods in the Philippines

Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 02:40:00 09/28/2009 Filed Under: Statistics, history, Flood, Weather, Disasters & Accidents, Ondoy

MANILA, Philippines?A country prone to natural disasters, the Philippines has been battered by floods for long as its people can remember. Below are some of the most devastating floods to hit the country in memory: For more than two weeks in September 1972, heavy rains pummeled Luzon before then President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. Floodwaters merged with the Pampanga and Agno rivers and submerged most of Central Luzon. This became known as the Great Flood of 1972. On Nov. 5, 1991, massive flash floods descended on Ormoc City in Leyte, killing about 8,000 people, including some 4,000 who were never found as walls of mud and water roared down the mountains, washing away shanties and sweeping people into the sea. In September 1998, more than 900 families living along the Pasig, Pateros, Marikina and Napindan (Taguig) rivers were swamped by floods after continuous rains. The floods and high tides submerged 85 percent of Malabon and flooded 26 primary and secondary roads in Metro Manila. Reming and Frank In November 2006, Supertyphoon ?Reming? (international code name: Durian) caused widespread floods and power outages, especially in Bicol. More than 700 were killed, over 700 others were missing and more than 2,000 were injured. Over 3.5 million people were affected. At least 500 people died in the wake of Typhoon ?Frank? (international code name: Fengshen), which triggered severe flooding in Western Visayas in June 2008. Nearly 400,000 families, or almost 2 million people, were affected. At least 2,500 others were injured. More than 300,000 people, or over 50,000 families, were evacuated. The areas affected by Frank included Iloilo, Antique, Aklan, Capiz, Guimaras and Negros Occidental. Aklan?s capital town of Kalibo was covered with mud and was without potable water and electricity weeks after the typhoon struck. In January, heavy rains spawned by the tail-end of a cold front caused floods, landslides and tidal surges that displaced nearly 200,000 people in many parts of the country. Thirty-eight municipalities and 11 provinces from northern Luzon to Mindanao were affected. Inquirer Research Sources: Inquirer Archives

Evacuees return to mud, damage after Manila floods

By OLIVER TEVES | Associated Press Fri, Aug 10, 2012 2:31 PM EDT

RELATED CONTENT

View Photo

Luzviminda Limas goes out of their house after floods recede in suburban Marikina city, east of Manila, Philippines on Friday Aug. 10, 2012. The 54-year-old widow said the floods this week brought back memories of the 2009 deluge when she was huddled under an umbrella with one of her two daughters and her four-month old grandson on the roof of a day-care center beside her house as floodwaters rampaged through her neighborhood during a typhoon. The flood then destroyed her home. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

View Photo

Residents clean their clothes along a river as floods recede in suburban Marikina city, east of Manila, Philippines, Friday Aug. 10, 2012. Philippine disaster officials were shifting Friday from rescue work to a massive clean-up of the capital following nonstop rains that left tons of muck and debris from floods littering the city. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

View Photo

Young evacuees raise plastic cups close to a container to get the last drops of orange juice from private donors at a school that was converted into a temporary evacuation center in suburban Marikina city, east of Manila, Philippines, Friday Aug. 10, 2012. About 2.4 million people in Manila and nearby provinces have been affected, forcing more than 360,000 to seek shelter in government-run evacuation centers, the Office of Civil Defense reported Friday. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Photo: Luzviminda Limas, left, checks her house after floods recede in suburban Marikina city, east of Manila, Philippines on Friday Aug. 10, 2012. The 54-year-old widow said the floods this week brought back memories of the 2009 deluge when she was huddled under an umbrella with one of her two daughters and her four-month old grandson on the roof of a day-care center beside her house as floodwaters rampaged through her neighborhood during a typhoon. The flood then destroyed her home. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Photo: Residents stand on mud outside their homes after floods recede in suburban Marikina city, east of Manila, Philippines, Friday Aug. 10, 2012. Philippine disaster officials were shifting Friday from rescue work to a massive clean-up of the capital following nonstop rains that left tons of muck and debris from floods littering the city. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

MANILA, Philippines (AP) Evacuees who sheltered at a school in a badly flooded suburb of the Philippine capital were told Friday to return to their homes. Luzviminda Limas worried where her family would sleep. Her home is a 24-square-meter (258 square-foot) box that has a rough concrete floor and a tin roof, with no ceiling. The lower half of its walls is made of flimsy cinder blocks and the upper half of warped cardboard and tarpaulin. The Marikina River, normally about 200 meters (yards) from her house, was swelled by torrential monsoon rains, and the water reached within centimeters (inches) under the roof of her house. It deposited thick mud half-knee deep as it receded early Thursday. A 54-year-old widow, Limas said the floods brought back memories of the 2009 deluge when she was huddled under an umbrella with one of her daughters and her 4-month-old grandson on the roof of a nearby day-care center as typhoon floodwaters destroyed her home. When the water rose early this week, Limas hustled her family to the same elementary school in Nangka village where they had found emergency shelter in 2009. More than 7,000 evacuees sheltered at the Nangka Elementary School in Marikina City during the recent floods, which submerged more than half of the sprawling capital at the peak. But principal Marciana de Guzman said they were told to leave so the school could be prepared for the resumption of classes next week. Limas works doing laundry and shares her home with her two unemployed daughters and their husbands one a mini-bus driver and the other a laborer who is currently out of work. Each of her daughters has two children, one only 8 months old. She worried where everyone would sleep on Friday night when they return home because everything was wet and muddy. Her daughter, Venice, was collecting cardboard boxes to use as sleeping mats. "I wish we could have a new home, one that has decent walls not made of cardboard," she said. "We have nowhere to go. If we had money, we will leave this place." Her community is a resettlement site for hundreds of poor families in Marikina, the "shoe capital" of the Philippines, said city council member Judy Magtubo. Magtubo said many of the shoemakers who lost their livelihood have not yet recovered from the devastation of the 2009 floods, which was then the worst flooding in the country in 40 years.

The torrential monsoon rains that lasted from Sunday through Wednesday forced than 360,000 in Manila and nearby provinces to flee their flooded homes and seek shelter in schools, churches and government buildings. At least 60 people died, many from drowning. Civil defense chief Benito Ramos said some evacuees have returned home but many others remain in the shelters because their houses have been destroyed. "They have no homes to return to, they have no food, they have no clothes except what they are wearing," he said. Residents using anything from shovels to pieces of plywood scraped the debris off the floors of their houses and the pavements and gathered them into mud-caked piles of garbage on the side of the street. "It's really an eyesore when we saw it from the helicopter," said civil defense chief Ramos. "There will be no more rescue. It's now 'Operation Cleanup.'" North of the city, rains still poured intermittently and a helicopter carrying President Benigno Aquino III had to land on an isolated portion of a highway early Friday when visibility became difficult, said his spokesman Ricky Carandang. No one was hurt and the presidential party proceeded by car to visit flood victims in his home province of Tarlac, Carandang said.