Every July, Iloilo somehow receives two visitors.
One is the Habagat.
The other is our annual realization that water still flows downhill.
This year’s southwest monsoon, strengthened by Typhoon Inday (Bavi), did not even have to make landfall in Iloilo to leave its calling card. It simply borrowed extra moisture from a distant tropical cyclone and reminded everyone that gravity remains undefeated.
The results were familiar enough to be copied and pasted from previous rainy seasons. Floods in Zarraga and Janiuay. Hanging bridges collapsing in Leon and Tigbauan. Landslides in Igbaras, Tubungan, and Leon. Road erosion in Maasin. Creek overflow in Pototan. Rescue operations in Miagao. Damaged houses in San Joaquin. Evacuations. Suspended classes.
The only thing missing was someone saying, “No one could have predicted this.”
Actually, someone did.
PAGASA had been warning for days that the enhanced Habagat would bring heavy to intense rains over Western Visayas. Weather forecasts have become impressively accurate. Our infrastructure, unfortunately, still seems to rely on optimism as a construction material.
Somehow, we have normalized a strange cycle.
When the dry season comes, we talk about development. When the rainy season comes, we talk about evacuation centers. When the floods subside, we promise long-term solutions.
By the next Habagat, those solutions are often still under construction, under procurement, under study, or under another committee.
Even our roads appear confused about their career paths. Some aspire to become rivers. Others gradually transform into landslides. A few simply disappear one lane at a time until motorists are left driving on hope and caution.
Then there are the hanging bridges. Their name was never meant to be a prediction.
Yet every collapse invites the same uncomfortable questions. Was the structure inspected? Was maintenance funded? Were warning signs already visible long before the rain arrived? Heavy rainfall may trigger the failure, but it rarely creates every weakness overnight.
Climate change has certainly made extreme rainfall more frequent and more intense. That much is true. But climate change should not become the universal alibi for every washed-out road and every collapsed bridge.
Sometimes nature reveals problems. Sometimes it merely exposes the ones we have postponed fixing.
Iloilo has invested in flood control projects, disaster preparedness programs, and early warning systems. Those investments matter. The challenge now is making sure infrastructure is just as resilient as the people expected to use it.
It is because resilience has become one of our favorite words. We praise resilient farmers after crops are flooded. We praise resilient commuters after roads become impassable. We praise resilient families after they spend nights in evacuation centers.
At some point, perhaps the goal should be fewer opportunities to demonstrate resilience.
Habagat, after all, is not conducting surprise inspections. It arrives every year.
If the rain already keeps its appointment, perhaps our preparations should stop arriving late.
