Now that government people, including those in National Power Corp., have reported that enough time was given to warn residents living in the path of the waters released from certain dams at the height of typhoon Pepeng, they are admitting that what they did was an act of man rather than an act of God, as insurance companies are wont to say.

If an act of man resulted in loss of lives and property, then compensation must be paid by insurance companies, who may no longer hide behind the mantle of an “act of God.”

“If it can be proven that the proximate cause of the flooding was the release of the dam waters, then it was not an act of God and therefore is claimable,” so an insurance broker with experience in Lloyd’s of London tells me. “Also, where the dams are government property and they were opened by government personnel, the government is liable.”

Not to worry, though. GSIS as insurer of government entities “has adequate liability cover to pay for damage caused to private property by the dam operators.”

But government cannot shirk its duty to pay up by falling back on the defense that only God could have sent so much rain – Ondoy’s more than Katrina’s in New Orleans, and Pepeng’s more than Ondoy’s. Even if the consequences of NOT releasing the dam waters could have been more dire, “the fact is those consequences did not happen.”

Owners of cars, houses, farms that were destroyed by the floods and the bereaved who lost family members or friends could band together and hire an insurance adjuster to determine the proximate cause of the damage, which Lloyd’s defines as “the most direct cause of loss, that is, the most effective and dominant cause in a chain of events which ends in the loss.”

The row between government and survivor-victims will not end until a credible
third party weighs in and wades in.