The stories the typhoon debris tell

When the skies finally calm and the floodwaters recede, what remains is far more than wet houses and broken trees: The debris that floats tell a deeper story.

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Two recent storms — first Typhoon Tino (international name Kalmaegi) and then Super Typhoon Uwan (international name Fung-wong) — did not simply test our emergency-response systems. They exposed the errors in our lifestyles and how we live with nature.

Typhoon Tino battered the Visayas region. Tino had maximum sustained winds of 150 kph near the center and gustiness of up to 205 kph when it made its initial landfall.

Super Typhoon Uwan made landfall in Northeastern Luzon with sustained winds of up to 185 km/h, and gusts reaching 230 km/h.

These are formidable figures. But the damage and the flood-debris are what really show how deep the vulnerabilities go.

Every time a typhoon or monsoon rain event hits, the floodwaters carry more than water: they carry the outcome of our land use choices, our ignored drain systems, our buried rivers and neglected slopes.

I recall from my reporter days in the early 1990s in Negros Occidental: a log-pond in the mountains was unleashed after heavy rains. Large logs — one to two feet in diameter — rolled down the hillside, destroyed crops and houses, and landed on a mountain road, blocking traffic and undermining roadsides. The natural slope had been destabilized; the logs became the floodwater’s freight.