We kid ourseelves when we cite Filipino resilience each time we survive disasters.

We have seen survival with “Ondoy.” We have seen Filipinos rebound from “Yolanda.”

The years have erased the deaths which we should never forget.

Ondoy, Yolanda, Ormoc, St. Bernard. Too many disasters we should have stopped from happening. But we did not.

We associate those disasters with names we have given typhoons and places. Yet we forget the names of those who died in the name of other peoples’ greed.

We, Filipinos, should not congratulate ourselves for our supposed resilience to these kinds of disturbance. We should bonk our heads for our stupidity for making them happen.

Marikina was in the news again. Not for its greatness but for the floods that made they their way into the lowest of its parts, made beautiful by great leaderships but were built to survive water when it attacks the valley from above.

The mountains are no longer recognizable.

Houses, quarries and mining traps now sit where just four decades ago they were wrapped by greens that made the Hinulugang Taktak a sight to behold.

Villages have taken over the hills. People have taken over the fates of other people living downstream.

We blame Ondoy for the death of 747 people and the more than $1 billion in damages after the water which raged higher than the houses and small buildings had left.

Before that was “Kiko” which be blamed for 789 deaths and $6.2 billion in damage.

And then Ormoc before them. Also, the landslide at St. Bernard. And then more.

We did not blame the owners and operators of the quarries.

We did not blame the government officials and clerks who signed their permits to operate.

We did not blame ourselves for not playing a part NOT to make them happen.

That was felt last week when just half the amount of rainfall inundated a large part of Marikina and several other places in the metropolis.

Like when Ondoy came nine years ago, residents feared the worst when the waters started rising.

We received pleas for support and rescue. We could only do so little, though.

A call I received told of two children barely hanging from a tree on Daisy St., Twinville Subdivision in Concepcion, Marikina. The caller considered his family luckier as his relatives squeezed themselves in the ceiling of their house.

The Marikina City rescue team arrived on time to bring them all to safety.

It was only later that a serious promise by Special Assistant to the President Bong Go to call on the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to stop the quarrying at the mountains of Rizal was lauded by those who heard him make it.

Go should make it happen. He should have DENR Secretary Roy Cimatu’s commitment to make it happen.

They should go farther. They should ban developments in the mountains for a hundred years.

They should let trees flourish again and make the soil firmer and sturdier to handle the next rush of water until none comes downhill in the next years.

Because that is the only way to save Marikina and its environs.

There is no money to make from its mountains and hills anymore that would not kill people. Remember that.

Whenever the rains fall, they have a cleansing effect — they wash away soot and grime, the patter of rainfall soothes the soul and cleanses the spirit.

But heavy rainfall that quickly rise into floods is another matter. Instead of cleansing, it makes the negative aspects more glaring.

We were at the airport on our way to Boracay when “Ondoy” hit in September 2009. Heavy rainfall caused floodwaters to rise so fast that people hardly had time to do anything other than try to get out of danger.

Floods rose all over the metro to as high as above the heads of adults. Houses and cars were submerged, people drowned in rushing waters.

In the aftermath, we knew the disastrous results of overdevelopment, overpopulation and waste mismanagement.

These past few days, we were already out of the city when Ondoy-like rains fell once more in the metro. Monsoon rains and low-pressure areas caused the same kind of calamitous results from practically the same problems.

While we, Filipinos, are known for our resilience in times of calamity, one can’t help but think having the same problems over and over again may have caused an immune effect that we like to glorify as a positive attitude.

Water level in Marikina River, reports say, rose to 20.5 meters at the height of the torrential monsoon rains. I could only imagine it, but I knew exactly how it was to be under the same conditions. If it isn’t traffic, it’s flood — I have endured four hours on the road, and scary moments when I thought I would end up wading in the murky waters. This time, the waters were just as murky and the uncertainty just as intense. Thousands of residents in Marikina City were forced to evacuate just in case it became too dangerous for them. It probably felt like deja vu for them. And if not for the dates, the stories sounded the same.

Social media was peppered with on-the-ground updates of the flood situation in different parts of the metro. I caught up every now and then, in between moments of rain-like downpour in my sphere.

I couldn’t help but liken the monsoon to tears — grief for things past and present and the presentiment of a future where nothing changes; for all things left unsaid or undone and for moments we let pass until the moment we are forced to face the pain of wasted time.

I am on my way to a funeral as I write this piece and the tears that have fallen these past days are akin to the rains in the metro — non-stop and too heavy for the dams and rivers to carry.

Rains like that are cleansing, in way. Even as mountains of garbage show the magnitude of our sad reality, having revealed the truth, rain had given us a chance to wash away the detritus of the past and clean up our act this time around.