“For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.” — Genesis 6:17
THE DISASTERS IN the past week have exposed a singular problem in government—corruption.
In Calumpit, Bulacan, where dozens of flood-control projects worth over P2 billion were implemented, the entire village went underwater and the local government was forced to declare a state of calamity, with more than 150,000 residents affected. Days earlier, public works secretary Vivencio ‘Vince’ Dizon stood on a stretch of EDSA that had just been repaved as part of the government’s ₱6-billion rehabilitation project, only to find it already cratered with potholes after a few days of rain.
Dizon’s reaction—caught on video and widely reported—was unfiltered fury.
Two infrastructures failed. Two supposedly ‘completed’ projects failing what is expected from them. These remind us that when disaster strikes, it doesn’t just flood streets or crack pavement— it exposes exactly where public funds went, and where it didn’t.
So, we consider natural disasters as God’s way of revealing the corruption in our midst. A typhoon or a monsoon downpour is, in effect, a litmus test that shows us that the project said to be completed is not a mere press release or ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Calumpit precisely illustrates the deeply entrenched corruption in our government—something I witnessed during my brief stint as an employee of two agencies under the Office of the President.
Calumpit is not an isolated case. The Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) own data show Bulacan received more flood control funding than any other province in the whole country, and yet towns like Calumpit continue to be submerged in floodwaters as though none of taxpayers’ money was ever spent to prevent flooding or any other calamity.
And investigations into the so-called ‘ghost’ projects—those flood-control structures marked complete on paper but never properly built or else constructed with substandard materials—have already implicated contractors and at least one dismissed DPWH engineer in the area.
The truth is that the floodwaters do not lie about what was and wasn’t actually built.
But floods are not caused by corruption alone. The EDSA potholes tell a smaller but equally revealing version of the same story.
This is not some decades-old road nobody had touched. It was freshly rehabilitated pavement, marketed by the DPWH as using high-grade asphalt and modern paving technology, in a project meant to restore public confidence after the flood control corruption scandal.
Yet it disintegrated within days of heavy rain because of a basic, foreseeable drainage flaw.
If a ₱6-billion flagship project can’t survive a single monsoon season, the question isn’t really about asphalt. It’s about who signed off on it, who inspected it and who got paid regardless.
I don’t have to look far to see how corruption pervades governance. A week ago, floodwaters entered our house after the street outside was likewise submerged caused by hours of torrential rains brought about by the southwest monsoon that was intensified by the spate of tropical storms.
Outside, A. Mabini Street was in knee-deep floodwaters and this despite the recent construction of a ₱28.8-million flood control structure along nearby Casili Creek. I just don’t know if our city’s former District II representative Mary Mitzi ‘Mitch’ Lim Cajayon-Uy had a hand in this project.
Us residents in Maypajo still deal with the same flooding year after year, and this particular episode was severe enough to make me recall regretting having transferred to Caloocan City.
However, if there’s one thing good about the hardship we experience during disasters, it is the fact that it reminds us that God sees all—like in the days of Noah and his ark.
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