In a City Known for Its Shoes Water Up to Its Knees

Marikina is famed for its cobblers, whose handmade shoes are a source of local pride. Its Shoe Museum is home to a pair of shoes from each president of the Philippines, including 800 of the more than 3,000 pairs in the collection of Imelda R. Marcos. A barge in the Marikina River sports statues of two giant shoes, and what the city fathers claim is the world’s largest functional shoe — more than 15 feet long — is on display in a local mall.

 During the dry season, visitors can stroll a river promenade. But at times like these, when it rains and rains until it seems it will never stop, Marikina becomes famous for its floods.

For days now, parts of Manila and surrounding provincial areas have been submerged after a series of storms intensified the usual strong monsoon rains. An estimated two million people have been affected by the flooding in the capital and 15 surrounding provincial areas. At least 72 people have been killed since the deluge began in late July.

Lying on the eastern edge of Manila, Marikina sits in a valley that is crisscrossed by a major river and several creeks, all of which makes it one of the most flood-prone areas in the region. Traveling on the commuter train that runs above the Marikina River, the scale of the inundation is clear.

The banks of the river have disappeared, and in many places any semblance of a river is gone. Where a clearly defined riverbed once zigzagged under the elevated train, now all that can be seen is a vast waterscape of churning, fast-flowing brown currents dotted with debris. In some areas, landmarks like the top of a basketball hoop give indications of what was previously dry land. In other areas, the waters have engulfed entire neighborhoods, which appear to have been built in the middle of a river.

A row of cobbler shops could be seen unattended, with about two feet of brown water covering their floors. The shoe barge sat in the middle of the river and, much like the city itself, was badly damaged and covered with mud. The river promenade was underwater and surrounded by evacuees receiving shelter in schools, churches and government buildings.

Not far from the swollen Marikina River, a police officer, Fernando Frayre, looked haggard on Thursday as he stood outside the Shoe Museum, where Mrs. Marcos’s shoes are displayed along one entire wall. Mr. Frayre said he and a few volunteers spent a nerve-racking evening watching the floodwater approach the museum. The water crested about 70 feet from the museum, but the officer said he had been prepared for the worst.

“We were ready to rescue the shoes,” Mr. Frayre said.

One of the roads leading to the Marikina River is now a waist-deep canal where an eerie line of slow-moving evacuees could be seen on Thursday afternoon making their way from a submerged neighborhood to higher ground. In one large, colorful inflatable beach raft sat a 12-year-old boy playing a PlayStation Portable as his 10-year-old sister carried an infant dressed in immaculate white footie pajamas.

Having been stranded for days on the second floor of their home near the river, their parents decided that it was time to move in with relatives until the water subsided. Surrounded by inundated shacks and grinding poverty, the clean, well-dressed children were completely dry in the large toy raft, which was pulled by six shirtless men with grim expressions. Beside them were neatly packed designer suitcases and backpacks.

Waiting at the edge of the water was their father, in a late-model Toyota Land Cruiser, to take them to their relatives’ home on higher ground. The father, who did not want to give his name, said he and a teenage son would continue to sleep on the second floor of the flooded house to guard it.

On Thursday, the sun was shining in Manila for the first time in nearly two weeks, and the water was subsiding in some parts of the city, though an estimated 300,000 people remained in hundreds of evacuation centers.

A senior government official on Wednesday echoed what many of the beleaguered evacuees — most of them victims as well of the floods of 2009 — have been saying: that cataclysmic flooding is becoming routine for Manila. In 2009, the typhoons Ketsana (called Ondoy locally) and Parma struck within a week, causing flooding that affected more than 9 million people and killed 929, according to the government disaster relief agency.

“The only way we can be prepared for the impact of climate change is to accept that these recent developments in our country like intense weather disturbances, heavy rainfall, as well as long dry season, are the ‘new normal’ ” said Ramon Paje, the environment and natural resources secretary.

For Eleanor Ropero and her family, whose home near the overflowing banks of the Marikina River is still under three feet of water, fleeing the floodwater has become an uncomfortable routine, she said. As she languished on Thursday in a sweltering evacuation center with her three children and two grandchildren, she said that they had all been evacuated before, in 2009, but that this time was worse — it was their second evacuation this week.