The American Geological Institute

4220 King Street, Alexandria, VA 22302-1502, U.S.A.

703-379-2480; Fax: 703-379-7563; subscriptions@agiweb.org

www.earthmagazine.org

The Perfect Storm: Floods Devastate Manila

A.M.F. Lagmay, R.S. Rodolfo and M.G. Bato
EARTH Vol. 55 (No. 4), p. 51

REPRODUCTION: More than one photocopy of an item from EARTH may be made provided that
fees are paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Dr., Danvers, MA 01923,
USA. Phone: (978)750-8400. Fax: (978)646-8600. Any other form of reproduction requires special
permission from and is subject to fees by EARTH.
Information about obtaining reprints of this article or about obtaining permission to reproduce
this article in whole or in part can be found by e-mailing earth@earthmagazine.org.

EARTH is published monthly for a base subscription rate of $34.50 a year (single copies $4.99) by
the American Geological Institute. 2010 American Geological Institute. Standard mail, nonprofit
postage paid at Denver, Colo., and at other mailing offices. Claims for missing issues will be
honored only up to six months. Issues undelivered through failure to notify EARTH of address
change will not be replaced.

www.earthmagazine.org

THE PERFECT STORM:

Floods Devastate Manila

Bottom to top: Digital Vision; Jay Directo/AFP/Getty Images; iStockphoto.com/Marcus Lindstrm

Torrential rainfall
combines with
overpopulated
shanties in a
floodplain to
overwhelm the
capital city
of the
Philippines

Filipinos lift a boy onto the roof of a building to escape floodwaters brought by
Tropical Storm Ondoy in Quezon City, a
suburb of Manila, on Sept. 26, 2009.

50

EARTH April 2010

www.earthmagazine.org

A.M.F. Lagmay, R.S. Rodolfo and M.G. Bato

Bottom: AGI/NASA; top: E. de Castro

ropical Storm Ketsana, or Ondoy, as locals call it,

came ashore at the Philippines island of Luzon on
Sept. 26, 2009. The ensuing deluge caught everyone
by surprise.

Rains started pouring in the evening

of Sept. 25. By mid-afternoon the following day in Manila, the capital of
the Philippines, more than a months
worth of rain had fallen. The city and
entire metro area were underwater.
Some areas were flooded up to two
stories high. Hundreds of people
were dead: drowned in their cars,
their homes and in malls. The floods
brought one of the worlds largest cities to a standstill.
Although the storm devastated the
Manila metro area, other elements
contributed to the disaster: The entire
area is composed of a series of floodplains with multiple large rivers running through them, and the region is
subsiding, faster in some parts than
others. In addition, Metro Manila is
overpopulated, with many impoverished residents living in shantytowns
incapable of standing up to heavy rain
and floods. Add in some 44 centimeters
of rain in a 12-hour period, and you
have a recipe for the perfect storm of
factors that led to the high death toll.

www.earthmagazine.org

Flooding stops traffic in Cainta, Rizal, east

of Manila, Sept. 27.

THE GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS

Metro Manila is located
on an isthmus between the
Manila Bay, which opens to
the South China Sea, and
Laguna de Bay, an approximately 900-square-kilometer,
2-meter-deep freshwater lake
formed partly by two volcanic
eruptions. The entire region is
Thailand
composed of one
major river
basin called the Marikina
River Basin, which covers
535 square kilometers, and
eight smaller, highly urbanized river sub-basins, which
cover 683 square kilometers,
that drain directly into Manila
Bay and Laguna de Bay. The
Marikina and Pasig rivers
serve as the main outlet for
tributaries of the Marikina
River Basin. Underlain by
mostly volcanic and coastal
sediments, the metropolis lies
on one of the widest floodplains in the Philippines.

Taiwan

China

PHILIPPINE
SEA

Laos

MANILA
SOUTH CHINA SEA

Vietnam

Philippines

Cambodia

SULU
SEA

Brunei
CELEBES
SEA

Malaysia
Indonesia

EARTH April 2010

51

In 1986, the Manggahan floodway was built to reduce flooding along the banks of the Pasig River by diverting floodwaters into Laguna de Bay. A complementary project called the
Napindan Hydraulic Control System was built at the confluence of the Marikina and Pasig rivers to regulate tidal flow and
prevent intrusion of polluted water into Laguna de Bay.
Despite these flood control measures, floods are still common in Manila, generally occurring at least once a year during
the rainy season. Residents have known about the regions
flood risk since at least the Spanish colonial period (1521 to
1898). But usually when floods strike Metro Manila, they are
small, affecting only a few neighborhoods at a time.

