The flooding that paralyzed the North Luzon Expressway near San Simon in Pampanga may trace to a repair job that was never cleaned up. San Miguel Corp. president Ramon Ang blames soil and debris left behind during the 2024 repair of the NLEx Tulaoc Bridge for blocking the waterway, and he has offered to clear it himself.
The cause, per Ramon Ang
Speaking to journalists this week, Ang said debris from the Tulaoc Bridge repair blocked the flow of water released from Pantabangan Dam in Nueva Ecija, which cascades through Pampanga before emptying into Manila Bay. “The soil had blocked the waterways. They just left it there. They have to remove it to clear the waterways,” he told the Inquirer, which ran his explanation in full. The bottleneck, he says, is what flooded the expressway and stranded motorists for hours on Monday.
The proposed fixes
Ang says his firm is ready to help unclog the channel near Tulaoc Bridge, using a lidar drone survey to find the exact blockage and a backhoe to remove it, work he estimates could take about a week. In parallel, the expressway operator is raising pavements on the San Simon segment to keep water off the road, and the Department of Transportation has directed NLEX to send flood warnings by SMS and electronic roadside signs. The congestion itself is under review, with NLEX ordered to explain the delays that stretched into near-daylong jams.
Flood fix tracker
| Measure | Who is doing it | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Unclog Tulaoc waterway (lidar + backhoe) | San Miguel / Ramon Ang | Clears blocked flow from Pantabangan Dam, ~1 week |
| Raise San Simon pavements | MPTC / NLEX | Keeps floodwater off the expressway surface |
| SMS + roadside flood advisories | NLEX (DOTR directive) | Warns motorists ahead of affected stretches |
| Dredge rivers to Manila Bay | Longer-term plan | Ang says full dredging could take ~3 months |
Ang rejects the airport theory
Ang pushed back on claims that San Miguel’s New Manila International Airport project in Bulacan caused the floods, saying it sits within the shoreline in Barangay Taliptip and is not connected to the Angat River or Pantabangan Dam. The expressway flooding adds to a punishing week for motorists in the north, days after dam water releases and class suspensions across Luzon and a separate bridge collapse in Tarlac. With the fix pipeline now laid out, the question is how fast the expressway returns to normal for the thousands who depend on it daily.
