Apart from the weather bureau’s acknowledgement of the power of prayer that thwarted “Pepeng” from a direct hit at Metro Manila, the only sensible post-“Ondoy” statement I heard was Jun Palafox denying that what happened on Sept. 26 was an act of God.

“Don’t call it an act of God,” he fumed. “It was an act of man,” he added, decrying what must have been some insurance agent’s refusal to honor the claims of clients who had lost their cars to man-high floods and maddening mud. In the insurance business, earthquakes and floods are reasons for not paying compensation because such disasters are a force majeure – in English meaning a superior force which would excuse a party from carrying out its part of the contract. But because it’s French, the mercantile minded found it easier to use the name of God, in English.

One could understand the architect and urban planner Palafox’ frustrations, in light of a flood map of September 1970 that was eerily the same as the flood map of September 2009. In 1974-77, the World Bank funded the Metro Manila Transport Land Use Development Project covering 40 towns and cities, an area larger than the 17 units that make up Metro Manila.

Heading an international crew of 60, senior team leader Palafox pinpointed the eastern part of the metropolis as the most vulnerable to flooding, but even with the mind-boggling data that emerged, nothing was done to address the problem that was to hound Pasig, Cainta, Marikina.

Is the Lord and Master of climate change a very forgiving, very patient God who could wait 30 years before teaching us a lesson?

As we now painfully learn, neither the Metro Manila Authority (as it was called then) nor the Martial Law government of Ferdinand Marcos nor any of his successors bothered to implement the project’s recommendations. But the career of Jun Palafox took an ironic, upward swing. He became the urban planner for Dubai, UAE, and consultant to 31 other countries, all wanting to learn what he had learned. True, they have the funds while we likely washed away ours.