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Saturday, January 03, 2009

Nature Strikes Back

A local eco-system long ignored and grossly violated reacted quickly and without notice. Unleashing flashfloods fueled by torrential rains, and as some feared coupled with the deadly effects of a waterspout crashing into denuded mountainous areas close to the city.

The usually lazy river traversing through the city becomes a roaring and rushing blur of dirty brown water, curdling and ripping through everything standing on its way and angrily catapulting flailing catches into the sea.

And the hapless human victims are those who live close to its banks, including those squatting on government lands technically part of the riverbanks. And worse for those who had allocated for themselves the underside of bridges and anywhere close to them that provided shelter and privacy. These areas for the meantime are no more, but merely annexed parts of an overgrown river.

The rustic scenes pictorialized in a previous blog entry have turned watery and ugly, with the makeshift structures mostly underwater and their occupants scampering to higher ground with their meager belongings on their backs.

After revisiting the same areas, here are the results of the flooding and the devastation wrought as seen in pictures.