Published 2025-08-21 11.08
Now the sea washes over the island in the growing Manila Bay.
The photo above shows William Gregorio and his son Yamry on the Philippine island of Pugad in waist-high water. Here previously stood the house where their relatives lived for generations.
The area's patron saint is Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary. But no prayers help the residents now. The slightest tide causes streets and houses to flood in just a few minutes, writes The Guardian.
According to the more than 100,000 residents, the culprit is large-scale land reclamation and other human interventions over the years. It also involves melting ice caps in Antarctica, subsidence from unregulated groundwater extraction and relentlessly rising sea levels. It also brings with it altered currents that push the tides ever further afield.
Still, the islanders try to live as normally as possible.
Marriages are being held and funerals with coffins on high stands are being held. Despite flooded churches with knee-deep water. Modified bicycle taxis ply the streets – barely half a meter higher than normal. Homeowners are repeatedly raising their houses to escape the floods, with their wallets getting thinner as a result. And they still can't breathe.
The levees that are being built to protect against the water do not provide adequate protection yet. The planning is lagging.
- There is no uniform line. Since the levees are broken, they are not effective, engineer Eugene Migel told ABS-CBN News.
Inside the house of Salomon Tamayo and his wife Maria Landa on Pugad Island, the water is knee-deep.
1 of 6Photo: Ezra Acayan / Getty Images
Bea Paula, who sits on a youth council and is currently studying journalism, is now urging both national and local governments to take urgent, concrete long-term measures to stop the floods, writes the Manila Bulletin.
- This is not normal and should not be accepted as the "new normal". It is a problem that must be addressed and taken responsibility for, she writes in a post on Facebook, according to the newspaper.
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