MANILA: In flood-prone towns across Bulacan, even the dead can’t rest in peace.
“It hurts,” said Esper, a Bulacan resident now living in Malolos, describing how it feels that not only the living — but even their departed loved ones—are affected by the constant flooding.
What used to be solemn sanctuaries are now stagnant ponds. Tombstones lie submerged. Mausoleums rot in silence. Candles are lit not beside graves, but in living rooms far from the site of burial.
In Hagonoy, one of Central Luzon’s most vulnerable coastal towns, climate change and corrupted road works have sealed off cemeteries under permanent water.
"Our loved ones are buried at Hagonoy Memorial Park… and for years now, we haven’t been able to visit them because it’s always submerged in water," Esper said.
Once a tranquil resting place across Hagonoy Central School, the Hagonoy Memorial Park is now a watery graveyard. Residents say the water no longer recedes, especially after road elevations trapped rain and tidewater inside the park’s low-lying grounds. In Esper’s words, “The water got trapped inside the Memorial Park itself."
While the science of sea-level rise may sound distant to many, Esper’s story is a gut-wrenching reminder that even death offers no escape from a warming world.
The drowned and the grieving
Flooding in cemeteries is not a uniquely Filipino problem. Around the world, rising seas, stronger typhoons, and land subsidence are displacing the dead alongside the living.
Findings by Climate Central, Scientific American, and USA Today show how caskets in Louisiana float like battleships during hurricanes. In Alaska, Indigenous graves sink as permafrost melts. In Alabama and Florida, floodwaters scatter headstones like driftwood.
“Trying to keep things buried that you want to stay buried is often a really big challenge,” geologist Allen Gontz told USA Today in a 2023 feature.
But in countries like the Philippines — ranked by Climate Central as the most at risk from the climate crisis — the problem becomes cultural, economic and painfully personal.
In Hagonoy, residents like Esper are being asked to pay between P15,000 (US$255) and P75,000 just to exhume and relocate family remains from submerged plots. “That’s no small amount,” she said. Her parents and siblings are still there, somewhere beneath the water.
She’s not alone. In a public Facebook post, a local resident wrote: “It’s been six years since we’ve been able to visit the cemetery."
Another said: “It’s been 13 years of raising roads, but it hasn’t been a solution to the worsening floods."
Mapping the risk: Cemeteries underwater
Preliminary mapping using Project NOAH and Climate Central confirms what locals already live with: Hagonoy’s major cemeteries are inside high flood-risk zones.
Project NOAH’s hazard database map classifies both the Hagonoy Memorial Park and Hagonoy Public Cemetery under the “High” flood hazard level. Nearby homes, roads, and schools are similarly inundated.
In an overlay with Climate Central’s 2050 projections, both cemeteries fall within areas that may be below the annual flood level within the next 25 years.
INQUIRER.net’s INQFocus team’s cross-check of at least 40 cemeteries in Bulacan shows that nearly half are situated in medium-to-high flood hazard zones, especially in coastal or riverside towns like Malolos, Meycauayan, Bustos and Pulilan.
While landslide or storm surge risks are minimal, the combined impact of tidal flooding and poor drainage means these sacred spaces are often the first to go under.
What the data and the dead reveal
Residents confirmed that even during dry months, water no longer drains from the Hagonoy Memorial. “Almost all the cemeteries here in our area are flooded,” INQUIRER.net was told. Among the primary causes cited were high tide events and climate change.
Esper added that only mausoleums remain visible. “They are completely submerged; they’ve been totally drowned in water. You can’t even see the gravestones anymore.,” she said, referring to her family members still resting in the submerged cemetery.
But the cost of recovery is steep. Even if one finds a dry burial plot elsewhere, the cost of relocation—labor, permits, excavation—is unaffordable to many. Relatives of those with loved ones buried in the Memorial have also been told that the former caretakers allegedly passed away in 2023.
Residents say no one responds to inquiries. “It’s a long shot that they’ll ever be relocated,” Esper lamented.
Planning for the dead in a climate-changed world
For towns like Hagonoy where cemeteries are now frequently submerged, experts say it is no longer enough to treat burial sites as static spaces. They must be treated as part of the urban fabric—and planned with the future in mind.
