The day after “Tino,” we bumped into Ronnie and Angie Mangubat at the Abaca in Citadines. They were there for the same reason that we were: lunch. Abaca was the only open restaurant in the Baseline compound.
Ronnie’s parents have a house in Guadalupe Heights Subdivision. Only his widowed mother lives there now. The day before the typhoon, they evacuated her to her lawyer-daughter’s residence.
It was a precautionary measure dictated by experience. Guadalupe Heights was flood-prone.
Ronnie and Angie chose to ride the storm in a hotel, anticipating the inevitable power interruption that would follow a severe weather disturbance. From his hotel room, he monitored the situation at the ancestral home through his mother’s helpers.
Little by little, he learned that floodwaters had breached the house’s concrete barrier, engulfing the sala and settling in his mother’s room.
“That was the worst flooding that ever happened in the village and I have seen many,” Ronnie would later recall. The two water pumps installed by homeowners in the village could not stem the tide.
When the mud that the waters dumped into the village dried, the streets looked like they were painted white.
They contacted Monterrazas. The water could have only come from the mountain that was levelled down and converted into an upscale subdivision, they thought.
Monterrazas sent culverts. Still feeling aggrieved, they complained to the Guadalupe barangay captain. The latest word was that the subdivision’s lawyers had scheduled a meeting with the Guadalupe Heights homeowners led by their president, former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) regional manager William Medici.
I am not aware of anyone claiming that the waters that rampaged through the Mananga and Cotcot rivers, in the process claiming several lives, came from Monterrazas or were caused by it.
But to use that argument to deflect blame for the runaway waters that overwhelmed the receiving capacity of surrounding areas like the Guadalupe Heights is unfair.
Monterrazas’ neighbors were lucky that no one died from the flood. But how long will that luck hold?