The latest news bulletin reports that super-typhoon Juan has changed course and its new direction now puts Manila within range. Earlier yesterday, CNN plotted the path of the weather disturbance and its trajectory will hit the Cordillera Region. If liberal estimates are to be followed, Signal Number 2 could be raised in the capital region by six in the morning. If we are spared from its direct onslaught, we can expect some heavy rains as the outer bands of the storm skirts the metropolis.
Every time a typhoon passes, we are reminded of the deluge that swamped the city last year. Some of us have never moved past the horror that our collective memory is still haunted by the floods when a heavy downpour occurs. I live in a place considered to be the catch basin of Manila. I maybe fortunate that my home stands far away from fluvial arteries, but the inconvenience to a way of life when the streets become submerged is the same.
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| like when we will ever learn? |
We speak of the deluge like it had never left our midst. Ondoy has been immortalized in our words and personal legends - telling people of our exact whereabouts while houses and streets disappear under the torrent.
But one thing we have forgotten - and perhaps - have even learned to deny is that the floods have been our doing. My hope is that it would not take another tragedy - like Juan could bring - for us to learn that the trash we throw away
is the trash that comes tumbling back to our doors.