Addressing calamities

EDITORIAL

As of today, around 100 small-scale miners are feared dead after a landslide buried their bunkhouse in Itogon, Benguet, during the onslaught of super typhoon  “Ompong” in northern Luzon recently. 

Scores of others have been confirmed killed in floods and landslides, among them two first responders trying to retrieve people trapped in the mud, also in Itogon. At least 42 landslides have been recorded in the Cordillera, authorities said as Ompong howled its way like Typhoon Yolanda which whipped the Philippines leaving some 7,000 dead.

Yolanda has often been described as the strongest storm on record. Ompong was as destructive.

And while the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council has yet to release validated casualty figures, it reported a total of 250,036 people in seven regions affected by Ompong.

A total of 133,457 people, or 34,169 families, had to stay in 1,190 evacuation centers, the NDRRMC said.

Cagayan, which initially bore the brunt of Ompong, had to be placed under a state of calamity as it sustained P46 million in damaged infrastructure and P4.6 billion in destroyed crops.

Meanwhile, Central Luzon, known as the catch basin of the Cordilleras, saw massive flooding, with at least 108 barangays in 18 towns and cities in Pangasinan under water days after Ompong headed for China.

There were the calls for preemptive evacuation and preparation of evacuation sites days before Ompong hit the country, with barangay officials going house to house to urge residents, especially in high-risk to pack up and leave their homes.

Satellite phones, internet connections, rescue equipment and boats were also readily available for deployment in many provinces.

But then, in some if not most cases, vulnerable people refused to evacuate.

Ompong also highlighted areas where immediate rehabilitation needs to be done, if only to mitigate far more disastrous consequences from similar typhoons.

Mining activities in Baguio and Benguet have caused sinkholes and are putting areas at risk of landslides and flash floods from the mountains during heavy rainfall like what happened to Ucab in Itogon where bodies are still being unearthed from the huge landslide.

Improvements have been made in our preparedness for natural hazards. New equipment for Pagasa has allowed improvements in weather forecasting and modeling climate change. Early warning systems and communicating climate and disaster-related information to the public have also seen progress in the past decade.

Some regional DRRM Councils have even initiated projects to reduce disaster risks in their areas and increase the resilience of their constituencies.

Nonetheless, glaring problems in the national and local DRRM remain evident. A lack of sufficient manpower and financial and technical resources hinder the implementation of programs throughout the DRRM framework. At the height of Typhoon Ompong for example, no one was answering the landline phone of the regional office of the Office of Civil Defense in Baguio and some days later.

Inefficiency and typhoon awareness in dealing with disasters remain low in some regions, partially worsened by corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency. Some government agencies even refuse to provide necessary data for planning against disasters to other agencies or civil society organizations.

The most significant of these problems is the focus of governance on responding to disasters instead of prevention and mitigation. Poor land use planning and ineffective building codes repeatedly expose the most vulnerable sectors, including the urban poor and the marginalized, to the worst of such impacts.

The government must enforce existing policies and implement programs to empower communities to prepare for, if not avoid, the impacts of extreme natural hazards.

As they are at the forefront of these impacts, LGUs must explore all available options to build the capacity in their respective areas to respond to possible disasters.

Proper land use planning would provide not only DRRM-related benefits such as reducing vulnerability to immediate hazards, but also long-term economic and environmental benefits that can never be matched by short-term pursuit of financial gains.

Resilience is no longer enough. Prevention is and always will be better than cure.  Is there really a need to change the system if the solution is a change in the people in it?

Unless government acts swiftly and compassionately in preparing for another disaster like a strong typhoon like Ompong, more lives could be lost.