52

EARTH April 2010

www.earthmagazine.org

Background: Digital Vision; maps courtesy of A.M.F. Lagmay

Above: Elevation map of Metro Manila and vicinities. Metro

Manila is composed of 16 cities and one municipality (yellow
outline). Orange dots are the locations of rain gauge stations.
Inset map is Luzon Island, Philippines. Left: The Marikina River
Basin (green) and sub-basins of Metro Manila. The Manila area
is composed of multiple floodplains, with several rivers draining
into Manila Bay and Laguna de Bay.

A street turns into a turbulent river in

Park 9, Katipunan, Quezon City.

THE STORM

Bottom and middle: A.M.F. Lagmay; top: J.C. Lopez

Tropical Storm Ondoy was just one of

several storms that struck Metro Manila
last year: On average, the area is affected
by 20 typhoons each year. Ondoy was
first spotted in the Philippine Sea on
Sept. 24, 2009. By 11:00 p.m. local time,
its center was located 611 kilometers
east of Manila moving west-northwest
at 16 kilometers per hour. Following its
forecasted track, Ondoy made landfall
on Sept. 26 shortly before 12:00 p.m.
local time, on the eastern side of Luzon

near the border of Aurora and Quezon

provinces. The storm had maximum
winds of 85 kilometers per hour near
the center and gusts up to 100 kilometers
per hour just a tropical storm, not
quite a hurricane, on the Saffir-Simpson
Hurricane Scale. The slow-moving storm
crossed Central Luzon before exiting
the western seaboard toward the South
China Sea.
Between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. on Sept.
26, more than a months worth of rain fell
on Metro Manila. The total precipitation

on Sept. 25 and 26 was 17.35 centimeters

over Manila itself and 53.06 centimeters
over Quezon City, northeast of downtown Manila. The regional average was
44.85 centimeters of rain nearly double the 20 to 30 centimeters dumped on
Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Rainfall intensity was highest between
11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. on Sept. 26,
when 9.2 centimeters of rain fell. The
western side of Luzon, home to Manila,
received enhanced rainfall as the storm
approached because of the interaction
of Ondoys circulation pattern and the
seasonal southwest monsoon.

FLOODING
Some areas began flooding early in the
day. By the afternoon of Sept. 26, inundation ranged from ankle-high to more
than two stories high, according to anecdotal accounts of the deluge recorded
on an interactive public flood height
map, with flow velocities as high as 15
kilometers per hour along main river
channels and their banks.
The distribution of flooding varied
across the region. Most of the high-level
floods occurred in areas closest to river
channels, creeks and the lake. The two
hardest-hit cities, Marikina City and
Pasig, for example, lie along the floodplains of Marikina River, a major waterway that drains into Laguna de Bay.
River water rose as much as nine
meters and in many instances reached
the base of bridge spans. Many streets
in the more than a dozen cities of Metro
Manila were completely submerged.

Debris from a flash flood overtops a bridge

in Marikina City.

Bodies emerge in Tumana, Marikina City,

three days after the disaster as the flood
subsides.

www.earthmagazine.org

EARTH April 2010

53

Houses destroyed by flooding in Marikina

City.

