[Pastilan] The cost of neglect in Iligan

Late last week, Iligan City once again learned what it means to be governed by inattention.

Tropical Storm Basyang (Penha), DXIC-Radio Mindanao Network reported, left at least five people dead and displaced over 6,000 families – roughly 24,000 human beings – as it turned 27 barangays into virtual swamps. That’s more than half the city. 

Iligan was paralyzed. Streets are clogged with mud and debris, traffic has ground to a near standstill, and the local government has launched 24-hour road-clearing operations to try to restore order.

DXIC said at least 72 houses were destroyed, 152 damaged, and over 300 more were submerged. Naturally, evacuation centers overflowed, while emergency teams scrambled like understudies in a tragicomedy scripted years ago.

Then came the expected government rituals. City hall declared a state of calamity, unlocking reserved funds. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) followed, imposing a 60-day price freeze on essentials. Citizens were urged to report overpricing and hoarding. And all the while, the performance of the government carried on as if responding were the same as preventing.

Iligan should have known better. In 2011, Tropical Storm Sendong (Washi) tore through Iligan and its neighbor, Cagayan de Oro, killing, displacing, and exposing structural weaknesses. It has been repeated in February 2026. Sendong should have been a hard lesson; instead, it became just a bad memory, and not a guide to action. Nearly 15 years later, Basyang arrived not as a surprise, but as proof that the city’s officials chose to forget.

Perhaps it is time for Iliganons to scrutinize, with unflinching eyes, every flood control project supposedly built since Sendong in 2011. The records of every public works official, congressman, and mayor who has held office since must be examined.

Two mayors have presided over the city in this span – Celso Regencia and now Frederick Siao, who traded places in the 2022 elections. Lawrence Cruz, who was mayor when Sendong struck, and former congressman Varf Belmonte should also be asked, bluntly and publicly, what they did in the immediate aftermath of that disaster – or whether inaction was always their default policy.

Let’s drop the comforting talk of fate. Last week’s flooding was not divine whimsy, but a predictable, entirely preventable result of human neglect and bureaucratic incompetence. Nature did what nature does. People failed to act.

Cagayan de Oro faced the same storm – heavy rain and strong winds – but did not suffer the same degree of devastation. The difference may lie in foresight: after Sendong, it appears the government moved fast to build a JICA-funded “mega dike” along the Cagayan River, a structure stretching several kilometers that likely saved riverside areas from the worst.

In 2011, the same river mercilessly overflowed and flattened communities in Cagayan de Oro. At least, the semblance of planning, investment, engineering, and collaboration may have spelled a difference, so it seems. In Iligan, by contrast, negligence seems to have been the only architect at work.

Rivers exist to carry water away, yet in Iligan they have reportedly been narrowed, choked, and constrained, while the areas they drain have grown recklessly. These bottlenecks are dangerous traps that could turn even an ordinary rainfall into catastrophe. On February 6, the Tubod and Mandulog Rivers did what physics demands: they became swollen and overflowed in the worst-hit areas.

Urban planners are not ignorant. They know what must be done: widen the channels, dredge the silt, move families out of harm’s way, and remove illegal encroachments. What appears to be missing in Iligan is the will to spend on prevention rather than propaganda, the will to choose substance over spectacle. Yet we are told that concrete adorned the city where water should have flowed, and public funds were allegedly spent on cosmetic projects to the delight of the cameras and contractors. And the rivers? They remained clogged. 

Let’s cut to the chase: Sendong was the warning, and Basyang should be enough to drive the lesson home. Rivers overflow not because they are whimsical but because humans make them incapable of doing their job. And so, they will swell and spill every single time.

Until Iligan treats its rivers as systems to be managed and public funds as a trust rather than an opportunity for vanity, destructive floods will return. And it’s not because the rain is extraordinary, but because negligence is habitual, celebrated even, in the corridors of power.

Nature, at least, has been consistent. It is Iligan’s officials who seem to be persisting in demonstrating that consistency need not be learned. Pastilan. – Rappler.com