By Phoebe Gwynn Francisco
In the past few weeks, Mandaue City, particularly A.S. Fortuna St., has turned into a flood zone even before an hour of heavy rain passes. Roads stretching from Eskina Gloria to Rolling Hills become completely impassable. As a commuter who relies on jeepneys to get from the workplace to the highway, getting home has become an agonizing daily challenge.
You have to wonder: what actually happened to get us here?
It all boils down to poor urban planning and development. Mandaue’s flood risk is not a mystery, but a long history of neglected warnings. Master plans from 1983, 1995 and 2005 clearly identified these flood-prone areas, yet none of their key recommendations were ever acted upon. Guidelines to regulate storm runoff were never implemented, worsening the flooding year after year.
Academic research directly backs up what we experience on the ground. A 2026 flood risk assessment by Villarosa and Lozano highlights how the hazard, exposure and vulnerability of Metro Cebu’s highly urbanized cities leave Mandaue particularly exposed to recurring flood disruptions. Meanwhile, 2022 research on flood defense in Mandaue by Bañados and Quijano demonstrates how the severe lack of rainwater retention areas directly drives extreme surface runoff, emphasizing that engineered retention sites and open green spaces are desperately needed to divert water away from our streets.
Instead, rapid urbanization and industrial growth have covered the city in concrete, leaving Mandaue with an alarming lack of green space. With only about 3.58 percent of the city remaining as open land, rainwater cannot naturally infiltrate the ground, forcing massive surface runoff straight into our commute.
Exacerbating this is an aging, inadequate drainage infrastructure and the state of the Butuanon River, which serves as the city’s primary waterway and main flood basin. Because Mandaue sits downstream, the Butuanon River must absorb regional runoff from neighboring, heavily populated cities. But rapid development, bank encroachment, outdated drainage systems and poor garbage management have choked the river’s capacity. During events like typhoon Tino, the river overflows and the city drowns.
Underneath all of this lies clear governance and policy failure. Mandaue focused so heavily on rapid urbanization that it neglected zoning regulations, green spaces, and sustainable urban mobility. Of course, we as citizens share the fault too.
Unmanaged garbage continually clogs these systems, turning bad situations into extreme disasters.
Looking at how fast water rises on A.S. Fortuna, one cannot help but fear what the future looks like if these practices persist.
As commuters, we hope the government and the community finally take this flooding problem seriously. Because at the end of the day, it is us, the ordinary working people waiting for a ride in the rain, whose lives are constantly disrupted.
