Stop blaming God. Blame stupid officials and greedy real state developers for the flood damage caused by tropical storm Ondoy. We came to this conclusion after listening on Thursday to the ABS-CBN ANC’s interview with crusading environmentalist and leading Filipino architect and urban-planning expert Felino Palafox Jr.

Mr. Palafox knows whereof he speaks. And we believe him, as should government officials (if they care for the welfare of our people), when he says the government and private developers should and can be held liable for the damage sustained by their houses, buildings and vehicles.

From what Mr. Palafox said on ANC, and after some cursory research, we see that the insurance companies’ small-print sentences excluding “acts of God” and “force majeure” from the coverage of insurance policies should not hold water (that serendipitously found pun intended).

But not only Ondoy’s floods. Damage caused by all the Metro Manila floods through the years—in areas that Mr. Palafox and other experts decades before him have identified as places that should never have been developed into residential and commercial estates—should be subject to insurance compensation.
And the government as well as the real-estate developers who built and marketed these estates and locations should be made to pay. They are liable—for ignoring expert opinion and actual regulatory issuances.

Mr. Palafox wants the government agencies held jointly liable with property developers for practicing bad urban planning when they allowed residential and commercial structures to be built in flood threatened areas.

Palafox said a 1977 World Bank-funded study identified Marikina Valley, the western shores of Laguna de
Bay, and the Manila Bay coastal area as those where disaster preparedness should be done. There development should be restricted and proceed only when certain protective measures have been taken.
That is because these locations are threatened with disastrous flooding, earthquakes and possible changes in topography.

The Metroplan blueprint

He said there is a blueprint called the Metroplan—or the Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and
Development Planning Project—which was completed by Freeman Fox and Associates, a Hong Kong-based urban planning consultancy firm. Metroplan has been the guide used by urban planners and government agencies when making development decisions.

He said in the ANC interview: “You see the irony here. National government agencies are aware that there is a flooding level of so many meters, then another national government agency would approve subdivision plans for only nine-meter high houses. There are about 32 signatures to obtain just to do a development project. It’s like an obstacle course.”

He said that after a terribly destructive typhoon in 1970, the experts who were mapping Metro Manila for flood-prone areas, recommended the construction of the Manggahan Floodway, which was to keep floodwaters from inundating Metro Manila by diverting the flow to Laguna de Bay. Apart from the
Manggahan Floodway, “there was supposed to be a Parañaque spillway to flush out the excess water to
Laguna de Bay and the South China Sea . . . ” But these parts of the Metroplan recommendations were never done.

One immediately guessed before Mr. Palafox uttered the words. Corruption, lack of planning or planning errors on the part of government were involved in causing some of Metroplan’s expert recommendations to be ignored. We would have said incompetence and ignorance compounded by cupidity resulted in gated subdivisions and commercial buildings being built in the most dangerous areas in Metro Manila.

The Marikina experience

Mr. Palafox also said Metroplan recommends the monitoring of the Marikina Riverbank so that the water would not be allowed to reach 90 meters. There is also a recommendation not to allow any buildings nine meters from the riverbank.

He is now engaged in development projects in Marikina City, working with Mayor Marides Fernando. The structures built in Marikina should all be above 17 meters or higher than the city’s maximum flood level.
That is why, Mr. Palafox said, SM Marikina, which he helped design, has stilts and the lower levels of the mall are used solely for parking while all the shopping floors are on the higher levels.

He said that “instead of nine-meter high buildings, in Marikina, you go upward and build a boulevard with dikes. All subdivisions should go medium-rise or high-rise and there should no longer be individual houses.
Buildings should be mixed use. You live upstairs, you work in the middle and you shop downstairs, just like Paris.” Which is also what they have in Hong Kong and Singapore, although they are not doing this to combat the problem of flooding.

Manila as another Paris

Mr. Palafox said that in 1905, the American colonial government’s architect, Daniel Burnham, thought of developing Manila beside the River Pasig like Paris the city beside the River Seine. Burnham had envisioned the esteros of Manila becoming like the canals of Venice. “We were all right until the 1940s when the Americans left and then we adopted wrong models of urban planning,” Mr. Palafox said.

National and local officials should take these expert opinions of Mr. Palafox seriously. They should make the
National Capital Region safe from floods. And safe, too, from earthquakes and tsunamis that we Filipinos should expect as a result of climate change.

We must, for heavens sake, end corruption. It causes loss of life. We must, as the experts advise us, use technology.