What is act of God?

The recent Habagat that saw 660mm of rainfall in three days was phenomenal.  If you have been listening to the scientists and engineers, all the designs and facilities (even forecasting) would not have dealt adequately with last week's massive rainfall,

It is simply man vs nature, man vs acts of God.

US cant deal adequately with 40 tornadoes in  single day;  or extreme drought in 32 states it is experiencing now.  We are in a different territory, different realm of science, and many guru say it is because of  climate change (many still debate of it caused by too much carbon or greenhouse effect)

It is no use making a blame game or firing scientists for making the wrong prediction or having inadequate flood control system:

1.  On weather forecasting -  the current instruments can predict temperature, wind direction, whether it is rainy, sunny, or cloudy in the next 3 or 5 days and expressed in percentage.  It is not  a l00% sure thing.  The weather forecasters rely on instruments that can be old or make wrong measurements.  And precisely, they name the typhoons or weather disturbances after women, because directions, wind strength or amount of precipitation can change.

For example:  typhoons before become weak after landfall;  but because of warmer seas, typhoons can become superstrong when they leave land and have warm moist air from China sea. (This happenned to Katrina in US and Peping in Phl.)

Let us not castigate our forecasters nor fire them, they are doing their best.

2.  On flooding:

l.  On flood control system:   with little knowledge I have of drainage and flood control,  most do not  deal with  the massive   400 mm or 600 mm of rainfall that we have just experienced.  The engineers would have to recompute, and if they were to build those flood control system, we would  not be able to afford them.

2.  On mitigating the flooding:   Many well meaning individuals, intl organizations, MMDA, DOST  have proposals for flood mitigation  Arch Jun Falafox has 60 recommendations since Ondoy happenned,  but what did our managers and leaders do with them?  (am now blaming too?)

3.  If we do the same thing expecting different results, we must be crazy.  GMA ordered the removal of informal settlers at the Manggahan floodway (to lessen risk of flooding on the settlers and relocate them)  It is either there is no budget or political will to remove the  obstruction at the floodways and waterways.(Politically incovenient)  And when the floods come, and there are flood victims, we just do the same rituals all over and all over again....

It is best to build your houses on hills.  Ever since Punongbayan predicted flooding, cities being submerged form ice melt, as developer, I built subdivision in high areas....

But then, we do not recognize prophets in our own land and Punongbayan is long gone....Who will still listen to him...