We beg to differ.
Metro Manila is, by its very nature, a city vulnerable to flooding. Yet it has grown and developed into a monstrous megalopolis that, today, teeters on the brink of catastrophic failure. Manila is bisected by the Pasig River into which connect a system of natural waterways that both feed into it and absorb excess water…
When former President Gloria Arroyo (GMA) was in power, people were quick to blame her government for what happened during the flooding brought about by typhoon Ondoy in September 2009. Yes, her government could have done more to prevent the flooding but the deluge brought forth by the rains induced by the storm that caused…
Read More “Is PNoy to blame for the recent flooding in Luzon?” »
The virtue of ‘resilience’ has become a dirty word now in the Philippines as third-time unlucky Manila is again hit by another one of those “one-in-one-hundred” calamities that were once the key statistical notion underpinning urban planners’ archaic flood “control” master plans. Although response to the disaster has “improved”, the feel-good rhetoric around Filipinos’ cockroach-like…
Read More “Metro Manila a candidate for urban ‘catastrophic failure’ according to policy expert” »
In another one of its infomercial articles that it would like to pass off to the average sucker as a news “report”, ABS-CBN trumpeted another one of those dubious “achievements” Filipinos owe mainly to their enormous population — our undisputed place in the global scheme of things as the “social media capital of the world”….
Read More “Social Media and Big Telco emerge as Filipino heroes” »
Haring habagat – this is the name that some people on Facebook are throwing around to call the latest series of torrential rains that has besieged Metro Manila. Habagat refers to the southwest monsoon experienced by the Philippines every year. The total volume of rainfall from this incidence has seemingly exceeded that of Ondoy in…
Perhaps in this instance rather than refer to Philippine President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III by his catchy first two initials, he should instead be referred to as the ‘BT’ President — as in bad timing. Just two weeks before The Disaster that Could not be Named struck Manila and turned it into a real-life…
The latest deluge to hit Metro Manila once again demonstrates the sorry state of preparedness of state emergency services in the Philippines and the woefully insufficient flood control infrastructure of the country’s premier metropolis. Flooding brought about by days of southwest monsoon rains pounding the northern Philippine island of Luzon have once again paralysed vast…