Why aren’t we angry yet?

The Southwest Monsoon (habagat) dumped 201.7 mm of rainfall in just five hours over Metro Manila on Aug. 17. With 138 mm falling in a two-hour window, widespread flooding hit major roads across Metro Manila.

It wasn’t quite at the level of Ondoy some years ago. But the deluge was enough to cause suffering and inconvenience to millions of people in Metro Manila and Central Luzon.

In Metro Manila, severe street flooding forced pedestrians to risk infection of leptospirosis and has paralyzed what we call our transport system.

In Central Luzon, continuous heavy downpours have triggered deep flooding in Pampanga and Zambales.

Here is how one netizen (Belle Enriquez) saw it on Facebook:

“Suddenly, perfectly respectable adults become acrobats. They balance on gutters, leap between patches of pavement, cling to railings, remove their shoes, roll up their trousers and calculate every step as though crossing EDSA had become an Olympic event nobody volunteered to enter…

“That is not resilience. That is adaptation to failure. And we Filipinos have become extraordinarily accomplished at adapting to things we should have stopped tolerating long ago…

“The serious question is why, after decades of development, engineering, appropriations, plans, projects and solemn declarations that the problem is being addressed, ordinary Filipinos are still expected to improvise their own passage through contaminated water?”

DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon said there are no overnight solutions to our flooding problem. But we know that, Vince. And we have been waiting all these years for solutions to our flooding problems.

Over the last ten to fifteen years (2011 to 2025), approximately P1.939 trillion has been spent for all sorts of flood control projects. The people are not being unreasonable to expect that by this time, something useful can protect them when the torrential rains come.

Part of the problem is we live like pigs, throwing garbage everywhere and clogging our rivers. Ramon Ang is spending billions every year dredging and cleaning some metro rivers, even acquiring his own equipment. Waiting for the government means lost business opportunities.

It isn’t as if Filipino professionals are bereft of ideas on how to deal with this flooding problem.

Urban environmental specialists like Paulo Alcazaren suggested 15 years ago the construction of flood cisterns and detention ponds metro-wide, if we want to address increased flood risks.

Architect and urban planner Felino “Jun” Palafox Jr. thinks that flooding is primarily a failure of urban planning and governance. Jun has tirelessly submitted hundreds of flood control measures to various administrations and been ignored.

He notes that existing drainage networks are 75 percent undersized and must be updated to match current urban densities and extreme weather.

Like Alcazaren, Jun thinks we should build massive underground water catchment systems and storage basins to hold excess rainwater before it floods streets, as they do in Japan and the Netherlands.

Palafox strongly advocates the construction of the long-delayed Parañaque Spillway to serve as a vital drain for Laguna de Bay, which he describes as a “bathtub without a drain.”

The Spillway was first proposed during the Marcos Sr. administration as part of a flood-control plan that includes the Manggahan Floodway, Napindan Hydraulic System and Camanava flood control. The Parañaque Spillway was stalled and deferred for decades due to changes in political administrations.

We have spent big sums on project studies but do not have political continuity. Flood management cannot be bound by six-year political terms. Infrastructure plans must be institutionalized so subsequent administrations cannot arbitrarily cancel or abandon ongoing flood control contracts.

Now, BBM has ordered the DPWH to revisit and fast-track the project, a good press release on a rainy day. But even if it finally gets started, it will take a minimum of ten years to construct. JICA has updated their study.

But there are other things we can do. Rainwater harvesting is one.

Singapore has successfully converted two-thirds of its land area into a massive, integrated water catchment system. Through strict urban planning, advanced engineering and a unique architectural approach, the city-state captures rainwater on a metropolitan scale.

Singapore treats its entire urban landscape as a sponge, collecting rain where it falls and channeling it into a sophisticated network of reservoirs.

The city operates two entirely separate pipe and canal networks. One network is exclusively for sewage and industrial wastewater, while the other is strictly for clean rainwater runoff. Rainwater is significantly easier and cheaper to treat at reservoirs.

As always, the Singaporean government overachieves.

In our case, the question is, why aren’t people sufficiently angry at the failure of our government to provide the infrastructure that would protect us from regular flooding? Are Filipinos just too patient? Are we simply used to shrugging off calamities as being Pinoy?

Or, as a sociologist sees it, “our outward patience is due to systemic fatigue and weaponized cultural traits that complicate our ability to sustain collective anger.”

Or as an academic puts it, maybe our leaders have effectively used so-called Filipino resilience by romanticizing survival.

Sociologists point out that the cultural trait of pagiging matatag (resilience) and the tendency to smile through adversity are habitually co-opted by our officials to cover up their failures, as floods annually devastate the country. By praising the public’s ability to bounce back, the state effectively shifts the burden of recovery onto the victims.

Academic papers assert that framing survival as a moral or cultural victory turns structural governance failures into tests of personal endurance, diluting potential rage.

So, this cyclical pattern of “disaster, temporary relief packs, and photo ops” normalizes the crisis, pacifying immediate public anger before it can solidify into an organized movement.

Someone suggested on social media, not totally in jest, that we should abolish DPWH and outsource its functions to JICA. I think it is a great idea. Sec. Vince may even agree.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco