As victims of typhoon-prone Philippines’ worst floods in 50 years clean up and rebuild, its disaster-risk management is back under the spotlight

Climate change has made the tropical storms that hit the Philippines every year more severe. It has responded by improving warning systems and management plans

Yet the plans come to nothing. They aren’t given enough priority, co-ordination and direction are lacking, and laws aren’t enforced, a disaster-risk expert says

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Rubbish is piled up in the middle of the street after floods in Barangay Malanday, Marikina City, the Philippines. An average of 20 typhoons a year now hit the country, with flooding devastating many towns and cities. Photo: AJ Bolando

Published: 8:45am, 3 Jan 2021Updated: 8:48am, 3 Jan 2021

The sun has come out and the floodwaters have receded. Corazon Tocio, a resident of Barangay Malanday in Marikina, Metro Manila, the Philippines is washing her family’s flood-stained clothes while her husband is digging through streets covered in damp and rotting garbage, looking for pieces of wood and other materials with which to repair their house.

“All I could think of was my family’s safety,” Tocio says, looking distressed as she remembers the night their village was hit by Typhoon Ulysses, known internationally as Typhoon Vamco.

Towards midnight on November 11, torrential rain began to pour down across the northern Philippines. According to several reports, the storm triggered the worst flooding in Metro Manila – the greater capital city region – in 50 years. Most of Marikina was submerged before daybreak.

Rescuers had to use rubber boats and swim through floodwater to take stranded residents to safety. The catastrophe came at a time when the country was grappling with a surge of Covid-19 infections.

Corazon Tocio washes her family’s flood-stained clothes in front of her home in Barangay Malanday, Marikina, in Metro Manila, the Philippines. Photo: AJ Bolando

“I looked through the window and I saw the murky water in the river,” Tocio says. “It was rising so fast. I have not even got over the trauma I experienced from Typhoon Ondoy yet, but we are faced with the same thing again.” Ondoy, known internationally as Typhoon Ketsana, hit the Philippines in 2009.

The 60-year-old housewife says she and her daughter fled the waterlogged streets and found refuge in an evacuation centre, but her husband insisted on staying to watch over their elevated one-storey house, built that way in the hope it would withstand flooding.