This is part of a NiCHE series that investigates if rivers can be heritage, and if so, what kind of heritage. A companion to our series on Canadian Heritage Rivers, authors focus on the epistemological, historical, and cultural place of rivers with lessons and parallels for Canada, including comparative stories and/or lessons.

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Lina had been living with her husband and two children on the banks of Cagayan River since she came to the city to live with her husband. She relied on the river for various domestic chores: cooking, washing plates and doing the laundry. Her entire family bathe in the river and her young children swam in it for recreation.  A lifelong resident of the city, I grew up on the western side of the river, while my school and eventual workplace are located on the eastern border. Every day on my morning commute, I would see the shanty houses lining the riverbanks and the families doing their morning routines by the river. Just like Lina’s family, the lives of these households along the river revolved around the nearby waterway, reflecting the historical centrality of the river to our hometown, Cagayan de Oro, in the Philippines.

In this piece, I take up the role of Cagayan River as the center and embodiment of the city’s physical and cultural history. First, I present the history of the Cagayan de Oro, a former Spanish colonial town which began in the Cagayan River. I then chronicle the tragic event that forced the river to reclaim its historical morphology, killing thousands of residents. Finally, I discuss how the river today embodies the turning point in the city’s history, becoming the site of the remembrance for this tragic past.

Cagayan river is one of the 18 major river basins of the Philippines with its headwaters starting in the mountains of Kalatungan and Kitanglad, the sacred ancestral lands of the indigenous peoples of Cagayan de Oro and its neighboring province, Bukidnon.¹ About 80% of the river’s watershed is in Bukidnon and is primarily rain-fed, receiving an average of 2500 mm of rain annually.² From the mountains to the city, Cagayan river is 90 kilometers in length, draining into Macajalar Bay, the port gateway of Southern Philippines. As it cuts across the city, the river serves as the natural dividing line between its two congressional districts (east and west), linked by up to nine bridges.

The everyday lives of households like Lina’s and the urban landmarks that line the river reflects the history of the city as a Spanish colony. The church cathedral, built by Spanish Friars in 1624 is a few steps from the river. So are the city hall, called Casa Real during the colonial period, and the town square now called Gaston Park. The proximity of these landmarks to the river is typical of the urban planning in Spanish colonies, where the catholic church, government buildings and open square are clustered together in the municipal plaza. Roads and pathways, laid out during the colonial period, emanate from the town plaza in a grid pattern. Burgos, the street that lines the eastern banks of Cagayan River, starts at the doorway of the cathedral and stretches two kilometers. Burgos itself is filled with houses typical of the colonial era: two-story wooden structures, with open lay out and large windows. The river’s role as both the site and witness to early human settlement—and the urban transformations thereafter—constitute one of its fundamental heritage values. As widely recognized, early cities emerged and thrived on the banks of rivers because it acts as the natural infrastructure required for household chores, transport and trade.³ The development of Cagayan de Oro, from the early settlements along the river, to being a Spanish colonial municipality, and its current status as a highly-urbanized port city, confirms the vital and inextricable link it has to Cagayan River.

Being the gateway to Mindanao, the southern island of the Philippines, Cagayan de Oro attracted settlers from nearby rural municipalities since the 1950s.⁴ Many of these new settlers earned their living as street vendors, rickshaw drivers and scrap scavengers: livelihoods that required them to live in the areas surrounding the town plaza.  By then, the city proper was already cramped with residential settlements, commercial establishments and government buildings. This forced new settlers like Lina and thousands more, to find home in the riverbanks, floodplains and even the swats of land in the middle of the river. Joseph is among hundreds of families that settled on one of the sandbars in the middle of Cagayan River, later dubbed  Isla de Oro. Joseph summed up why many in his neighborhood considered their dwelling right in the middle of the river as prime location: “There is a barrio (rural) feel here. Yet it’s only five minutes away from everywhere else [in the city].”

Then on the midnight of December 16, 2011, almost 20, 000 homes were submerged in flood waters along the 15-kilometer stretch of Cagayan river. On that night, Sendong (international name Washi), poured 181 mm of rain water in a span of 24 hours which increased the depth of Cagayan River from its normal 2 meters to 10 meters.⁵ The river had no recourse but to reclaim its historical shape and pathway, which by then was filled with thousands of houses, including Lina and Joseph’s. With a storm signal strength of category two, Sendong was considered weak and the local government did not initiate an evacuation order-not even to the neighborhoods on the riverside. For the thousands of households along the river, many woke up to the fast-rising waters that entered their homes. Before the night was over, more than 600 were killed. Some were drowned inside their homes, some were swept by the flood waters into to the open sea and some were buried in the rubble of their homes, pulverized by the raging waters (see Figure 2). To this day, more than 300 remain missing.

Fifteen years since Sendong, Cagayan de Oro has changed physically, politically and socially. Nowhere are the communities that line the riverbanks and in the riverbed. Lina’s husband rebuilt their home in the same spot where the floodwaters decimated their old house. Only this time, the pathway to the river, where they use to bathe and do household chores, is walled by a 12-kilometer flood control dike.⁶ What used to be Joseph’s neighborhood in Isla de Oro is now a large patch of greenery in the middle of the river. The city mayor from 1998 to 2013 who tolerated, some say encouraged, these settlements along the river has been voted out. Since 2013, the city government has embarked on a series of disaster prevention measures, which included the resettlement of those in the floodplains and the construction of the flood wall.

If Cagayan de Oro has changed so much in the last 15 years, what then remains as the memory of the tragedy of Sendong? How does the river act as a two-and-a-half kilometre reminder of hundreds of lives lost? How do the empty lots along the river serve as carriers of the memories of that fateful night?

