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Bencyrus Ellorin

CAGAYAN de Oro City is flood-prone. This is primarily due to its topography; it is located below the Bukidnon plateau and its main river system, the Cagayan River, has headwaters coming from Mindanao’s second and third highest mountains, the Kitanglad and Kalatungan.

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Around a fifth of the city’s land area is located in a narrow strip of coastal land stretching from Barangay Bugo in the east to Barangay Iponan in the west. Inner urban and peri-urban settlements lie directly below mountainous terrain. Bugo and Puerto, for example, sit directly below the Carmen Hill. Agusan, Tablon, Cugman, Gusa below the Malasag watershed. You go southward – the towns of Manolo Fortich and Libona in the Bukidnon plateau.

The amount of water flowing in the eastern part is evidenced by the presence of the Ala-e River in Bugo, Agusan River in Barangay Agusan, the Umalag River in Tablon, Cugman River in Cugman, and Bigaan River in Gusa.

There were the rivers, among other waterways that overflowed in the Jan. 16, 2017 floods.  Also rapid elevation of the waters at Iponan River in the west prompted City Hall to declare forced evacuation in the communities near the river around midnight on Monday.

Urban Cagayan de Oro has the Cagayan River in the west, south of it are the mountains of Indahag which straddles Libona and Baungon towns in Bukidnon.

Politically, that is District 2 where the Poblacion is located. Where the major business centers are located, starting from the Divisoria district, the Cogon market – the city’s biggest public market, the sprawling Limketkai Center and the adjoining soon-to-open SM, the Corrales business area where Ayala Centrio and the Gaisanao malls are located.

There are three universities in this area, Xavier University, Capitol University and the University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines, formerly the Mindanao University of Science and Technology.

It is also where the City Hall and the Misamis Oriental Capitol are located.

You can imagine the high population density in this district, perhaps, over half of the city’s population of 800,000 are in this district plus a hundred thousand or two from adjoining from Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon and Lanao del Norte during daytime.

On the other side of the city is the biggest barangay, Carmen, where development has expanded, including in barangays Kauswagan and Bulua. Going upland is the emerging uptown with Pueblo de Oro and about a dozen more subdivisions.

When people converge in a small area – high population density – it creates among other garbage, vehicular traffic and informal settlers. These are ugly indicators of fast and high volume economic exchange, creating lucrative business and eventually economic development.

Governance, on the other hand, should be responsive to address these needs with short-term and long-term solutions. Short-term solutions like traffic enforcement, escalated garbage collection, estero clean-ups, beefed up disaster response, among others, address daily concerns, but are not usually sustainable.

Long-term solutions like building more and bigger roads; expanded and modern drainage systems, resettlement of informal settlers; better waste management and other disaster risk reduction management systems are expensive and does not happen overnight.

The light at the end of the tunnel glowed after “Sendong” (Washi) when Kagay-anons collectively stood up and resolved to build better.

Now, where has this build-better battlecry, which in fact had been adopted in post Yolanda (Haiyan) and Pablo (Bopha) rehabilitation work, placed Cagayan de Oro and Kagay-anons?

The Jan. 16, 2017 flood which inundated the mostly the eastern part and the urban center, including Carmen and Kauswagan, of the city was a litmus test; sadly, it would seem, we failed. No excuses for all sectors, including the local government.

Perhaps, the silver lining is the better disaster response. Investments in the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office paid off. Although a lot of work still needs to be done to improve its capacity to take on disaster with such enormity. Some sectors are left grumbling, understandably after their pleas for help did not come as rescue teams responded to more life-threatening situations.

Resilience to extreme events works two ways. Resilience is primarily the ability of one to run away from danger. Prompt response from government emergency units is a must, but even the most modern disaster response systems are always overwhelmed by enormous extreme events, be it in New York City, London, Makati or here in Cagayan de Oro City. Waiting for rescue, when you can still run to safer grounds, and later on grumble, is not resilience, it is pabebe.

When rainwater equivalent to a month’s rainfall is poured into a coastal area in a short period of time and high tide raises sharply the bar of flood risk. You put in more than a half million people in that area and you have a perfect formula for extreme hazard–disaster.

The Jan. 16 flood is another grim reminder of the hazard people of Cagayan de Oro are facing. It is a community problem that needs collective response. No excuses, no more grumblings. Kagay-anons need to address the problem collectively.

Even Mayor Oscar Moreno in an interview with TV Patrol of ABS-CBN is not making excuses and admitted that the recent flood was exacerbated by outdated drainage system, solid waste mismanagement and traffic. He pointed out that while the local government is doing short-term and long-term solutions, the community needs to do its part by doing simple things like not throwing garbage in esteros.

The Jan. 16 flood also underscored the urgency to address the nagging problems of garbage and traffic–indubitably among the biggest challenges to City Hall this new year. The flood is instructive to the newly formed task force to address the garbage problem. The RTA has also been under strict orders to come up with a traffic masterplan.

On drainage, I understand, a drainage masterplan is under study to align and rationalize all drainage related projects.

Flashback: The Jan. 16 flood was similar to the Jan. 3, 9 and 14, 2009 floods. Here are excerpts from an article I wrote that was published in Mindanews on Jan. 19, 2009: “Poring through the data at Pag-asa last Friday, I was dumbfounded to discover that the amount of rain that hit the city in the first 15 days of 2009 is almost 25% of the annual average rainfall of Cagayan de Oro. Based on a 30-year average, the city receives 1,654.3 millimeters of rain every year, with July as the rainiest with 244.1 mm and March the driest with 44.8 mm.

“Records from Pagasa revealed that the rains from January 1-15 totaled 381.7 mm or 23.07% of the total annual rainfall average of the city based on the 30-year average used by the agency. January has an average rainfall of 82.8 mm making the January 1-15 rains 461% above normal or almost 1/4 of the city’s annual rainfall in 1/24th of the year.”

 

E-mail: bency.ellorin@gmail.com

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