Floods & my EPA education

Friday Oct. 25, 2024 - 7:20 a.m. "Sir, please help us. Our home has been flooded." The message was followed by two short videos inside a dark house where you could barely see but the water already knee deep.

Given that most of the Bicol provinces and many other places were equally flooded, what was so interesting about this case? The second message, in Tagalog, says it all: "Ngaun lamang po nangyari sa amin ang ganito, gawa po ng bagong tayo subdivision malapit po sa amin, nagiba po ang pader ng subdivision dito po sa Bagumbayan, Tanauan City, Batangas." (This is the first time this happened due to a new subdivision development that was built near us. The wall of the subdivision collapsed, here in Bagumbayan, Tanauan City, Batangas.) It seems that the subdivision wall was quite long and managed to gather so much water during the two-day downpour. The volume was so large that when the wall collapsed, it released enough water to the nearby barangay, where the ground was already soaked, thereby causing instant flooding.

Was it mere coincidence that for the second time in the last two years, our previously flood-free place at the LPL Compound in Barangay Inosluban, Lipa City, Batangas was again flooded. In 2023, we already called out the culprit being a new diversion road or access road cutting across a new subdivision development.

No one realized that the road, which was generally a blessing during the dry season, would end up becoming the equivalent of an irrigation canal during the wet season.