Flooded out despite billions spent

A flooded street in Calumpit in Bulacan Province. While devastating flooding has become frequent in the country, billions of dollars’ worth of funds allocated to flood-control projects have been embezzled. — Jes Aznar/The New York Times

CYNTHIA Colindres remembers her low-lying village flooding every two or three years when she was growing up, a fact of life in the typhoon-plagued Philippines.

Nowadays, she said, it happens two or three times a year.