Floodwaters. This is a short photo essay about the August 2012

Floodwaters.

 

 

This is a short photo essay about the August 2012 deadly floods in Metro Manila.

I will always be in awe by the resilience of the Filipinos. They keep their good spirits and smiles even amid the biggest calamities. Their ability to cope with just about everything is amazing. 

Alas this ability to cope is paired with a “bahala na” attitude which can loosely be translated as “fatalistic passiveness”.  In the Philippines we experience the same urban disasters year after year. Politicians and urban planners don’t seem to be able to get their act together. 

How many disasters do we still need before things will change?

I like to share a comment from Mr. Tomas Gomez III in the New York Times:

  

"Metro Manila is abused space. It is engaged in self-strangulation by not consciously decongesting and redistributing its population. Slums and squatter colonies predominate much of the terrain, occupying what used to be open canals/streams, river tributaries and even riverbanks themselves. Clogging of natural drainage arteries is the tolerated norm. It is beyond its carrying capacity and for a long time now has been bursting at the seams and there is no national policy/initiative to decongest, to demagnetize and to deimperialize. There is mass transit that goes around in circles within the metropolitan core instead of ferrying masses of people over long distances to and from the city. There is no such thing as a "freeway" or a "highway" cutting through the metro area through which you can travel at a speed of better than 10 mph.!  All of its 636 sq.km. has a daytime population that is approaching 30,000 per sq. km. Manila itself is now planet earth's most densely populated municipality. BTW, the office and residence of the President is located within the same national capital region as the national penitentiary as well as the national mental institution. Yet, as the crow flies, just beyond 40 miles to the northeast, east and southeast of Manila are verdant open spaces waiting to be opened up to efficient infrastructure and a better quality of life. What a country!"

 

Link to full article