A battle is lost, we can still win the war

Several months ago, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) forecast a severe El Niño phenomenon to start in late June towards the end portion of this year. I must confess to be without any educational background on meteorology. When PAGASA alerted us to a possible severe El Niño, I thought of drought condition hitting our country. I imagined the sun scorching our land, our rivers drying and our plants withering. Based on my uneducated perception of the weather forecast, I wrote some articles asking government to implement a kind of program making use of the predicted hot weather to clear our river banks of illegal structures and desilt our river beds. My whole idea was for government to prepare against more Tino-like floods devastating our island.

We saw nothing of the forecast drought condition and I realized that my perception of El Niño to be hot weather was wrong. In the last several days, our land was not parched by the sun, our agricultural fields did not crack like dry clay and our rivers did not dry up. But neither did I see any effort to remove the structures that were erected on what should be legal easements nor men and equipment dredging and desilting the riverbeds. Instead, heavy rains poured, our natural waterways swelled and we witnessed unprecedented flooding.

If in my articles, I urged our government to implement programs to do any proverbial battle against floods, the raging floodwaters of the kind we suffered in the past several days beat us. That battle is lost. We already got inundated by the unexpected floods and we suffered immensely. It was terrifying to see our streets becoming waterways as it horrified us when floods entered our homes as unwelcome guest. Still there are relevant words of Sun Tzu that contain an applicable remaining value. He was attributed saying “we may have lost the battle, but not the war.”

True indeed, the upcoming war against flooding that the city must wage is highly ambitious. But, while the infrastructure work is most daunting and the financial costs are expectedly massive and understandably staggering, this project is non-negotiable. It must be done because this is the only way to protect our legacy as the "Queen City of the South" and fulfill Vice Mayor Tomas Osmeña's vision of a city that is second to none.

If playwright John Heywood said that “Rome was not built in a day” Cebu City’s war “kontra baha”, to succeed, needs to be done in defined stages. Immediately, the city needs to remove everything that blocks the flow of water on its rivers, esteros and other natural waterways. Because the manpower required to do the job is big, let the city and barangays tap their job-order personnel. There are private contractors doing business in the city, I believe that they are willing to lend some of their workers and equipment if our leaders knock on their doors for help.

The intermediate stage needs a strong and determined political will. It focuses on the ultimate clearing of the banks of our rivers and other waterways. Actually, many mayors planned of removing illegal structures that violated the legal easements. Beyond plans however, no work was done. The hard lessons we learned from the recent floods must now move our leaders to implement this admittedly-painful job. The time is now. A further delay is not acceptable.