CLIMATE change is here, believe it or not. The summers are getting hotter. Witness the UK getting its first extreme heat warning in its history this week. Note the wildfires in the US and Canada caused by intense heat, enough that any spark (lightning, cigarette butt) can ignite a huge forest fire. Mount Holyoke College in western Massachusetts, where I studied, had a dorm hit by lightning in the ever more frightening thunderstorms of summer. It caused a fire. Firemen responded, but the dorm suffered extensive water damage and will not be in use this year. This occurred in a developed country. Do I need to remind us of Yolanda, the biggest storm recorded on the planet to date that impacted Leyte and neighboring provinces, and Ondoy, the unprecedented rainfall that flooded the National Capital Region (NCR) in 2009, recent events within memory?
The NCR, or Metro Manila, has been classified as one of the 10 most disaster-prone cities in the world. We are along the coastline, have had perennial floods during rainy seasons from time immemorial as we are in a delta of river and bay, and some of our ground is below the water level or sinking because of rampant water extraction. There is also high tide from Manila Bay to worry about when it comes with heavy rainfall. We have also regularly experienced typhoons which in the past decades have been getting more and more fearsome and destructive. And we are awaiting the Big One, the earthquake that we are overdue for.
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