This typhoon is called Typhoon Fung-Wong, which I understand means “phoenix mountain” or something in Chinese, but within the “Philippine Area of Responsibility,” which is a large polygon on the map encompassing the Philippines and Taiwan, it is known as Typhoon Uwan. That is one thing I’ve always appreciated about the way Philippine authorities deal with tropical storms and typhoons, the way they name them in alphabetical order. This is the 21st storm of the year, so it is Uwan, a Tagalog word that I understand means “uwan.”
This is the second destructive typhoon to hit the country in less than a week; earlier in the week Typhoon Tino (called Kalmaegi elsewhere) ripped across the central part of the country, killing at least 224 people (the official count as of earlier today), with more than 100 still missing. That storm dumped an entire month’s worth of rain in about 7 hours, leading to catastrophic flooding. There are very few reports yet about damage from the present storm, but it is likely to be serious. As one indication of that, the most recent update from the national grid operator said that there was a total of 29 of its transmission lines that were out of service, and that’s without the storm having made landfall yet. During last week’s typhoon, the largest number of downed lines, after the typhoon had passed and across a much wider area, was 19.
Schools and government offices have already been closed for the next two days here in Metro Manila, and while the authorities have seemed to be a bit over-cautious about that this year, there will indeed be some flooding. Metro Manila is one of the most congested cities (actually a collection of 17 individual cities) on Earth, it is poorly designed, and the drainage system is shit. Flooding has become steadily more frequent and more serious with each passing year, as much of the city is sinking due to groundwater extraction and unchecked development.
Climate change is probably worsening that problem, but it is difficult to quantify that as of now. It won’t be, in the not too distant future. Likewise, there is a common belief that climate change is making these storms worse – more frequent, more intense, or both. The relatively new science of weather attribution has created models that tend to support that belief, but again, it’s difficult to put your finger on it. We don’t often get to the letter U in the yearly alphabet of storm names, but it’s not unheard of; the weather doesn’t behave in orderly trends, so discerning a pattern even over 20 years, the amount of time I’ve been here, is impossible. But it won’t be, in the not too distant future.
These back-to-back destructive typhoons have happened at a time when the Philippines is grappling with a large-scale corruption scandal involving public works projects; the focus the past couple of months has been on flood-control projects, although just about every public works project done in the past couple of decades – roads, bridges, health care facilities, school buildings – has been tainted by a well-organized and widespread system of graft involving public works officials, local government officials, members of Congress, and contractors. There has been a lot of finger-pointing in the past few days, and there will be more in the days to come, and where it will all lead is anyone’s guess. There have been other huge scandals in the past that should have brought down the government, or seen some of the country’s ruling class hauled off to prison, but that has never happened; despite the volume of rhetoric and the show of investigating the evildoers this time around, there is nothing really to suggest this time is going to be any different.
And I think I know why, and this storm lashing the big window in front of my desk is the clue. I live on the 18th floor of a well-built building in a decent neighborhood, and have a comfortable existence – I am not wealthy by my or anyone else’s standards, because I am a journalist after all, but I do okay. This storm may be a modest inconvenience to me at best, and realistically, if it is, it will probably only be because the suspension of government offices the next two days holds up some work I have to do. The most serious repercussion we are likely to experience in this household is my college student daughter being pissed off and grumpy that classes are suspended.
That is obviously not the case for a vast number of Filipinos. 30 percent or more of Metro Manila’s inhabitants – 4 to 5 million people – live in slums. They euphemistically refer to them as “informal settlements” to try to dignify them a bit, but slums are what they are, and some of them are the worst you can imagine. There is a similar proportion in every urban area of any size everywhere else in the country as well. These are the people who overwhelmingly suffer the consequences of typhoons and flooding. Most of the dead from Typhoon Tino in and around the central city of Cebu earlier in the week were from the hive-like shantytowns crowding the banks of rivers, which were literally scrubbed off the face of the Earth by the floods the typhoon caused.
These are the faceless millions, unseen in life or death, with no power to hold anyone to account. Those who are better-off may express outrage over things like “Floodgate” on moral grounds, but the people whose lives are actually at risk are silent, and furthermore, are kept that way by politicians who treat them as pets, at best. Nothing will come of the current “probes” into the flood-control corruption scandal, save for a few scapegoats who will be sacrificed to draw attention away from the real culprits.
If the floods would come to a neighborhood of a little higher economic status, things would be different, and we know this because it’s happened once. Back in 2009, torrential rains from a tropical depression – it wasn’t even a tropical storm at that point – called Ondoy caused catastrophic flooding across Metro Manila. In the city of Marikina, a village called Provident Village – a nice place, probably best described as upper middle-class – lying in a bend of the Marikina River was pounded by a flash flood, worsened by immense amounts of garbage clogging drainage systems. Many people died; a guy I know casually lost his elderly father.
Things began to change rapidly after that. The City of Marikina improved its flood warning system, and invested heavily in civil works and drainage improvements to try to prevent another catastrophe. Marikina is unfortunately very flood-prone, so it has not escaped trouble in the years since, but a good emergency management system, better solid waste management system, and its investments in flood-control infrastructure do a lot to minimize harm.
Unfortunately, that’s what it’s going to take to provoke real reform in this country, whether it’s the specific issue of flood-control and other public works projects being compromised by corruption, or the larger issue of dealing with climate change. Hurt the people who matter, put them and their property and businesses in harm’s way, and they’re going to demand something be done, beginning with punishing those who betrayed them.
That’s really sad, but that is the world as we know it.
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