should the blame be on the dam operators for the massive flooding in luzon?

I cannot say it is entirely the dam operators fault. They are releasing it as slowly as they can to prevent the dam from being destroyed by the water pressure building up in them which can prove to be more catastrophic if that would ever happen. They have no choice but to really release that pressure building up because of the heavy rains that came in the last few days. The only fault I am thinking is really the communication lines between the affected areas were poorly established since one thing for sure is that they are both damaged by the typhoon that came along with it. I think for it to be effective the affected areas should have establish the communications they need. Maybe a direct line should be built from the dam to the affected areas. The sirens are ineffective since they are not as they cannot be heard when strong rains are pouring in. It should be made from person to person so that it could be relayed immediately to the area.

There this attitude of Filipinos to be selfish and unmindful. We tend to point our fingers to someone without thinking our own fault. As far as I know, the dam operators will not release its water without any warning unless rain water accumulated the highest level and breaks the dam intensely. I think, people are aware the releasing of the waters, but they transferred the blame that the approximate cause of the flooding was due to the release. I just hope we all learn from what happened and avoid cleaning our hands with our own negligence.

It is definitely sad that these things should have happened when it could have been totally avoided in the first place, with proper planning, implementation of the proposed plans for urban planning around that area. I watched the show "The Correspondents" and it points to a lot of factors why we have experienced this catastrophe in many areas. I think it's high time to think long term in our goal of making our country better prepared for any typhoon that will struck. All measures should be enforced to ensure that we come up with a better flood management system and people will no longer dwell in dangerous areas to ensure their own safety when typhoon strikes.

Hi saluyot! (spinach in english your username made me smile..lol..im sorry) Seriously, Right now, anyone can point fingers on anybody. We could blame anyone! We could even blame the sky or even the stars for that matter! But the question is..."So what now?" "will it turn back the time?" Can it bring back the little girl's mom from the news? Well the answer to all of that question is NO. None. Nothing. Instead of senate blaming this dam operators they should have been strict in the first place in implementing rules on how this dam operators should release excess waters from their respective damn site. With all the calamities that our country had experienced our government should have taken great measures and precautions in dealing with it in the futures to come. So the blame could be with anybody. Now the question is "What are the actions should we take in order for us to avoid such circumstances?" I think that is the most important thing to resolve right now. Happy mylotting!

Why blame the dam operators? What they did was only release the water that's just too much for the dam to handle. What would the people choose, for the operators to keep the water until the dam explodes? For me it's just mother nature. They can blame the people for clogging their rivers because the water could have just flowed out to the sea. They have to accept the fact that global warming is now upon us and we need to adapt otherwise will perish.

I really don't believe that it is their fault. It is our fault. Typhoons are normal. Everybody can get this kind of typhoon. But why do we get this flood? It's because the garbages that we throw everywhere. It is not just the government's responsibility of MMDA's task to clean up our trash. Our trash is ours. These trash blocks the passage or the flow of water. Our environment is just reminding us that consequence that we should get.

It's hard to start pointing fingers over who should have done this or that with the recent calamities which have struck our country. First, I do know that the dam in question has given warning to the residents that will be affected by the release of the water. This is not something new, flooding in the province has always been attributed to the dam even before Pepeng. Now who is really to blame with all these calamities? Everyone. From the flood victim to the government officials who in their incompetence to pass laws or handle disasters as wide as the two calamities (Ondoy and Pepeng) are now trying to find other people or institutions to blame. Flood victims are also to blame, especially those who put up shanties in areas like riversides that are really risky. We don't have to look very far. Just look at the esteros in Manila. Our government has no capacity to respond to a disaster that is as big as the ones that struck our country recently. This has been observed as early as 2001 during the time of 9-11. It has been observed that given the same scope of disaster, our hospitals will not be able to cope, nor our local government units, nor our police. The response of government was seen in Marikina and Cainta where it took them hours before they could respond. Now our hospitals are showing strains of not being able to cope with the Leptospirosis outbreak. I hate our senators for spending time and money for an inquiry such as the one today for San Roque and Napocor. I feel bad because they are spending my tax money over things like these instead of focusing on passing and enacting laws that can really help us.

I don't think it is right at this point in time to blame anybody for the massive flooding in Northern Luzon during "peping" disaster. It's nobody's fault why it occurs because typhoons are natural calamities and nobody could prevent it. The only to be blamed are people too, some calamities are triggered by human inflicted activities such as kaingin, mining, irresponsible garbage disposal, industrialization, burning of fossil fuels, population explosion among others. IPCC (Intergovernmental panel for climate change) revealed in their reports that the cause of aggressive typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, destructive flooding and fluctuating weather phenomena are attributed to Climate Change as a clear result of Global Warming, analyzing this situation carefully, the world is already in danger and nobody is exempted. So the outcome of these aggressive typhoons are destruction of lives and properties. So nobody should be blamed in this situation, instead of pointing fingers to other sectors, leaders and people, why not ponder our fate and go back to ourselves why these things happened and must set a precautionary measures to prevent the same disaster and situation to happen in the future. The typhoon destructions are just reminders or signals to all of us what things more to come in the future, so we must act now before everything becomes late, our action should always consider the protection of our environment and natural resources so that these won't haunt us through natural calamities in the future.

Honestly, I don't think they should put all the blame on them because there were a lot of contributing factors in the flooding. One is climate change, the two typhoons are stronger and brought about a lot of rain because of climate change. If we took care of our environment, this will not really be a problem. Another factor is poor urban planning, this factor is what I'm really most angry about because this is caused by greed. It is very obvious that all those subdivisions near the floodways and Laguna Lake don't deserve building permits but because of greed and most probably because of bribery, these projects were still continued. Places like Provident Village were unsuitable to live in and a lot of engineers have predicted that this can happen but greedy property developers still push through with all this crap. I'm really saddened by this because in reality such a calamity can be prevented.

So who should get the blame? The corrupt politicians? The dam operators? The urban planners? The squatters? Who? Everyone points finger to everybody else. Don't you know that when you point your fingers at somebody the rest of your three fingers are pointing at you. That means you are as guilty as everyone you think are guilty of the matter. We all hold the blame for this it's just that nobody is too smart to look at their fingers when they point it out and nobody is too humble to accept mistakes. One more thing, nobody wants to accept the blame because they have endless reasons not to be blamed.