Knee-deep in Caloocan’s floodwaters, Dion Angelo dela Rosa gambled his health and safety in search of his missing father, who never came home on July 22, 2025. 

He found him three days later, detained in a police substation for the alleged crime of illegal gambling for playing kara y krus, unable to reach his family. By then, the odds were not in Dion’s favor. 

Days of wading through polluted waters left Dion with leptospirosis, an infection that quickly worsened and led to his death just two days after their reunion. 

It was a tragic wager Dion should not have been forced to make — one that revealed how the negligence of those meant to protect us can be as lethal as the floods themselves.

Dion’s story is not an isolated tragedy but part of a larger pattern: a country where every storm reveals the same failures, and where the same familiar culprits emerge dry.

The usual suspects— climate change and floods

In the last week of August, Quezon City and Marikina were overwhelmed by floods unlike anything residents had ever seen. Images of Katipunan Avenue submerged like a swimming pool circulated widely on social media. 

According to Dr. Mahar Lagmay, Quezon City was hit by hyperlocalized rainfall of 121 mm/hour, far heavier than the 90 mm/hour recorded during Typhoon Ondoy in 2009.

Just a month earlier, the successive arrival of Tropical Storms Crising, Dante, and Emong had paralyzed communities nationwide. Crising alone inundated 43 areas across 14 regions, despite billions supposedly poured into flood control projects.

With a warming climate, we should expect wetter and stronger typhoons, carrying more rain into already burdened flood channels. Flooding is no longer a rare occurrence, but a hand that every storm will continue to deal with. 

The fallguy— unmanaged trash and undisciplined Filipinos

Like clockwork, every time heavy rains inundate Metro Manila, the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is quick to point its fingers at the lack of discipline of Filipinos. The agency claims that irresponsible waste disposal clogs waterways, rendering its 71 pumping stations less effective.

Yes, garbage contributes to the problem, but the government’s fixation on “Filipino indiscipline” reduces a systemic crisis into a morality tale.

The MMDA itself admits that Metro Manila’s “drainage systems are antiquated, more than 50 years old.” They are narrow and incapable of carrying today’s volumes of floodwater. Urbanization has outpaced infrastructure upgrades, and climate change has made rainfall more extreme. 

Yet despite decades of billion-peso budgets supposedly earmarked for flood control, Metro Manila floods with the same intensity year after year.

The perfect heist— flood control projects

President Marcos himself revealed that of the Department of Public Works and Highways’ ₱545.64 billion flood control projects from July 2022 to May 2025, approximately ₱100 billion was allocated to just 15 contractors. 

Such a concentration of contracts should raise alarms about patronage politics and potential corruption. Where did all that money go, and why are the results so underwhelming?

The rot runs deeper than favoritism. Finance Secretary Ralph Recto himself admitted that the economic losses from the flood control projects’ corruption amount to ₱119 billion. Money that should be building protection has been siphoned off into private pockets.

Now, these ghost projects have become a primetime spectacle, dissected nightly on television in the form of a Senate probe.

The Senate’s probe has zeroed in on the contractors. Sarah Discaya, dubbed the ‘flood control queen’, admitted under questioning that the scheme dates back to 2016 — a revelation that awkwardly ties it to the Duterte presidency and undercuts Senator Bato dela Rosa, who led the grilling. Discaya further confessed to bidding on the same projects using multiple companies, a clear violation of procurement rules.

Other contractors have been just as brazen. Several admitted their payouts doubled as campaign contributions to the very lawmakers investigating the corruption. 

Senator Joel Villanueva objected when the hearings raised his name in connection with Bulacan’s former 1st district engineer, an alleged central figure in the province’s anomalous flood projects. 

Meanwhile, a top flood-control contractor disclosed donating to the campaign expenses of Senate President Chiz Escudero. Escudero has since confirmed the contribution but denied any hand in the procurement process.

On social media, the contractors’ and lawmakers’ families flaunt their winnings — designer bags, European getaways, luxury cars — images that have fueled public outrage over how the Filipino’s money may have been wagered away to bankroll extravagance. The hearings dredged up a casino of corruption where the odds are stacked, the rules are bent, and the House always wins.

But despite the overwhelming evidence, will there be true accountability, or will this scandal, like the floodwaters, eventually recede without resolution?

The false messiah— Ramon Ang

Swooping in as though to play savior, San Miguel Corporation president and tycoon Ramon Ang offered to solve Metro Manila’s persistent flooding problem “at no cost to the [Filipino] people, at no cost to the government.”

But Ang is simply the other side of the kara y krus coin. He should first reckon with the mangrove graves left in his airport’s backyard before offering salvation.

The New Manila International Airport has been described as an ecological disaster. It has obliterated mangrove forests in Hagonoy and Malolos that once served as natural flood barriers, while displacing fishing communities and eroding local livelihoods. 

According to Global Witness, an international watchdog on environmental abuses, NMIA is vulnerable to natural disasters, which risks it being non-operational within just 30 years. The bitter irony is that it is the clearing of mangroves and the reckless reclamation of this flood-prone coast that have made the airport’s foundations so fragile.

And the airport is not the only project worsening the floods. The ongoing construction of the Metro Rail Transit-Line 7 (MRT-7), another Ang-led venture, has already been blamed by the MMDA for worsening the flooding in Commonwealth Avenue during Tropical Storm Crising. 

A single misplaced post of the elevated track obstructed existing drainage systems, turning the thoroughfare into a waterway.

In other words, the very projects Ang hails as progress are the same bets that stacked the deck against ordinary Filipinos.

The silent killer— state neglect

Whether it is government officials pocketing billions through padded flood control contracts or Ramon Ang portraying himself as a benevolent savior, both are two sides of the same rotten coin. 

In truth, neither is motivated by public welfare, only by profit. The alleged corruption in DPWH bleeds taxpayers dry while delivering little protection, just as Ang’s grand projects like the New Manila International Airport carve up rivers, wetlands, and mangroves – natural defenses we cannot afford to lose in the climate crisis of rising seas and intensifying storms.

Filipinos are left submerged, while those at the top cash in on disaster. The tragedy is not only that money is stolen, but that what is stolen is our very chance to adapt to a changing climate.

As long as systemic corruption and capitalistic greed continue to flood this country, we will remain chest-deep in water every rainy season. Climate change may bring stronger typhoons and heavier rains, but it is corruption that ensures we are defenseless when they arrive. For every Dion lost to the waters, we are reminded that what drowns us is not rain, but neglect. 

Every storm deals its cards and it is always the poor who get the losing hand.

***