IT floods often these days—floods damaging property, flash floods causing injury and death.

But after the storms Pepeng and Ondoy and Ramil, at last we’re trying to move in anticipation of the next storms. And it’s better if we know why storms and flooding are part of our life, especially in this part of the world.

Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy

And perhaps it’s probably good to look into ourselves as we live in a world like what we have.

We know, there’s a “flood part” in the year the world over—in 1999 hundreds died in floods in East Asia in August; in North America in September; in Vietnam and in Mexico in October; in Venezuela after weeks of rain in December, killing “tens of thousands of people, wiping out whole towns,” said a news report.

In other words, flooding has always been part of the seasons in our planet, something natural, with nature not intending to bring on a disaster. Anything that happens all the time, like the seasons, is part of the natural landscape, as geologists put it. Even as we have tampered with the natural topography, so to say, and caused disastrous events in our life, there will be a time when we will get used to it, disaster after disaster. Flooding has become frequent and the earth, used and wounded by urbanization and deforestation, is not quite able to hold water properly.

It’s interesting to have a second look at the way we live with nature and find out it’s not just the government at fault—that we have quite a part in it and that we must do something now.

That is to say, humans must adjust, like not coming in the way of the water flow and, instead, “living clean.” Don’t throw your garbage there, don’t clog the drainage system, don’t be in the way of the natural seasonal water’s flow.

Today in many crowded metropolitan areas, it takes less rain to flood. Flooding caused by overflowing rivers and coastal floodlands are happening too often in our life these days.

Then water is trapped and drainage systems don’t work from too much clogging of nature’s waterways.

Environmentalists say floods are acts of God, they were not meant to hurt man. Floods moving into land take in new sediment and clean up the soil at the bottom; that is, renew it, sort of. Before the urban lifestyle, floods were doing what they were meant to do--carry away dead vegetation, regularly replenishing the waters, allowing the man to have clean water, or his travel in rivers stay smooth and unhampered.

But in these days, there are people living by the coasts and at the riverside, people with bad habits of clogging the water, trapping it longer than it’s own time to move.

There are lessons to learn, says a wise one.

Let the flood pass, don’t be in its way.

The point is, prepare for that incoming storm and the floods. Plan your moves.

Move far from streams, drainage channels and other low-lying areas.

Before you move away from a home that’s in the way of floods, secure it, unplug electrical appliances.

You can use a “disaster pack” to be prepared by each one of you living by rivers and the sea coasts. In that pack, keep food and bottled water enough for three days. When it’s time to run (or wade), run, with your disaster pack.

Leave the place when it’s time to do so. Know where to go, don’t wait for the deluge to sweep you away. Don’t walk where the water up to six inches is moving, it can make you fall; choose only the path where there’s “standing water.”
And don’t ever drive.

Then when the emergencies are over and you have time to think, decide to transfer to safer subdivisions, or resettlements, or go home to the province and start a new life.

(ecuizon@gmail.com)