MANILA, Philippines – The torrential rain brought in early August by southwest monsoon and enhanced by tropical storm ‘Haikui’, poured down over Manila and Luzon from August 6 to August 8, hitting leading retail, fast food and telecommunication businesses.

But most reported that damage was not severe because they were prepared after Typhoon Ondoy devastated Manila in 2009.

Sy-led SM Prime Holdings, for example, made one of their malls more flood-resistant by adding in a catchment facility. Meanwhile, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) elevated some of their infrastructure so it would not be covered by rising flood water. At the same time, Globe Telecom enacted its own internal alert system to trigger early deployment of personel to affected areas.

More rain poured down in the first 24 hours of this August monsoon rain than the first 24 hours of accumulated rainfall during tropical storm Ondoy, known internationally as Ketsana — yet businesses were not as badly damaged.

Below are several of the top businesses in the country that learned from the severe floods 3 years ago and have taken steps not to relive the damage or at least insure themselves for them.

SM Prime Holdings, the Philippines’ largest mall operator

Learning from the devastation of the Ondoy floods, Sy-led SM Prime Holdings focused on reengineering malls in flood prone areas, building new developments in strategic locations, focusing on safe design, and making sure their insurance was even more compressive. 

This recent heavy rain flooded the basement of SM City Santa Mesa, situated in an affected area at the boundary of Quezon City and San Juan City.

‘[SM] Santa Mesa is now closed in the basement because of the flooding and it will take us about 45 days to get that back into business but the ground and the 2nd floor will be open,’ said Jeffrey C. Lim, Executive Vice President and CFO for SM Prime Holdings at a briefing on August 15. 

The lower level of the mall with a Hypermarket outlet is not expected to reopen until the end of September, causing company executives to worry about its impact on their bottom line.

‘Even with the ‘not opening for 45 days,’ we will be able to actually claim for business interruption,’ Lim said, referring to their insurance coverage for these incidents.

He explained that all of SM Prime’s ‘developments and shopping centers are insured against all risk, including acts of god, like typhoons [and] earthquakes.’

Their comprehensive insurance coverage may also allow the retailer to claim the money it lost from its tenants for the period. Lim said ‘7,207 tenants were not able to open because of problems like accessibility.’ He said their policy was not to penalize them for the period. 

‘Apart from ensuring that the malls are strategically located, the engineering group of SM prime actually carefully stud[ied] the location of each and every mall and we try to make sure the design and the structure are compliant,’ said Lim.

He also cited SM City Masinag in Antipolo City, which experienced minimal flooding during the recent monsoon rain. It was heavily flooded during past storms, prompting the company to spend P25 million to P30 million to ‘build a rain catchment facility that can actually store about 17 million liters of water.’

Through this catchment facility, the mall structure slowly release the built up water after the storms so the surrounding community doesn’t experience flooding.

In SM Marikina, which is located in an area often hit by floods, Lim said their mall was built on stilts to allow water to flow beneath it and empty into the nearby river.