Are We On Our Own?

When the flood comes, prepare yourself.

Keep an emergency kit. Know where to evacuate. Protect your children. Have a family plan.

All sensible advice.

But when a government official tells flood victims to build a second floor because the government cannot shoulder the cost, preparedness begins to sound like something else: “You are on your own.”

That is the uncomfortable message behind some of the statements coming from flood-hit areas of Luzon.

In Rodriguez, Rizal, Mayor Ronnie Evangelista said residents should build two-storey houses because the local government could not shoulder the cost for more than 2,000 affected residents.

And suddenly, the second floor stops sounding like a solution. It sounds like another burden handed to people who are already underwater.

In Pampanga, Gov. Lilia Pineda urged residents to save their families, heed warnings and make their own emergency plans.

Her call came as Pampanga bore the brunt of the flooding in Central Luzon. According to OCD Region 3 information officer Raymond Garcia, 327 of the 608 flooded barangays in the region were in Pampanga. In San Simon alone, about 95 percent of the municipality was reportedly submerged.

Pineda said residents could not leave everything to the government, given the number of people affected, and urged families to have their own plans for keeping everyone safe.

There is nothing wrong with telling families to prepare. In a disaster, they should. But when hundreds of barangays are underwater and entire towns are struggling to stay afloat, the message can sound very different depending on where it comes from. “Prepare your family” is a sound advice. “Don’t rely on government” risks sounding like something else.

Flood-control infrastructure. Drainage systems. River management. Early-warning systems. Evacuation centers. Rescue operations. Land-use planning. Disaster-response teams. Long-term mitigation.

These are not favors. They are among the reasons governments exist. And citizens do have responsibilities. But those responsibilities should complement government action, not replace it.

Perhaps the most troubling part of these statements is not what officials literally say.

It is what people might hear. A family watching floodwater rise around their home may not hear, “Please become more resilient.” They may hear: “You are on your own.”

And that is a dangerous message for any government to send.

Not because citizens should be dependent. But because citizens should have reason to believe that their government is capable of doing more than telling them how to survive the next disaster.

Especially when flooding is no longer an occasional inconvenience but a recurring reality for communities that have learned to clean their homes, replace their belongings and wait for the next one.

There is something almost cruel about asking a family that has just lost its belongings to start planning how to build a second floor.

Before asking people to build higher, perhaps we should ask why they keep having to live with rising water in the first place.

And perhaps, when the next election comes, we should remember that question.