EDITORIAL - The never-ending flooding problem

If it seems like you have read this editorial before it’s because it’s about a topic that we revisit a lot. Yes, you guessed it, we are talking about floods.

Following heavy downpour yesterday, many streets in Cebu City as well as Mandaue City again turned into rivers and many residential neighborhoods into swamps.

Needless to say, many students and workers were stranded on their way home and had to wait for hours for the waters to subside. Needless to say, many homes were again invaded by floodwaters that destroyed belongings, including in areas not previously flooded.

In Cebu City, floodwaters in Barangay Sambag II rose to about 10 feet, while Barangay Sapangdaku saw 11 feet of water.

We got lucky this time as there seemed to be no reports of casualties or deaths. But the cost in terms of damaged property or productivity lost because some workers couldn’t make it to work on time will always be there.

Cebu City authorities have blamed the usual cause --irresponsible disposal of garbage-- as to why many parts of the city got flooded again.

This isn’t something we can totally disregard; many people still don’t throw trash where they should, and trash clogs up drainage systems when it rains, leaving rainwater nowhere to go but wreak havoc in the surface.

But it’s not that simple anymore. Because the floodwaters also came from rivers in areas like Lahug, Guadalupe, Ermita, and Zapatera, and we don’t think garbage is to blame for what happened there.

It would seem that even after all these years flood-mitigation measures are still inefficient. This situation has been going on for a long time now that Cebu City residents jest that we have better chances of turning Cebu City into Venice as supposed to another Singapore.

The jokes aside, it’s time to solve our flooding problem. We can expect worse situations in the future.

We were not being directly affected by a typhoon; that was just typical, run-of-the-mill monsoon rains. Imagine how it would be if a typhoon were to actually hit us head-on.