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We agree with Governor Joey Sarte Salceda of Albay. He said
“It’s better to spend millions and have zero-casualty than
gamble on the lives of the people” when accused of wasting P5
million to evacuate 130,000 residents. These people would have been
injured or killed had Typhoon Frank struck Albay as the Philippine
Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa)
had warned.
Instead of landing in Bicol on Saturday, Frank
made a turn for Samar.
Salceda was also right in complaining about the
Pagasa’s inaccuracy.
But we should also point out that Congress and
Malacañang should equip Pagasa properly with state of the art
typhoon tracking equipment and satellite facilities that only rich
nations like the United States, Japan and the Western European
countries possess because they can afford them.
And since we are doing the finger-pointing game,
we should also curse corrupt people—especially those in or
connected to the Palace who steal and misuse government money as in
the fertilizer and swine-fund scams, the Malacañang paper bags of
money for congressmen and governors caper and other criminal
activities. These thefts have made it impossible to buy or rent the
facilities Pagasa needs for it to become an accurate meteorological
agency.
What happened on Saturday, said Salceda, was the
third time Pagasa made a wrong weather forecast for Albay under his
watch. But as the old proverb says, “An ounce of prevention is
better than a pound of cure.”
During this time of the year without fail, year
in and year out, typhoons come to the Philippines and often enough
cause loss of lives and property destruction.
Local government executives and the communities,
guided by an advanced Pagasa forecast, and assisted by all the local
branches of the relevant cabinet departments, should have an
effective and easy way to implement disaster preparedness plans.
At the first sign that disaster is on the way,
the plan should be carried out. Evacuations, as Governor Salceda and
his people did, should be carried out immediately with the
assistance of the police and by appropriate branches of the Armed
Forces.
Of course, the National Disaster Coordinating
Council should be there, too. That seemed not to have been the case
this time with Typhoon Frank. Why?
NDCC couldn’t coordinate
Some sources say that the National Disaster
Coordinating Council (NDCC) could not do its job of coordinating
because it was relying on cellular phones. It has no backup means of
communications in case cell phones aren’t working. When there is a
power outage cell sites that depend on electricity are as dead as
mummies in Egyptian tombs. Apparently on Sunday 2,700 cell sites
were not working because of the power outage. So NDCC’s officials
and men were not in adequate and steady contact with each other and
the people in disaster areas.
Even when electricity is flowing and cell sites
are working, dozens of reasons can make cell phone signals weak or
disappear.
The NDCC and every agency involved in disaster
management should have an alternative and backup means of
communications.
Coast Guard had pants down
President Gloria Arroyo lost her cool over the
incoherence of the Coast Guard commander she was talking to while
she was enroute to the United States. Like someone caught with his
pants down, he couldn’t tell the President if the PCG had given MV
Princess of the Stars clearance to sail and when or if the PCG had
given a no-sail order to all ships and at what time.
Twenty-four hours after the Sulpicio Lines ship
sank, the Coast Guard could still not tell the public—and the
President—exactly what had happened and where. At one point, the
PCG officer interviewed by CNN could only hem and haw and was forced
to say “the safety of our personnel is paramount.”
In fairness, we must understand that the PCG
doesn’t have the best of boats and doesn’t have proper
communications equipment needed in a perfect storm.
Disaster management in Japan
Japan is a great model for disaster
management—in earthquakes especially.
It’s not just because Japan is rich and
equipped with state of the art equipment. It’s also because of the
Japanese community spirit.
The Japanese Empire’s Occupation Army gave us
Filipinos lessons in forming neighborhood associations that worked.
Unfortunately, we dropped our neighborhood spirit as soon as the
freewheeling air of democracy came back at the end of the Second
World War.
And even Japan now has problems of disaster
prevention and management. A government white paper just released
shows that communities are now less capable of doing immediate
disaster management and relief work. The principal reasons are
Japan’s acutely aging population and the paucity of young people
willing to work as volunteer firefighters and disaster relief
workers.
The Japanese prime minister had set the goal
last year of achieving zero deaths from disasters. The white paper
says that may be very difficult to achieve.
The present efforts of the Japanese government
to encourage births—and convince the people that it has not been a
great idea after all to prevent births and abort babies—will take
at least another generation to have an effect. Maybe never. For some
experts say that when the population imbalance reaches the point
Japan is now in, it becomes impossible to reverse the
more-deaths-than-births equation and have a population with more
young people than old.
Perhaps the Japinoys will be Japan’s
salvation. These are the scores of thousands of children born of
illicit relationships between Japanese men and Filipinas, whom the
Japanese government will now recognize as citizens.
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