“Cemeteries can be considered as public, green or recreational spaces,” said urban planner Ragene Andrea Palma, “and such spaces are considered as green infrastructure and are key to how our cities and municipalities can address climate adaptation.”
She suggested that integrating cemetery management into broader urban design strategies — such as those aligned with land use and climate risk planning — can help local government units (LGUs) better anticipate threats like flooding, sea-level rise, or land subsidence.
“Design and planning solutions can range from simple actions such as planting more trees to cool cemetery walkways and support biodiversity, to more complex strategies such as integrating cemeteries into urban corridors, or networks of blue-green spaces, so these can be part of everyday mobility routes,” she said.
“Cemeteries are also historical and cultural spaces in the city, and in our context, many are affected by subsidence and worsening floods due to the climate crisis. It is important for cities to take actions that are respectful for different communities and feasible for local governments to implement.”
Palma emphasised that while immediate steps may be necessary, they should not be rushed or implemented without context. “[T]hese may become band-aid solutions and may also pose risks or do more harm than good,” she warned.
Still, she identified three priority actions that LGUs could consider when working to rehabilitate cemeteries:
“Immediate measures would include developing flooding [ot] disaster protocols that cover Undas and other events taking place in cemeteries and its surrounding area, given we now experience more severe weather events during the last quarter of the year; ensuring maintenance of spaces is properly observed; and very importantly, assessing the cemeteries’ risks and impacts on the environment.”
For medium- to long-term solutions, Palma acknowledged the challenges of space and overcrowding, especially in older cemeteries located in urban centers. Still, she said, there are opportunities to innovate.
“[W]here still feasible, we can look into design solutions, such as improving and increasing elevated and vertical columbaria, which are space-efficient, maximizing niche capacity, and improving greenery and paths,” she explained.
“Where applicable, long-term solutions should also include determining buffer areas with corresponding information-education efforts on the environment, sanitation, and public health, and may explore the transformation of cemeteries into ‘forest memorials’ (or in our case, perhaps ‘mangrove memorials’) and gardens [or] arboretums.”
In the most extreme cases—such as chronically flooded or irreparably damaged burial grounds—managed relocation may be necessary, Palma said. But this should never be done in haste.
“Where really necessary, and where there are resources available, the managed relocation of cemeteries is also a solution, although this should entail proper consultation and engagement with the local communities (e.g., families, parishes, and the general public), so that considerations are taken into account.”
What local government is doing and what many still hope for
In a public post, Hagonoy Mayor Ma. Rosario “Ate Charo” Sy-Alvarado Mendoza announced that cleanup efforts were underway at the Hagonoy Public Cemetery and that the local government unit (LGU) had set aside funds to rehabilitate the site by 2026.
“The Municipal Government is aware of the burden carried by every resident who is forced to wade through dirty water just to light a candle for their loved ones,” the mayor said.
While the announcement was welcomed by residents with loved ones in the public cemetery, many hope that similar action will eventually extend to other burial grounds in Hagonoy that are facing the same fate.
For families with relatives resting in private cemeteries like the Hagonoy Memorial Park, the hope remains that no grave, however submerged, will be left behind.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been with my loved ones—especially my parents and siblings—and now, the few times we get to visit them, sometimes only once a year, we can’t even do that anymore because of this terrible flooding,” Esper stressed.
“That’s why we hope that if Mayor Charo of Hagonoy truly cares for those in other cemeteries in Hagonoy, she would also show the same concern for those in Hagonoy Memorial."
INQUIRER.net has reached out to the Office of the Mayor of Hagonoy for an interview or official statement regarding the status of private cemeteries like the Hagonoy Memorial Park. As of this writing, the office has acknowledged receipt of our request via email.
In the same Facebook post, the mayor’s office also noted efforts to engage with private cemeteries:
“On the other hand, the government is striving to coordinate with other private cemeteries to ensure order ahead of the upcoming Undas observance."
Experts warn that as seas rise and infrastructure fails to adapt, the number of submerged cemeteries will rise. Globally, relocating one grave can cost up to P500,000. In flood-prone, resource-strapped towns like Hagonoy, the price of inaction is less monetary than it is moral.
“We can’t even visit them anymore,” Esper said. “I just hope some help comes before their memory is completely erased.”- Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN
