Floods and the hidden cost of corruption and mismanagement

Knee-deep in Caloocan’s floodwaters, Dion Angelo dela Rosa risked his health and safety in search of his missing father, who had not come home on July 22, 2025.

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He found him three days later, detained in a police substation for the alleged crime of illegal gambling, for playing kara y krus, unable to contact his family. By then, the odds were not in Dion’s favor.

Days of wading through polluted waters left Dion with leptospirosis, an infection that quickly worsened and claimed his life just two days after their reunion.

It was a tragic wager Dion should not have been forced to make — one that revealed how the negligence of those meant to protect us can be as lethal as the floods themselves.

Dion’s story is not an isolated tragedy, but part of a larger pattern: a country where every storm reveals the same failures, and where the same familiar culprits emerge dry.

The usual suspects — climate change and floods

In the last week of August, Quezon City and Marikina were overwhelmed by floods unlike anything residents had ever seen. Images of Katipunan Avenue, submerged like a swimming pool, circulated widely on social media.

According to Dr. Mahar Lagmay, Quezon City experienced hyperlocalized rainfall of 121 mm per hour, far heavier than the 90 mm per hour recorded during Typhoon Ondoy in 2009.

Just a month earlier, the successive arrival of Tropical Storms Crising, Dante, and Emong had paralyzed communities nationwide. Crising alone inundated 43 areas across 14 regions, despite billions supposedly poured into flood control projects.

With a warming climate, we should expect wetter and stronger typhoons, carrying more rain into already burdened flood channels. Flooding is no longer a rare occurrence, but a hand that every storm continues to deal with.

The fallguy — unmanaged trash and undisciplined Filipinos