Consequential ‘habagat’

The devastating southwest monsoon (habagat) rains in the past few days should serve as a serious warning of the looming threat of the forecasted La Niña event later this year.

As I write this, the sun has come out. But many are still reeling in the aftermath of the nonstop heavy to intense rain induced by typhoon “Carina” since early Wednesday and the subsequent severe flooding in the Greater Manila Area and nearby provinces.

As an extreme weather event, the enhanced habagat plunged large swaths of Greater Manila into an eerie standstill and evoked reminiscences of 2009’s typhoon “Ondoy.”

However, the jury is still out if last week’s heavy habagat rainfall has made it to the record books similar to Ondoy’s record-breaking 24-hour rainfall which scientists have since characterized as happening only once in a century.

Nonetheless, in the wake of initial reports of widespread flooding in Greater Manila, extreme weather events ahead like La Niña are starting to look bad if we continue to delude ourselves that last week’s habagat was merely another extreme weather event that we stout Filipinos can handily manage once more.

Plainly speaking, it is high time we all vomited the atrociously stupid self-delusion of our vaunted “Filipino resilience” that greatly aids us in muddling through natural disasters.

At the same time, consider it also idiotic that nowadays in this age of instant abundant information, our weather and disaster monitoring agencies are still issuing nothing more intricate about an incoming disaster than warnings to watch out for floods and landslides.

Merely issuing general warnings about the risks without giving us specifics is as useless as resolving an argument on whether it is raining or not without the simple expedient of looking out the window.

Ironically, government torpedoed a relevant and effective program meant specifically to pinpoint exactly flood hazards in the Greater Manila Area down to the street level.

Last week, many again turned to the easily accessible UP Project Noah website to find out if the places they lived stood in harm’s way. This despite the fact the available data was from 2012.

The University of the Philippines’ Project Noah stands for Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards.

UP Project Noah was once vital for disaster prevention and rescue but previous governments officially defunded it after supporting it for five years largely because sclerotic bureaucrats thought it was useless to spend more money on it. How wrong they were.

Fortunately, Project Noah was transferred to the UP Resilience Institute, albeit with fewer resources and personnel.

Considering Project Noah’s usefulness to both the people and local governments, it is time this government immediately revive the project. It is only when more people specifically know of an area’s susceptibility to flooding would they be saved the trouble of having to clamber up to the roof every time heavy rains come around.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the floods many are raising the legitimate issue of what happened to the numerous flood control projects.

President Marcos Jr. made big mention of these flood control projects in his State of the Nation Address, bragging that over 5,500 flood control projects had been completed and more were to be undertaken.

But the people are still asking.

Of course, flood control projects and improving present flood control structures are essential for reducing floods in Metro Manila.

But it would be hard to reduce the damage solely with flood control facilities without the necessary step of directly involving the people.

In fact, experts insist government must genuinely make it a habit that Greater Manila residents are actively informed and involved in undertaking measures needed to reduce the flood hazard from the Marikina flood plain, the valley flood plain along the San Juan River, the Laguna Lake plain, and the coastal lowlands of central Metro Manila.

In short, it is only when the people are themselves involved and made keenly aware of where in their communities disaster has been scientifically forecasted to strike will there be true “bayanihan.”