On the night that Sendong fell on the city, the river proved itself a steadfast marker of its historical morphology.⁷ The rush of flood waters caused by the typhoon forced Cagayan River to reassert its natural pathway, shattering the riverine communities in its path. Today, the river weaves through the urban landscape like a slithering snake with pockets of dryland, that use to cradle vibrant settlements. These empty pockets of land, are filled today with healthy foliage of greeneries, even used as grazing area for goats, cows and horses (see Figure 3); hiding its grim past as the site where hundreds died on the night of Sendong.

In the way that Cagayan river “forced” its way into its natural pathway when it could no longer contain the flood waters proved that humans can fundamentally change the physical attributes of the waterway, but the river “archives” its “deep rooted imprints of geological and climatic history.”⁸ Figure 2 shows a man standing where his house use to be, revealing what happened in the aftermath, when the river reasserted its natural, historical form

On the night that Joseph’s neighborhood in Isla de Oro was engulfed by the surrounding waters of Cagayan River, he attempted to save his niece, nephew and sister-in-law by placing them on a mango tree that stood beside their house. As they clung to the mango tree, they saw their house uprooted from the ground by the rush of water. Fearing that the mango tree would be uprooted too, Joseph used his leg to push away large debris being carried by the water until his leg was caught in a crack of a house he was trying to shove. He was carried away with it, separating him from his family. After evading several instances of certain death, he was pulled to dryland by two men and brought to a house along Burgos. That morning, Joseph found out that his nephew and sister-in-law were killed by the floods.

Today, a marker stands beside the mango tree with following inscription:

“THE TREE OF LIFE: This mango tree saved more than 50 people, residents of Isla de

Oro, at the height of the unprecedented flooding caused by Tropical Storm Sendong last

December 16, 2011”.

Joseph’s  family and 50 more in their neighborhood were among those that sought refuge and were “saved by the mango tree.” The inscription serves as an account of how people survived the rush of flood waters during Sendong. Figure 4 shows the height of the mango tree and we can only imagine how high the flood waters went up. Compared to the houses in Isla de Oro, the mango tree is firmly rooted on the ground and stood higher than the flood waters.

In the years since Sendong happened, Cagayan River has been the benchmark in anticipating the impact and in referring to typhoons that hit the city. Today, the river is fitted with water level gauge and warning systems. These river-based monitoring and alert systems have been instrumental in enforcing the city’s disaster response mechanisms.  Strong typhoons such as Rai (2021), Kalmaegi (2025) and Penha (2026) have devastated many places in the Philippines but have largely left Cagayan de Oro unharmed.  With the memorial markers, flood control dikes and the changes to its geomorphology, Cagayan River serves as the heritage site of the historical turning point of the city in its post-Sendong era. These conspicuous, physical changes to the river embody the lessons learned by the city from the tragedy of Sendong.

Focusing on the Cagayan River, this piece presents the three-part narrative on why the river is a heritage site that archives the histories of its place and the people that live on it. The development and expansion of the modern city around it demonstrates its historical and cultural value. In the case of Cagayan River, it was Sendong that triggered it to “remember” and reclaim its historical, natural shape, decimating the settlements along its banks. Today, the river stands as the heritage marker of this tragic history and the lessons learned by city from the past.

While this piece specifically focuses on the river that shaped my hometown, I have sought to show that a river is not some dormant, none-life form, that can be easily subjugated by humans. The rivers’ utility may be so ubiquitous that humans often disregard its strength and potential dangers. This piece has shown that rivers, indeed, carry memories of the past that over the years have been forgotten. But as Sendong has shown, the river can impose its memory, at great cost to human life.

Featured Image:  Photo by Jay Rey Alovera, PhD

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Note: This post was edited post publication to standardize footnotes.

Notes:

1. Tuddao , V. B. (n.d.). Water Quality Management in the Context of Basin Management: Water Quality, River Basin Management and Governance Dynamics in the Philippines; Almaden, C. C. (2021). Examining Sustainability Issues in the Water Dependent Economy of Downstream Sectors in the Cagayande Oro River Basin, 189; Zoleta, Judy Marie R., and David Almarez Jr. (2023) “Ambient Water Analysis of Cagayan de Oro River, Philippines.” Liceo Journal ofHigher Education Research 19, no. 1.  ↩︎
2. Tan, Mars P. (2017) “Sedimentation dynamics of the cagayan de oro river catchment and the implications for its coastal marine environments.” ↩︎
3. Padawangi, Rita, and Adrian Perkasa. “River cities in Asia: Waterways in urban development and history.” (2022): p.15 ↩︎
4. Dacalos, Arianne. “Social capital as a driver of local housing reform in Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines.” Policy Studies (2025): 1-29. ↩︎
5. Franta, Benjamin, Hilly Ann Roa-Quiaoit, Dexter Lo, and Gemma Narisma. “Climate disasters in the Philippines: a case study of immediate causes and root drivers from Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao and Tropical Storm Sendong/Washi.” (2016). ↩︎
6. dpwh.gov.ph/. “DPWH Inaugurates Key Component of Cagayan de Oro …” dpwh.gov.ph/, May 26, 2023. https://www.dpwh.gov.ph/dpwh/news/30048. ↩︎
7. Bullard, Eric C. “River and Stream Morphology | Geology | Research Starters | Ebsco Research.” ebsco.com, 2019. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/geology/river-and-stream-morphology. ↩︎
8. Jain, Vikrant, Ajit Singh, Rajiv Sinha, and S. K. Tandon. “Evolution of modern river systems: an assessment of ‘landscape memory’in Indian river systems.” Episodes Journal of International Geoscience 43, no. 1 (2020): p. 535. ↩︎