I’ve suggested in a previous post that ‘amphibious vehicles’ are becoming a necessity to survive Metro Manila flooding.

If each of the congress representatives allot a portion of their annual 70 million pesos pork-barrel funds to buy one amphibious vehicle for their districts, it will help our local governments tremendously in saving lives in their communities during moments of massive flooding. And that will mean having over 200 amphibious vehicles already deployed in all parts of the country. A far cry from the present situation where local governments are unable to conduct extensive rescue operations of their citizens who are endangered by the floods because local officials are still waiting (many times in vain) for ‘assets’ from the national disaster coordinating council, assets which are so, so limited that the whole situation has become not just pathetic but tragic.

Apart from amphibious vehicles, local government units (city and municipal level) should acquire at least a number of motorised boats that can be used to rescue their constituents facing danger from the raging floods and are trapped in their homes by rising floodwaters.

US$20,000 or about a million pesos can buy them four (4) of these motorised boats, more than four if the body (which is made of aluminum) and the outboard motors are manufactured here in the Philippines. These are not sophisticated boats (I know because I use them whenever I go fishing in the States). We have enough boat-building skill in this archipelagic country to construct them.

And what is a million pesos or two for city and municipal governments if it means raising their capacity to rescue their citizens in times of natural calamities?

Here are some more images (ripped off from a fishing boat site) to give our local government officials an idea of what I’m talking about:

These are inexpensive measures that can help save lives during times of emergencies, such as the one we are experiencing now in Metro Manila, even while this country struggles to address the wider problems of environmental degradation and effects of climate change, rapid urbanisation and high population growth, poverty, and bad governance.