Hi, it's me again, Budz!
It's been almost three months since we went back to Marikina City. Sooorry it took me this long to give you an update ✌️✌️ I found myself going back and replaying the recordings of our conversations with the people there. Here's what's clear: everyone was affected, yes, but each one has a different story. The floods are getting lower, people are getting used to it, but the fear is still there.
Whenever I got the chance, I always asked them: what does the word "resilient" mean to you? Almost everyone had an answer, as if it had been stamped into them that resilient means rising back up, that this is the definition of being resilient. As someone chronically online, I always see it in the news or in posts: Filipinos are resilient when it comes to disasters, they bounce back easily, and they even manage to laugh and joke around even when they are walking in the waist-deep flood (we actually talked to a few people with stories like this). They say they're used to it. But even if "bouncing back" is stamped on everyone, can we really say it applies to all? All at the same time?
And above all, why does "resilient" to them seem to be tied only to "bouncing back" ?
Damage and Recovery
The UNDRR defines resilience as the ability of a system to recover or adapt from the damage of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner. Let's break that down. The "system" here could be a household, or the city as a whole, anything that was affected. The definition does mention "timely recovery," but the word "damage" is in there, too.
Because it wouldn't be true: you wouldn't need to recover if there was no damage in the first place. And I think that's the missing part from what I keep hearing. To put it: no flood simply means no damage, so no need to recover. But it's pretty hard for Marikina City to be flood-free, being a valley sitting at the foot of the mountains (the people there are well aware of this, too). Maybe that's why "bouncing back" is the first thing on their mind when they talk about being resilient, because they are always flooded, and they always need to recover.
People in Marikina City still have a clear memory of their experiences during the past flood events: how high was the flood level? Where did they get/buy their food/necessity after the flood? Who helped them? Etc.
In my study, I want to measure resilience at the household level. Quantitatively, I proved that recovery really does vary, as damage also varies. Two households may had same floodwater level, yet some suffered much worse damage than the other. Some had nearly the same damage, but one recovered right away. The reason? The flood alone can't explain it, and the condition of the affected household matters just as much. Every household's situation is different, and this is exactly why resilience is not equal — it's a spectrum. As they say, there's no choice but to "bounce back," life goes on, but that "bouncing back" still doesn't happen at the same pace for everyone.
The Household and the City
After Typhoon Ondoy in 2009, quite a lot of flood control investments were made in Marikina City as part of its resilience strategy to "minimize damage", and it's true, flood levels have been going down. There's also been a shift in disaster management, from being "reactive" back then to "preventive" now. There's a clearer post-flood operation strategy: which parts of the City need fixing, assistance for evacuees, and so on. You could say the City is also getting faster at recovering or returning to normal operations. But if you zoom in to the household level, the extent of damage and the speed of recovery still really vary. Perhaps that's why there is a separation of the household and city-scale in the system definition because their resilience levels really are different. The City may have already recovered in terms of its operation, but still, within the City, there are struggling households.
One more thing I noticed: the help the City can give is really limited, which is why they're very open to assistance from NGOs or private entities. Among the community leaders we talked to, the phrase "kanya-kanya" (every household for itself) kept coming up whenever I asked what help they could give for repairing individually damaged houses. Some assistance does get given, but only to those who really, really need it most, and they simply can't cover everyone. As some of the community leaders themselves told us, they were flooded too; they had their own damage to deal with, so it really was every household for itself, and everyone understood that.
This is where it hit me: maybe the measure of being resilient isn't really only during the disaster event itself, but a product of the household's condition, shaped by the available opportunities to them to rise from their own socio-economic struggle. It's multidimensional, which is exactly why it's so hard to quantify.
Imagine this street in Nangka is flooded up to 2nd floor of these houses during Ondoy (2009).
Now and the Future
In the span of 15 years (between Typhoon Ondoy in 2009 and Karina in 2024), so much has changed in how Marikina City handles floods. And it changed fast. I don't know if the coming years will move at the same speed.
I'm writing this blog while calibrating a flood model, still have so many questions. Yes, we can model flood extent (we have data for validating this), flood damage and recovery (possible, but there's so much to consider), but when it comes to the future, "what changes could actually happen?" it's really thought-provoking. The City has plans, but even to them, they know the future is uncertain, and that's what we need to prepare for.
They, themselves, are aware of the uncertainties in the future.
Anyway, after our fieldwork, I got a few days back in my home province, Catanduanes (another typhoon-prone part of the Philippines). Here's a video of the sunrise, looking out over the Pacific Ocean.
No comments:
Post a Comment