Flood Waters

If there ever was a clear, consistent memory I have of my childhood days in Lianga, it would have to be of how predictably rainy and stormy were the months of December and January. I can easily recall many instances when my siblings and I would be huddled together most of the time for days on end in the living room of the family house, shivering from the delicious cold despite having thick blankets wrapped around us while outside the tightly closed window shutters the winds howled madly and the rain poured down in vicious and seemingly never ending torrents.

During those days in the early 1970's and until just a couple of years ago, the primitive gravel roads and the wooden timber bridges that were the norm in this part of the country were extremely vulnerable to harsh weather conditions and floods.  That meant that travelling around the province and the region was not only hazardous but prone to long delays as excessive rainfall turned gravel roads to viscous mud traps and flash floods washed away bridges or caused landslides that would block critical road sections for days.

Going back to school in Cebu after the Christmas holidays at that time was, more often than not, a logistically troublesome and dicey proposition as well as mind-numbing, physically challenging ordeal.  Not only has one have to deal with flooded roads and washed out bridges but also with cancelled airplane flights and, if one really had no choice but to endure it, a wave tossed and stormy night at sea on-board any of the small inter-island ferry ships brave enough to make the sea crossing to the Visayas.


It is ironic that nowadays, even with the advent of modern, concrete highways and bridges, communities within the Lianga area are still not immune from the possibility of being cut off from the rest of the country by flash floods and landslides during periods of heavy rainfall.  But as this pictures (taken just a few days ago in the Barobo area) will show, rampaging waters crossing main roads and even going into houses and public places are still a regular fact of life here as it was decades ago.

Man may be able to force ribbons of concrete and steel through jungles and across mighty rivers but in the face of Mother Nature's occasional outbursts of  raw fury, he remains powerless and impotent like flotsam on storm tossed seas.  The fact that by his arrogance and greed as manifested in his rape of the natural environment, he may have magnified the deadly effects of the natural calamities he has to face on a regular basis merely adds the sense of culpability with which he has to face and submit to the deadly aftermath of nature's rampages.

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