DepEd lists 257 schools at risk of flooding

BULAKAN, Bulacan—The waterlogged Don Isabelo Antonio Primary School in the coastal village of Taliptip here will not be ready when classes open tomorrow.

High tide has not receded as it used to, and water has worn out the two-room facility, the most recent casualty among schools rendered vulnerable to extreme climate changes.

Since late last year, the Department of Education (DepEd) has been inspecting schools in flood-prone Central Luzon to determine whether these are in good condition and could double  as evacuation centers this rainy season.

At least 257 public elementary and high schools in the region are at high risk to floods, according to a DepEd report.

The report lists down schools that were inundated during the southwest monsoon (habagat) in August last year, Isabelita Borres, DepEd Central Luzon director, said on Saturday.

Floods lasted for three weeks in some cases, affecting 145,685 students and 4,197 teachers who used those facilities.

Flexibility

Many schools in upland Cordillera are also classified as climate-vulnerable due to frequent landslides during rains, but DepEd is still conducting an inventory of these schools, said Ellen Donato, DepEd Cordillera director.

In March, Donato urged the government to be flexible about uniform specifications and to allow upland schools to be built according to the terrain. “We have not been given the green light yet [so we can proceed to build schools suited for mountains],” she said.

The DepEd report said 139 schools are vulnerable to floods in Pampanga, 56 in Bulacan, 30 in Bataan, 14 in Olongapo City, 10 in Zambales, four in Tarlac, three in Nueva Ecija and one school in Balanga City.

Last week, the DepEd approved the temporary closure of Don Isabelo Antonio Primary School, said Josefina Natividad, DepEd Bulakan district supervisor, adding that pupils enrolled in Grades 1 to 3 there would now hold classes in rooms made available at Taliptip Elementary School and the adjacent Perez Elementary School.

This also means parents would be bringing pupils on boats to school every Saturday for the duration of the first semester.

Natividad said this is because typhoons and the high tide had destroyed the dikes that used to protect communities from rising waters.

Ground zero

The fourth district of Pampanga is the so-called ground zero of flooding because it is at the mouth of the Pampanga River. It has 80 public school buildings that need to be built at high elevation, according to outgoing Pampanga Rep. Anna York Bondoc.

Bondoc said eight school buildings, which had been raised by 3 meters once or twice in the past three years, were flooded in August last year when southwest monsoon whipped severe rains over Luzon.

“The floods still reached them,” she said, referring to several schools in Macabebe, Masantol and Minalin towns. “The roads have been raised thrice but we still experience floods that have worsened due to climate change,” she said.

For the start of classes, the 14 districts of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) have fixed or paved the entrances of schools along national roads, widened frontages, painted pedestrian lanes and installed signs advising vehicles to slow down, according to Antonio Molano, DPWH Central Luzon director.

To ease traffic during the resumption of classes, he said the DPWH has completed 29 infrastructure projects worth P3.7 billion this summer. Tonette Orejas and Carmela Reyes-Estrope, Inquirer Central Luzon, with a report from Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon