Outlasting the long dry

Forty-three degrees Celsius in November. That isn’t supposed to happen here, not when the amihan breeze should already be cooling Iloilo City’s streets. Yet on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, DOST-PAGASA placed Iloilo City at 43°C and Roxas City at 42°C — right inside the danger category — while Dumangas and Mambusao baked at 40°C. Step outside at noon and the air feels thick enough to chew.

Out in the province, the heat has already written a brutal tab. Three months of scarce rain forced Dueñas to declare a state of calamity after 190 hectares dried up. Across Dueñas, Lambunao, San Enrique, Banate, Janiuay, Bingawan, and Lemery, 5,956 farmers are staring at 3,792.93 hectares of parched rice fields and PHP 124.26 million in losses. December — the actual start of the four-month dry peak stretching through March 2027 — hasn’t even arrived.

We have seen this movie before, and we know how much the ticket costs. Back in May 2024, Iloilo waited until agricultural losses hit PHP 1.025 billion across 23,699 farmers before declaring a provincewide calamity and unlocking PHP 76 million in emergency funds (a PHP 61 million Quick Response Fund plus PHP 15 million more). We paid for the funeral instead of the medicine.

This time, we don’t have to. Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. has already mobilized the Provincial El Niño Task Force under Executive Order No. 67, Series of 2026, and disaster chief Cornelio Salinas notes that a PHP 82 million Quick Response Fund (QRF) sits on standby. Waiting to tap that 30 percent QRF allocation under Republic Act No. 10121 is one tool, but the real leverage lies in the law’s 70 percent preparedness fund. Dueñas gives planners an early testing ground right now to deploy solar water pumps, small water-impounding projects, and cloud-seeding logistics before the rest of the province cracks.

Acting Provincial Agriculturist Geron Magbanua says farmer assistance is ready ahead of the peak. Good. Let’s steer that aid toward short-gestation, low-water crops — mungbean, corn, hardy vegetables — and pair subsidies with alternate wetting and drying (AWD) irrigation and barangay-level crop insurance so those 3,792.93 hectares still feed families in March.

Water and heat require the same practical urgency. The province’s Nov. 1 water conservation call works best if households and businesses pair rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling with hard data. We already have the 2024 drought map showing exactly which 444 barangays in 16 municipalities — home to 265,901 residents — ran dry. Send the tankers, fix the leaks, and rehab the deep wells there before December. Meanwhile, the task force’s five-sector framework — covering food, water, energy, health, and public safety — can push cities, schools, and employers to shift heavy outdoor work to early mornings, set up shaded hydration hubs, and green our scorching transit corridors.

We can’t stop the Pacific from warming into 2027. What we can stop is acting surprised when the wells run low in February.