Even in places that do not normally

flood, roads were transformed into rivers within minutes. Such severe flooding
created mammoth traffic jams in every
city in the metro area. In some areas, rapidly rising floods drowned vehicles, with
instances of passengers still in them.
Along the banks of the swollen
Marikina River and its tributaries, raging
waters swept up urban poor residents as
they stood on their shanties. Knowing no
boundaries, the floods spread into many
middle class and upscale residential areas
as well as commercial areas, drowning
people unable to climb to their rooftops in
time. Grocery stores, restaurants, Internet
cafs, entertainment plazas, banks, government agencies, retail stores, hospitals
and houses were covered in mud after
the floods receded.
At the height of the flooding, about
26,000 gallons of bunker oil from a paper
mill in Marikina City spilled into the
water, covering several communities and
complicating rescue efforts. Ondoy also
caused the total shutdown of electricity
in the cities of Marikina, Pasig and Taguig
for days. International flights were cancelled at the Ninoy Aquino International
Airport for nearly 24 hours.
About 65 kilometers north of Metro
Manila, lahars dense, viscous
mudflows poured along the southwestern slopes of the Arayat volcano,
burying communities in the area.
In the aftermath of the storm, 464 people were confirmed dead, with 37 missing

54

EARTH April 2010

Bottom to top: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Marie Matarlo; A.M.F. Lagmay; Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images; top background: Digital Vision

diarrhea, febrile illness (a respiratory disease) and pneumonia.

Furthermore, leptospirosis, a bacterial
infection commonly transmitted in floodwaters contaminated by the urine of rats
and other animals, killed 89 people and
hospitalized an additional 1,027 people.
The number of leptospirosis cases monitored by the Philippines Department of
Health has already exceeded the 800
cases reported for the entire country
in 2008.
Filipinos, resilient to natural catastrophes, have largely recovered from the
disaster. Life is back to normal in almost
every corner of the metro area. There are
no traces of the devastation except for
flood marks left behind by the deluge.

Above: Mud encrusted on the wall, appliances and furniture of a house in Tumana,
Marikina City. Right: Filipino citizens stand
in line for food donated by local businesses and private organizations to aid
communities affected by the storm.
and presumed dead, and hundreds more
injured. Nearly 27,000 houses were badly
damaged. In total, 4.73 million people
were affected. The top five causes of death
during the disaster were drowning, injuries, electrocution, asphyxia secondary
to landslides and heart attack due to
panic. In evacuation centers, the top five
causes of death were acute respiratory
tract infection, skin infection/wounds,

www.earthmagazine.org

THE COMPOUNDING FACTORS

The population of Metro Manila has boomed in the last couple of

decades, with tens of thousands of people living in shanties like
these, many of which were demolished by the storm.

The extreme flood that devastated Metro Manila was primarily due to the extremely heavy downpour on Sept. 26. The
more than 40 centimeters of rain delivered over the span of
12 hours in Metro Manila is the highest period of rainfall in
recorded history. But it was compounded by geologic factors,
and especially by rapid and poorly planned urbanization.
Since the 1970s, people have been migrating from rural
areas to the cities. Metro Manila has been growing significantly, increasing from 4.9 million residents in 1975 to more
than 11 million today. A survey by the National Housing
Authority showed that by the early 1980s, a quarter of Metro
Manila residents were informal settlers living in crowded
shantytowns with little or no infrastructure.
Furthermore, humans have altered the landscape in this
region. A variety of factors contributed to the generation of
massive floods, including encroachment of concrete surfaces,
densification of buildings and residential areas, silting of
riverbeds and canals, obstruction of waterways by informal
settlers, clogging of floodways by garbage, narrowing of rivers due to development on floodplains, draining and filling in
of small rivers forcing more water into fewer channels, forest
degradation, and reclamation of coastal land.
Further complicating the problem is ground subsidence.
From 1978 to 2000, parts of Metro Manila sank by an amount
ranging from 16 centimeters to 1.46 meters. The probable
causes of subsidence are excessive groundwater extraction, soil compaction and tectonic movement, though more
research is needed to fully determine the primary causes.
In the end, the flooding from this storm was a catastrophe
of unimaginable proportions. It was a natural hazard, compounded by human actions, making it a natural disaster.
The attention brought by Ondoy, hopefully, can focus future
efforts to address the growing concern of worsening floods
complicated by uncontrolled urbanization in the capital of
the Philippines.

Bottom right: A.M.F. Lagmay; top: iStockphoto.com/Hector Joseph Lumang

All three authors are geologists at the National Institute of

Geological Sciences at the University of the Philippines in
Quezon City.

Aerial photograph of shantytowns constricting

the Manggahan floodway, a major artery meant
to ease floods during rainstorms.

www.earthmagazine.org

EARTH April 2010

55