Fear and uncertainty are gripping residents of Provident Village in Marikina City.
They live beside the great Marikina River that often overflows.
In the past, raging, violent waters as thick as lahar from the mountains of Rizal, engulfing Provident Village, have killed at least 15 persons in this community during deadly flash floods rising to over 20 feet.
Two years ago, in July 2023, a big dike was built on top of an old dike along the river.
But in only just a year into its construction, big portions of the road on top of the dike already cracked and collapsed.
The structure was not yet complete, and yet it was already disintegrating. Dike collapse
An engineer, who requested that his name be withheld, gave INQUIRER.net a video taken in August 2024.
As he inspected the dike, he said, ‘We jog here. There are big cracks here on top of the dike. The road collapsed. The concrete pouring. the concrete pouring sank.’
The cracks were stretching to a few kilometers long.
The engineer inspected the project: ‘The road. This means the sheet pile was not compacted,’ he noticed.
Engineer shows kilometers-long cracks on Marikina dike in Provident Village (Video taken in August 2024)
What surprised the villagers was not just the dike’s cemented sections that sank.
It’s what was underneath that shocked them.
Rain that drenched the dike in August last year exposed the weak foundation of the dike.
It was not built on large steel frames.
The dike was standing mainly on mere soil.
Soil as foundation of dike
Resident Dindo Caballero was alarmed by what he witnessed.
He said that because of this structural weakness, the dike might not be able to withstand the deadly floods during strong typhoons.
‘Aside from it looks like it has not been compacted well, it looks like a structure without steel framing,’ he said, while standing on the dike with INQUIRER.net.
‘If you look at the structures like overpasses. of roads that are [solid]. I travel a lot. And I’ve seen constructions a lot. And they have a metal support supporting the structure for a longer service period like 20 years,’ he pointed out.
‘This type of construction is evidently not lasting for even a year. with a budget of say 20 years.’