the name of the blame

*This is my second paper for my Journalism 103 (opinion writing) class.

Metro Manila is a mess. Roads are congested. Piles of garbage line its streets and fill its waterways. The city reeks of its own filth.

And that was before tropical storm “Ondoy” came.

On the day that over 400 millimeters of rain came pouring from the sky, the mess became a catastrophe. What we left mismanaged and damaged came back to haunt us all.

We stared in awe at the sheer volume of the rising flood waters and asked where all that water came from, knowing all too well that the denuded mountains and hills in the distance held the answer.

We watched helplessly as the homes, factories, and shopping centers of a poorly – if at all – planned metropolis sank in the middle of natural flood plains between the Marikina and Pasig rivers.

We waited desperately for help to come in the midst of the storm, only to be frustrated by news of rescue teams blocked by congested roads and suffering from a lack of equipment.

When the rain finally stopped we picked through huge piles of garbage. Our own trash, disgorged by the very waterways we turned into latrines, plus the debris from all the destroyed buildings and the mud and silt from the mountains, covered all the streets.

Metro Manila is a mess. Roads are congested. Piles of garbage line its streets and fill its waterways. The city reeks of its own filth.

This is after tropical storm “Ondoy” left.

In the days after the storm, thousands of volunteers picked up the pieces and gave food and supplies to those ravaged by the floods. Unfortunately, such a picture of one nation and one people engaged in bayanihan was not meant to last.

That fleeting moment of national unity was quickly overshadowed by politicians, personalities, and people all pointing fingers and blaming each other for the disaster that brought the capital to its knees.

Critics slammed the national government’s feeble disaster-response capability, even though the blocked roads prevented the rescue teams from getting to where they were needed most.

They scored the weather bureau, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), for not warning the people about the amount of rain brought by “Ondoy”, even though the tools for doing so were not available.

They blamed the managers of the metropolis’ drainage system for not opening the pumps out of the city, even though doing so would have entailed pumping water into already full rivers.

But these critics need not look far for those who are ultimately to blame for last month’s deluge. They only have to look in front of them, behind them, beside them, around them, within them, for the cause of the disaster.

Yes. We are all to blame.

Our mad rush to build a city caused us to irresponsibly put houses and infrastructure in hazardous areas. Urban planning took a back seat to profit-making.

Our disregard for proper waste management filled our drains, our creeks, and our rivers with garbage that so congested the waterways that the water had nowhere to go but into our living rooms.

Our disrespect for the law led us to tolerate squatters who blocked the main drainage channels out of the city and added to the congestion of our waterways.

Our greed led us to strip the mountains bare of trees and plants, leaving our watersheds without any cover at all from the rains.

Our ignorance kept us from preparing for the inevitable, with money going into worthless endeavors such as junkets abroad instead of proper disaster response equipment, adequate warning systems, and Doppler radars which could have warned us of the amount of rain brought by “Ondoy”.

At the end of it all, we are left with what we have sown.

Now, let us plant new seeds in the mud left by this disaster. Let us learn from our mistakes, and not repeat them in the future, lest we suffer another “Ondoy”.

four days after "ondoy"

You don't see things like this everyday. Sure, one can tune in to CNN or any other news channel or log on to the Internet to see scenes of nature's wrath, but I wasn't really prepared to see and experience a disaster area firsthand and right where I lived.

It was the smell - that heavy, putrid stench that hung in the air - that made it all real. There were piles of garbage scattered everywhere. Brown, sticky mud still lined the roads - in some places, it still covered everything.

If it wasn't muddy, it was dusty. The silt deposited by the flood had dried in some places, and passing vehicles churned the caked mud into a fine dust that flew everywhere. Trucks of every shape and size were coming and going, while there were a lot of damaged cars along the road.

Aside from the cars, every house or establishment we passed had furniture and appliances outside. Sofas, tables, chairs, television sets - all broken or damaged by the flood waters.

That was what I and a couple of friends went through as we walked home from Riverbanks yesterday evening. The flyover into Marikina was damaged during the storm, so there was no public transportation plying the road from Barangka to the Marikina Bridge.

There were people everywhere. Some, just like us, walking down the street on the way home. Quite a few people were waiting for a jeep or taxi to pass by. Some were cleaning their houses and furniture. Many were walking out of the area with their things on their backs.

Provident Village was full of people and trucks. Soldiers and police were scattered here and there. There was a steady stream of refugees, some barefoot, walking out of the worst-hit place in the entire city. We watched a truck try to drag a muddy car out of the village. The car's bumper came off, undoing the chain tying the two together. It was already dark, so I did not want to risk going further into the subdivision.

As we neared the Marikina Bridge, we passed one van carrying relief goods. One van. The white L300 was being mobbed by residents shouting "May stub kami! May stub kami!" ("We have stubs!) over and over again. We quickened our pace, fearing a looming confrontation - there were stories circulating about relief trucks that had been attacked by hungry and angry people.

An old woman on the bridge muttered "Hindi nga nalunod, mamamatay naman sa gutom" (We did not drown, but we're going to die of hunger).

Relief goods in the area were scarce. The main sources of food and supplies were either closed or running out of stock. Riverbanks, a major supermarket and mall which we had visited earlier in the day, was like a ghost town. In the mall, the stores were eerily empty and quiet. The glass walls of Jollibee, Nutri Options, and Tropical Hut lay shattered on the mud-covered floor.

One security guard remarked on the flood that brought the once bustling shopping center to its knees. "Lagpas tao tubig dito" (The water went higher than a person here), he said. And indeed, the water line on the walls showed the flood going up to more than six feet.

The river bank itself was a sea of brown mud. Silt and garbage covered what was supposed to be green grass. The vine-covered gazebo across the Marikina River was smashed; pieces of it had broken off leaving an empty shell.

I remember hanging out there with my friends once. Our conversation touched on how high the river got during flooding. Right there and then, as we walked through the remains of the park, we knew.

A friend, who couldn't take the smell anymore, told us "Amoy bangkay naman dito" (It smells like a corpse here). Until then I had kept all thoughts of death out of my mind, choosing instead to focus on the disaster and the people who needed help. I didn't want to think that she was right, that there were dead bodies around, but looking again at the as yet untouched and uncleaned Riverbanks park, I wasn't so sure anymore.

It was sad and depressing all throughout. While one of the reasons why I took up Journalism was so that I could go to and see disaster areas and war zones, I had never planned on seeing one right in my own backyard.

While walking through Marikina - from Riverbanks, to Barangka, past Provident, across the Marikina Bridge, to Bayan - I couldn't help but think about how fragile life was. The once busy city was totally shut down, its people trying to get back up from the devastation of the flood wreaked by "Ondoy".

However, dark and devastating the aftermath of the disaster may be, there is always something that gives hope and light to the survivors of the catastrophe. Foremost of all are the many volunteer relief efforts that have sprung up all over the metropolis in the wake of "Ondoy".

Before going around Marikina, my friends and I tried to help out in some of the relief centers nearest to us. While it was quite frustrating that we couldn't find any places where we could join in, it was heartening to see that this was because all of them were overflowing with people doing what they could to help their countrymen.

The University of the Philippines' Church of the Risen Lord, Cubao Expo, Ateneo de Manila University: all were filled with volunteers - mostly from the youth - loading and unloading trucks and packing relief goods.

It was a very encouraging sight indeed, to see Filipinos working to provide relief for fellow Filipinos. For all the devastation "Ondoy" has wrought on our country, on our cities, on our people, it still did do one good thing. The storm brought out the best in our nation. It brought out the best in us.

You don't see things like this everyday.