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Topics Water Country Water Actions Philippines: Flood-Ready Marikina City
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Country Water Action: Philippines
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In Marikina, Philippines, where a big urban river and several creeks running through residential areas swell during heavy rains, people could not help but be accustomed to floods.
“Floods were a cause for celebration when I was a kid,” Jerry Macalino, 29, a father and a school bus driver, recalled. “During typhoons, we would await news on the suspension of classes so we could play in the rain on the flooded streets.”
In the 1980s, Marikina was a small bustling municipality struggling against urbanization, a very polluted river, and clogged drainage system, with little flood management know-how.
“Our street would remain flooded for days after the rains. We built rafts from scrap wood and used them to help people cross the waist-deep water, for a peso,” Jerry said.
Today, the children of Marikina have very little reason to celebrate a typhoon’s visit to their area. Rainwater gets flushed straight away into the streets’ storm drains. “Now, there’s no point in making rafts. But, at least my two kids have no more excuse to skip school like I did,” Jerry smiled sheepishly.
Now, Marikina is ready as can be for any flood that comes its way. Besides a much improved drainage system, the city boasts of a clean, flowing river, a host of flood preparedness and management measures, and communities that care.
Flood is a fact of life in Marikina, an urban community sitting in the heart of a valley on the eastern side of Metro Manila. During the rainy season, runoffs from the nearby Sierra Madre Mountains simmer a bit in Marikina’s creeks and streets before being drained by the Marikina River into the Pasig River, which empties into Manila Bay.
In the 1970s, however, the Marikina River turned black and putrid, and oozed instead of flowed. It became the official dumping ground of Marikina’s solid and liquid waste. The creeks suffered in similar ways.
Informal settlements and factories lining the riverbanks that unceremoniously discharged waste into the river were to blame. During heavy rains, filthy river overflows reach about 2,000 households and they had to be evacuated every time. Meanwhile, the mountain runoffs mix with urban trash, taxing the drainage system for days. Mud and sludge covered roads long after floodwaters had subsided. But the coup de grâce was the 1992 flood that almost called for building an ark.
“I remember the big flood in 1992,” Alma Hizon, 67, then a laundrywoman and now a grandmother of two, recalled. “We were living in Barangay (town) Calumpang that time in a small shanty just a few feet away from the riverbanks. My daughter and I had just enough time to pack our clothes before the river swallowed our house,” she narrated.
The flood covered almost 28% of the entire municipality, affecting 10,000 households, including Alma’s. It became the wake-up call for the local government to address the flooding problem and prepare for disasters and emergencies.
Fortunately, 1992 was also an election year, and Marikina elected a new mayor—Bayani Fernando, now Chair of the Metro Manila Development Authority—who worked to make Marikina livable.
Wasting no time, Mayor Fernando initiated the “Save the Marikina River” project—a logical move since the river serves as the valley’s biggest drain, and unclogging it means continuous flow of water and less flooding. And as an engineer, Mayor Fernando knew he had to re-engineer the failing drainage infrastructure.
A massive drainage improvement project ensued, led by the local Engineering department, with Mayor Fernando at its helm. The networks of canals, creeks, and other waterways were unclogged and connected to drain straight into the river. Roads were paved to improve storm drains and river dredging became more regular.
In 1994, a new law declared “no-build zones” along both sides of the river. All factories on the riverbanks were removed, or they were forced to set up their own waste and wastewater management facilities. Affected households, totaling 10,000, were relocated; among them were Alma and her daughter, who now live in one of the resettlement projects in Barangay Malanday, which is still by the river, but on higher and safer grounds.
“We’re more contented here and it’s very rare that we need to evacuate,” Alma said. “We have electricity and water. Garbage is collected every week. And we pay the local government just a small amount monthly for the mortgage of our new house,” she added.
With the major sources of pollution out of the way, river clean up was a breeze. The riverbanks were transformed into sports and recreational areas, with jogging and biking lanes, a skating rink, and pockets of children’s playgrounds. More importantly, incorporated in these improvements were simple instruments that measure the river’s water level.
In 1996, Marikina became a city. In 2001, Bayani Fernando’s wife, Maria Lourdes Fernando succeeded him as city mayor and continued the vision of making Marikina a model, flood-ready, and livable city in Asia.
Under Mayor Maria Lourdes Fernando, the Marikina City Disaster Coordinating Council (MCDCC), which was revived during her husband’s term, was given a more proactive mandate. Chaired by the mayor herself, the MCDCC now oversees pre- and post-disaster situations and needs of Marikina’s citizens and leads the city’s operations during typhoons, floods, and other disasters. It has a tried and tested Disaster Preparedness Program that coordinates efforts of 10 city government offices:
Sirens have also been installed near the river to sound the alarm for increased water level. A 30-second alarm means water has reached the critical level of 15 meters, and puts the MCDCC on alert status. A 2-minute alarm means that the water level continues to rise and evacuation of households in low-lying areas should begin. At this point, MCDCC member departments begin simultaneous work, coordinated by the Rescue 161 team. Incidentally, “161” is also the city’s emergency phone line, similar in function to 911 in the US.
Recently, the city has also published and distributed a “Disaster Management Handbook” to citizens as part of a disaster preparedness campaign. The handbook aims to educate residents about what to do before, during, and after calamities, such as fires, earthquakes, and floods. It also features the MCDCC Disaster Preparedness Plan. The city also has its own narrowcast radio station, DZBF-1674 MHz, which broadcasts emergency alerts and updates.
While the MCDCC takes charge of city-wide disaster emergencies, each of Marikina’s 16 towns has its own Barangay Disaster Coordinating Council that not only addresses disaster situations at the town level, but also does flood preparedness work. This includes the annual dredging of the town’s canals and drainage system prior to the rainy season. Each barangay also allots a small “calamity fund” from its annual budget for purchasing relief goods.
Niña Cruz-Sta. Ana, town secretary of Barangay Sta. Elena, disclosed her own Barangay’s initiatives. “Our Barangay Disaster Coordinating Council organized a Barangay Emergency Response Team,” she proudly said. “It is a volunteer group trained in rescue operations and first aid. The members were trained by the Red Cross, and one of their primary tasks is to assist during evacuation proceedings.”
The problem is, the response team does not have any hands-on experience yet—there has not been any major flood in their Barangay and in Marikina City in years.
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