Looking for someone to blame

Eleven hours to Dagupan; 14 hours to San Fernando, Pampanga, a city you can normally reach in two; 10 hours to Baguio.

Those are Victory Liner’s own figures for Monday, Aug. 31. And behind every one of them is a bus full of people who ran out of water, patience and dignity somewhere around Tulaoc and San Simon, Pampanga.

But what we actually do when such incidents happen? And the instant reaction, most often than not, is to look for a logo. The logo is easy to find: North Luzon Expressway-Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. It is on the sign of the toll gate, on the patrol car, that tells you the exit is closed.

So the anger goes to the direction of the expressway. The expressway was not the disaster. It was part of the disaster that had a customer service number.

Now consider what was on the other side of that concrete barrier. San Simon town was under water. Not the expressway – the town. A concrete flood wall in Barangay San Jose collapsed under the current. 

Downstream in Macabebe and Masantol, farmers had been waist-deep in water for days, which is exactly why water in San Simon had nowhere to go. As Pampanga Governor Lilia “Nanay” Pineda succinctly put in plain language: the whole province is choked up because heavily clogged Manila Bay cannot take in water any more.

So many drowning in floods up to now that residents of Candaba on Friday trooped to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Pasay City. They were seeking the civilian-led law enforcement agency to investigate alleged irregularities involving P1.4 billion in flood control projects in their town, including contracts reportedly awarded to firms allegedly linked to Mayor Rene Maglanque.

No less than 14 residents, represented by their lawyer Faye Singson and accompanied by former Candaba mayor Jerry Pelayo, filed the complaint before the NBI's Organized and Transnational Crimes Division. 

In their sworn complaint/affidavit, the Candaba residents sought an investigation into the flood control projects reportedly cornered by the Sto. Cristo Construction & Trading and Globalcrete Builders Inc. They accused that the contractor allegedly secured a total of P5.4 billion worth of government contracts in a period covering 2022 to 2025.

Of this total amount, the allegedly favored Sto. Cristo contractor won P1.4 billion in flood control projects in Candaba alone, according to the complainants. 

The complainants further alleged that Globalcrete Builders was registered under the name of Maglanque, while Sto. Cristo was reportedly owned by a certain Noel Cruz.

They also asked the NBI to look into MBB Global Properties Corp., which they claimed was owned by Macy Monique Alarcon Maglanque, the mayor’s daughter, and the companies purportedly owned by certain children of former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) secretary Manuel Bonoan and former DPWH undersecretary Roberto Bernardo.

Same names, same shady characters whose alleged hanky-panky activities in the flood control scandal first broke out. The same names cropped up during the probe of the flood control scam at the Senate Blue Ribbon committee public hearings in September last year.      

But here is the physics and with a dash of geology and geography. It is not complicated. Pampanga is a delta. Water from Nueva Ecija, from the dams, from Bulacan, all of it drains through Pampanga on its way to the sea. When the sea is high and the towns downstream are already full, the water stops. It doesn’t care what’s built on top of it, whether it’s a highway or a rice field.

Resorting to the blame game will not solve the problem. 

Neither can spreading the blame provide much needed relief to the affected people. Perhaps, we can only take consolation in the reality that climate change is not sparing any country, rich or poor. The city of Nagoya in Japan just last week was inundated in surging floodwaters. Japanese authorities immediately conceded their several decades-old drainage system could no longer cope and support the unprecedented volume of rainfall.

Tulaoc also flooded in 2023, and after that there was an agreement to raise both the road and the bridge. Three years later, only the road has moved – about 0.7 of a meter. Which raises the question nobody in the shouting match has answered. To lift that pavement any higher, the Tulaoc Bridge above it has to go up first. Otherwise, the trucks will stop fitting underneath. So who is responsible for raising the bridge and when should it be done? Maybe we should ask DPWH Secretary Vivencio “Vince” Dizon. 

Long before the drainage overflow, there was already a realization on the need for a long-term masterplan for drainage system in the Philippines. It should have been in place since yesterday, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) declared earlier. PBBM recalled it was his namesake father, the late president Marcos Sr., who first conceived of such a plan alongside the national flood control program.

Incidentally, PBBM turned 69 years old yesterday on the job as one of the Chief Executives attending 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, India. The acronym BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2001, later adding South Africa in 2010. Formed originally as an inter-governmental organization for emerging economies, they, too, suffer from flash flooding in these countries. 

What finally moved the water in San Simon was not miracle or something done by a single hero. It was mobile pumps deployed and 1,500 sandbags from the provincial government, barriers and siphoning trucks from the concessionaire. Assisted by warm bodies from the Philippine Coast Guard on the ground, DPWH civil engineers and workers sealed the points where Tulaoc River was pouring onto the carriageway. Then dredging, which churned up water lilies, silt and tons of garbage.

Yes, tons of garbage in the river. That is not a company’s lapse or a governor’s failure. It’s the collective sin of residents over a very long period of time.

So by all means demand answers. Just stop looking for a logo, and start asking who owns the river.