HOW MERRY CAN a Christmas be when engulfed are the people from the floods that devastated the nation in just a span of a year? Moreover, these circumstances are aggravated by the countless flood control anomalies that continue to surface while communities are left to fend for themselves after every storm.
Bulacan floods not because it is careless—it floods because it is vulnerable. The province is situated low, bordered by rivers and wetlands. When the monsoon decides to visit, when typhoons pass, when dams release excess water upstream, Bulacan shoulders the weight the country cannot hold.
On paper, it portrayed a story where Filipinos would no longer need to be resilient but could have a peaceful sleep as the rain passes by. In reality, however, the sound of the water drops screams the sorrow of what is to come, as the projects deemed finished are a sight that cannot be seen.
Audits conducted by the Commission on Audit (COA) laid bare what residents have long endured: flood-control projects that exist only on paper. Just last November, COA uncovered ₱279 billion worth of projects that were unfinished, misplaced, or missing altogether despite being fully funded—proof that money meant to shield communities vanished long before the waters arrived.
Between streets and streams
For Simon Gales, a third-year Legal Management student, flooding in Bulacan is not solely caused by rain, because even when the sky is clear, water comes anyway.
“We need to watch out for the tides,” he explains. “Lalo na ‘yung mga mababang lugar kasi once the tides goes up, ‘yung mga tubig sa ilog or ‘yung may mga malalapit na source of water tumataas,” he said.
In his community, living near a river means naturally learning a second language—not of words and sentences but of tides and timings. No one ever truly knows when the flood will arrive. They just know it will be.
This year in particular, it rose high enough to disrupt the already fragile routines of the people in Bulacan. Transportation is another challenge. Tricycle fares, once manageable, doubled and tripled on days where water decided to swallow the streets.
“Usually hindi siya 25, usually 50 siya per person, palabas pa lang ‘yon,” he said, emphasizing how this becomes another unspoken tax imposed by water and neglect.
Some areas suffer more than others. In lower areas near wetlands, the flood never goes away—it lingers. “Naka-stagnant na lang ‘yung tubig, hindi na sya bumababa, mas worse ‘yun kaysa sa’min,” They do not wait for the water to recede, they live with it. Stagnant, unmoving, and heavy with the sense that they cannot do anything about it but adapt.
Rescue units appear when other options are unavailable. But flood control — the long-overdue promise—remains an echo passed from one administration to the next.
“Very poor ‘yung response,” The statement carries no dramatics—only weariness. Flood control to him is not charity—it is duty. Public service is not a favor; it is a contract that has long been broken yet hope lingers within.
Simon is not asking to be given prosperity. He only asks for honesty, transparency, and justice that does not require pleading.
Christmas, for Simon, is not about forgetting the flood; rather, it is about refusing to let it drive one’s life. Hope, to him, is not passive. Instead, it is faith practiced in endurance, in conscience, and the belief that accountability—in the end, will surface.
And to fellow Bedans, he yearns a simple wish: “To study well, to study genuinely, to study with heart, study with genuine desire for a change.”
A walk through the flooded lane
Flooding often comes in small humiliations—soaked shoes on the way to school and roads that force long walks just to reach the destination. For Lourdes Ordoña, also a third-year Legal Management student, it lingers in the quiet realization that staying home is sometimes the only option, not out of fear, but because the world outside has dissolved into water.
The flood does not always arrive in surges. Sometimes, it settles into the small inconveniences that exhausts a person. “We couldn’t really go anywhere without wearing boots,” she shares.
Commuting to school became an ordeal everyone had to live with. With every step feeling heavier and routines being disrupted by roads disappearing beneath floodwater. In Malolos, flooding may recede faster compared to other lower-lying towns. But while it stays — life comes to a halt.
What Lourdes noticed most was not solely the flood, but also what came after. Assistance arrived—ayuda, relief, and the predictable gestures of response. Necessary, yes. But incomplete. Flooding in Bulacan is not new. Preparation should not be reactive. And yet, it often is.
Damage appears where people can least afford it. Farmers watch their crops drown, subjected to replanting what took weeks to grow. “Kapag nabaha ‘yan, uulitin ulit nila yan eh.” Homes absorb water that ruins appliances—things people work hard to afford, gone overnight.
In the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty, Lourdes held onto a single wish: “I wish na ma-humanize kami as citizens, na hindi lang tayo merely figures in a paper, hindi lang tayo numbers.” Affirming that projects are not mere abstractions.
Despite this, Lourdes holds firmly to hope—hope not to the officials, but to the people. In Filipinos who speak up, who question, who refuse to normalize a system that caters to the corrupt.
While institutions fail to hear the people’s expectations, Lourdes places her hope elsewhere. “Student activism really will change the nation,” she says, a belief shaped by seeing young people speak up when systems remain silent.
Christmas, then, gleams of hope and reassurance. Not that everything is fixed, but that people are learning. Learning through conversations that now happen publicly, loudly, and without apology.
Her desire for this season is not of extravagance, but of simple hope that infrastructure finally serves its purpose, and that those entrusted with building the nation do so with respect — for the work, and for the lives beneath it. “I wish na they, ano, they do it with integrity, and they do it with respect sa trabaho nila at sa mga constituents nila.” Singing her Christmas carol.
Listening to Bedans from bulacan
It is within this unrest that we amplify Bedan’s voices who call Bulacan home. The province has repeatedly borne the brunt of repeated flooding and projects that exist more on paper than on the ground. The investigations continue to unearth anomalies in flood control projects that were reported as completed yet still failed to protect the very communities they were meant to serve.
For Bedans who grew up there, the rain no longer signifies symbolic renewal. Instead, the rain carries triggers—a familiar unease of anticipatory loss, displacement, and the deafening reality that help may come, or not at all.
Listening to Bedans from Bulacan permits this narrative to go beyond calculated figures and findings and transform it to the eyes that bear the weight of the consequences. As students who possess both critical inquiry and social responsibility, their accounts reflect two sides of the story—attachment to home and an awareness of systemic failure.
(With Kryztyn Narbasa and reports from Paris Isaac Falcone)