Ondoy & Onwards

My cousin who lives here in Davao City in Bangkal bought a lifeboat in the wake of Ondoy. Such was the fear brought about by the horrors of the Ondoy storm even as we empathized with the flood victims, some of them our very own friends. Parents, children, everyone and all were traumatized. A lifeboat will not address the problem at the core. Still, we have to capacitate ourselves in disaster preparedness by organizing our neighborhoods and communities. We have been saying this before and it would be worthwhile to say it again – one year after the Ondoy floods. One of the major causes of such disasters is the unchecked urban sprawl and bad urban planning. Floods should be something that we should be preparing for – not unlike the planning of the ark of Noah of the Old Testament.

The architect's perspective is that function follows form. So, we are learning from architects again, particularly from Anna Maria Gonzales : that there is a reason for the stilts in our Bahay Kubo to keep us away from floods; that there should be a space in the perimeter of our homes for water drainage; the space around our houses should not be poured with concrete but should be just soil and vegetation to allow for water to drain; and our walkways should not be poured with concrete but just paved with grass or stepping stones or bricks.

Our asphalt jungle and cemented roads are causing the floods. Our garbage is preventing the run off of water to the watersheds and drainage systems. The concept of mega cities is bad urban planning. Urban experts are saying that our cities should be small and beautiful. I have been to some of the most beautifully planned cities (Vancouver, Amsterdam, New York ) in the world and their central business districts are small. I mean, the garden which is the Central Park of New York City is four square kilometers or as big as Baguio City; and less than a mile from central Vancouver is Stanley Park, a very, very big park planted with forest trees. Of course, the canals of Amsterdam were built to prevent floods as this city is seven meters below sea level.

It is never safe to build on edges of any waterway. And this is true of the coastal areas found in the central business district of Davao City from Magsaysay Park towards the banks of the Davao River in Bolton and Bankerohan and beyond. Not only that our human settlements are not observing the five meter easement, houses are built on parks and shores without building permits. Our people are not only building human settlements in places reserved for parks, their homes are in the sea and these could be danger zones in times of Southwest monsoons and strong storm surges. Goddesses forbid, these are accidents waiting to happen.

It has happened before with Typhoon Nitang in the early eighties. How can I forget? I spent a couple of years working with 231 families displaced by Typhoon Nitang. It was one of first cases handled by our center. These 231 families were hit by tsunami like waves caused by typhoon “Nitang” that destroyed houses & properties of these families. These victims were forced to move to a privately owned land and as expected, the landowner sued them for forcible entry. So, a delegation of women residents of this community, whose husbands were busy attending to their means of livelihood which was mainly fishing, sought the help of our center to defend them. Anyway, these families never went back to building homes in public shores. And it took them Typhoon Nitang to realize this. Therefore, this should be an indication for city planners to imagine another scenario for the coastal areas in our central business district currently inhabited by informal settlers who are technically living in danger zones as defined by our current Urban Development Housing Act (UDHA).