Disaster preparedness

NO HOLDS BARRED
Ike Señeres

Haiti’s hit by a strong earthquake and issues about disaster preparation and disaster mitigation are now hot. Does the government even know the technical differences between the two? I hope so, because the difference could spell life or death for many.

How true is it that Senator Loren Legarda was placed on the spot in a New York TV show when she argued for disaster mitigation rather than disaster preparation? She was said to be citing theories, while her adversary was citing statistics. Is this a reflection of our present government thinking wherein theories are given more attention rather than statistics?

The Americans beat the Canadians in responding to the Haitian disaster, even if the Canadian Governor General is of Haitian origin. The race between them should have started years ago, to help the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere that is practically in their own backyard.

Haitians are mad about aid not coming in as fast, but who are they mad at? They could be mad at Haitian President Rene Preval, but he himself is a victim too, becoming homeless after his palace collapsed. Perhaps they should be mad at their former colonizer France, for being slower than America and Canada in sending help.

Preval seems to have a nice excuse for not being able to do much, since he is a victim himself. Is this an acceptable excuse from an elected head of state? We do not want to hear this kind of excuse in the event that it happens here, when the governors and mayors become victims themselves.

Actually the correct technical term for disaster preparation is disaster risk reduction (DRR), a term that is usually used now in tandem with climate change adaptation (CCA). There is not much that we could do to reduce the risk of earthquakes however, except perhaps to make sure that all buildings are compliant with building safety codes.
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I remember that during the Ruby Tower disaster, corruption became an issue as it was discovered that substandard steel bars were used by contractors who were trying to cut down on costs. This could have been discovered by building inspectors, but of course that is another corruption issue by itself.

Let us not joke about the fact that high rise buildings are being built now all over the Philippines , without anyone paying attention to their capability to survive strong earthquakes. I do not know who built the Haitian presidential palace, but if the French built it, it would appear that the Spanish are better builders than them, as evidenced by the survival of the main UST building up to now. It swings with the quakes, they say.

Who could be held responsible in the event that high rise buildings will fall during an earthquake? Since the building safety officials are under the cities and municipalities, could we fault the mayors just in case? Where will the buck stop? Could we fault the DILG since it is the oversight of all local governments? Could we fault the boss of the DILG Secretary?
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Another disaster is bound to happen if there is a failure of automation in the coming election, and people could die too if there will be riots and runaway killings. I am officially predicting by way of this column that the Comelec will not be able to meet the deadline for putting the system in place, machines and ballots included.

It took me more than a year to deploy about a thousand machines for a nationwide computer system, after about six months of testing and acceptance procedures. It took the banks about 30 years to deploy about 20,000 ATMs. The Comelec thinks it can deploy 82,000 machines in less than a year! The machines could be hack-free as Chairman Jose Melo says, but are they fault-free? Why does he not accept my challenge to hack it?

Only about 30% of the initial batch of about 8,000 machines (less than 10% of the total) passed the testing and acceptance procedures. After lowering the threshold, all of the machines passed 100%. Critics are saying that the Comelec is bending over too much. Dangerously, I should add.
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