Philippines Flood (nature took its course)

Scotland Mountain side
mostly grass land and rock

When I went to Scotland for a month,  O M G!...  I only saw the sun just twice and it is just for  few minutes in my whole month stay. No wonder that this country was called the whisky capital of the world. Well the weather is cold and it is ALWAYS raining, the good thing is they have loads of water. To be honest there in Scotland everyday rains. And yet there are only patches of forest or some woodlands in their hillside as you can see it in a far distance. There are no thickly and dense forest, just like what we saw in a tropical country like ours. And yet there are no history of excessive flooding even in a crowded city area such as Glasgow and Edinburgh...why?


Is it maybe because it is an elevated area, but even so there are no history of excessive flooding in their lowlands such as in Ayrshire. Or maybe because they have a larger waterways such as in Glasgow they have the river Clyde, but then on last  Dec 8 2011 when Scotland was battered by the hurricane BawBag the river Clyde nearly, just nearly burst it banks.

                                                 "Hurricane " hits River Clyde in Scotland.

Look at the trunk of their trees
is it smaller compared to our trees

The answer is that they  respect  the power of nature and they did not take it for granted. They use their common sense. Nobody live or construct a structure on the river banks and waterways which can cause the narrowing of water passage that can cause the river to burst it bank when it rains. We should remember that nothing can stop water on it's course, It will always find its way towards the sea. They also have this system called controlled logging. A logging company was assigned in particular area where they are allowed to cut trees. Areas which is isolated,  far from the cities and towns, and the down stream channel direction of its river is away from the crowded area, so that in cases of flooding nobody might be effected. The Company was also ask to plant three tress in an exchange to a tree they cut. The company championing  this idea is VELVET. a tissue company.

When the tropical storm Sendong hit Mindanao last December 17 2011, it devastated town and cities. The rivers flooded and washed through villages  families lost their love ones and homes.  Soldiers conducting search and rescue operations are finding bodies in all areas, in homes, rivers, offshore, in the street. casualties are everywhere in short it is a total mess. The heavy rain sent water pouring down mountains and into already swollen rivers that quickly engulfed areas mostly in the northern part of Mindanao. Fast rising water poured into homes after 2 a.m., when most people were sleeping.

The death toll from this killer floods in our country has risen to 1500, more than a week after the disaster struck with officials expecting more corpses to be found. Cagayan de Oro and Iligan are bore the brunt of the disaster, suffering most of the fatalities. In Valencia City, just 118km southeast of Cagayan de Oro, about 300 families were forced to take refuge on their rooftops due to the floods and had to be rescued by helicopters. The navy and coast guard ships fished more bodies out of the waters off the southern island of Mindanao. And the stench of death pervaded the region, a sign that many corpses remained unrecovered on land.

More than 376,000 people were displaced by the storm and almost 55,000 are still huddled in crowded makeshift evacuation center.

THESE ARE THE FLOOD AFFECTED AREA and Number of Affected Persons

 In Region X Northern Mindanao: Cagayan de Oro---38,767, Iligan---- 45,821, El Salvador city----3,888, Manticao-----5,820, Valencia city-----3,000, Region XI DAVAO: Monkayo----1,360, Compostela---530, Montevista---90, Hinatuan----8,996, Bislig----3,826, Lingig---1,500, Dipolog City---3,164, Polanco----1,307 NEGROS ORIENTAL: Tanjay City---15,000, Pamplona---2,500, Amlan----750, Sibulan-----3,235, Valencia----825, Bacong-----550, Dumaguete city---10,630. REGION VII: Bohol Valencia---10,000.

Why are these things happened in Mindanao?  Is it a man made disaster or is it the nature took its place? I think the answer is both.

Illigal logger cut
big trees that can stop water

The once spectacular primary forests of the Philippines are now a relic of a bygone era. What little primary forest does remain exists on the island of Palawan, the last sanctuary for the Palawan eagle. Between 1990 and 2005 the Philippines lost a third of its forest cover. While the current deforestation rate is around 2 percent per year, this represents a 20 percent drop from the rate of the 1990s. Widespread logging was responsible for much of the historical forest loss in the Philippines. Despite government bans on timber harvesting following severe flooding in the late 1980s and early 1990s, illegal logging continues today. Illicit wood cut from secondary and primary forests are routinely smuggled to other Asian countries. After temporarily lifting the log export ban in the late 1990s, the government has increasingly tried to crack down on timber smuggling and forest degradation, but with limited success. Additional threats to Philippine forests come from legal and illegal mining operations which also cause pollution  agricultural fires, collection of fuel wood, and rural population expansion.

uncontrolled logging

In recent years, deforestation has been increasingly blamed for soil erosion, river siltation, flooding, and drought; environmental awareness is now rising in the country. Activists are quick to criticize government decisions that adversely affect the country's environment. With less and less forest in the Philippines, locals are increasingly reliant on plantations to meet their timber needs. As a result, plantation cover has fallen 65 percent between 1990 and 2005.

The continuing disappearance of Filipino wild lands are of great to concern to ecologists due to the high levels of endemic species. Of the 1,196 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles in the country, nearly 46 percent are endemic. Among plants, the number is around 40 percent. Only about 5 percent of the Philippines land area is under some form of protection.