It was already pouring when my wife and I left the house Monday morning, which was a little puzzling because the weather reports we had been hearing warned of the heavier rains coming Tuesday through Wednesday.
We had barely been on the road when Buendia was already gutter-deep. By the time we reached Roxas Boulevard, traffic heading toward Diokno Boulevard was clogged and the water ahead was much deeper. There was flooding on both sides of the road in front of the World Trade Center. We had been driving in heavy rain for only a matter of minutes.
I remember drainage and declogging work being done along many of these same roads only months ago-along Buendia, near Taft, along Taft itself and the surrounding streets near La Salle, Benilde and St. Scholastica’s where we live. There was also work along the road leading toward Diokno, near the Manila Film Center. I remember the inconvenience because I pass through these areas regularly when I drive my wife to work.
I am not an engineer and I won’t pretend to know whether those particular drainage works failed, whether the drains were overwhelmed by the volume of rain, or whether downstream waterways were already too high to take more water. But motorists are entitled to ask why streets where drainage and declogging work had been carried out only months earlier could flood within minutes.
I grew up in Manila. Flooding is hardly new to me. Even when we were children, streets flooded after heavy rain. But my memory is that it usually took hours of relentless rain, even days, before so many roads became impassable.
Metro Manila has changed enormously since then. There are millions more people, buildings and vehicles and considerably less open ground where rainwater can be absorbed. Much of the metropolis is now concrete. Water runs quickly into drainage systems and waterways already struggling to cope.
And yes, there is garbage. The MMDA says it removes 30 to 35 tons of garbage from waterways and pumping stations every day. People who throw garbage into canals and esteros deserve no defense.
But government cannot use public indiscipline as the explanation for everything. The Ecological Solid Waste Management Act has been around since 2000, yet in 2025 the country had only 20,458 materials recovery facilities despite having more than 42,000 barangays. More than a quarter-century after the law was passed, many LGUs still have not fully complied with it.
What made Monday particularly infuriating was that many people had gone to work and school expecting the really bad weather later in the week.
PAGASA eventually raised a Red Rainfall Warning. NDRRMC emergency alerts eventually started sounding on cellphones.
By then, many of us didn’t need our phones to tell us there was a problem. We were already looking at it. People were already at work. Teachers and students were already in school. Motorists were already stuck. Roads were already flooded. Many people didn’t need PAGASA and the NDRRMC to tell them conditions were dangerous.
An emergency alert is an excellent system when it gives people time to act. But when your cellphone starts screaming after the water is already rising around you, it isn’t warning you about what might happen. It is telling you what you already know.
Weather forecasting isn’t an exact science. Conditions can change quickly and rainfall can vary tremendously from one part of Metro Manila to another. But a warning is supposed to give people enough time to avoid danger. If it arrives after they’re already stranded, it has become a situation report.
Government decisions followed much the same pattern.
Malacañang eventually ordered government offices to shift to alternative work arrangements and schools to alternative learning modes. The Senate shortened its workday. Again, people were already there.
You tell people to go to work and school in the morning, wait until the roads are flooded, then tell them to go home. How exactly are they supposed to do that?
One friend told me he was stuck on the Skyway. Another had a daughter teaching in Manila who was allowed to leave early, except by then flooding around Pablo Ocampo and nearby streets was already bad.
That is the problem with late suspensions. You have already put people where you later decide they should not be, then release thousands of workers and students into roads already struggling with rain, floods and traffic.
Government will occasionally get the decision wrong. Classes will be suspended and the sun will come out. People will complain. Social media will have its fun.
So what?
I’d rather explain why classes were unnecessarily suspended than explain why children, teachers and workers were stranded in floodwaters.
This is hardly a lesson we should still be learning.
Ondoy was in 2009. After the devastation, government developed a comprehensive Metro Manila Flood Management Master Plan, approved in 2012. Among the things it called for were improved urban drainage, modernized pumping stations and, interestingly enough, better flood forecasting and early-warning systems.
That was 14 years ago.
Since then we have had more floods, more studies, more projects and billions upon billions of pesos spent on flood control. Last year’s scandal showed that some politicians and contractors apparently found another use for part of that money.
So when officials tell us that Monday’s rainfall approached the intensity of Ondoy, fine. Perhaps it did.
But Ondoy cannot still be our excuse 17 years later.
If anything, Ondoy should have been the reason we were better prepared for Monday.
What did we do after Ondoy? What lessons did we learn? Why are drainage systems still being overwhelmed so quickly? Why are we still sending students and workers out in the morning and warning them in the afternoon that conditions have become dangerous?
Nobody expects government to prevent every flood. Metro Manila’s geography makes that impossible. There will be rainfall that overwhelms even a properly functioning drainage system.
But the rain comes every year. That isn’t news.
The past two weeks should have made government particularly cautious. Millions of people have already been affected by prolonged monsoon rains. Lives have been lost. Damage has run into billions. DepEd’s latest count showed 8,243 damaged classrooms, including 1,639 destroyed.
And there wasn’t even a typhoon directly over Metro Manila.
After Ondoy, after the master plans, after all the flood-control projects and after all the money spent, we should at least have learned how to warn people before they get into trouble.
Decide whether classes and work should be suspended while people are still at home, not after they are stranded and trying to get back there.