The Philippines: Irresoluble Problem of Floods

by the Resource Recovery Movement, Center for Human and Society

In the recent period, floods plagued a considerable area, encompassing broad sections across the globe.

Heavy recent flooding in India and Serbia, China, Japan among many other areas around the world

With heavy inundations such as these that can often kill with their own sheer power by drowning, is there still a need for the water to be poisonous, toxic and very much hazardous to health or even deadly enough to kill?

In the Philippines, not the Secretary of the Department of National Defense now a bit too advanced in years unlike many past defense secretaries who braved calamities and got wet and dirty on the ground, but the helmsman of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) is a mite too busy nowadays. The chief is extremely tied up in many corners that at most times the poor disaster response executive does not even know where to plant his foot next.

Yet it is an inescapable Catch-22 situation. If the new chief of the Philippine Office of Civil Defense and the Secretariat of the NDRRMC follows the examples of his bosses, just stay put and let things unveil all by themselves, the people will be angry.

If the NDRRMC head appears very mobile and busy, the people are still not going to be appeased. They will be just as angry anyway. No option is a better one, even that of balancing between not doing anything and making an effort to be hyperactive.

A senseless new tragedy most recently hit the Philippines - not so much a tragedy as thousands of helpless citizens getting killed.

The powerful storm caused a maritime vessel Maharlika II in Cebu to drown, leaving as many as more than one hundred casualties. As of this writing, 70 persons are missing due to the tragedy.

All over the nation: Floods and landslides, destroyed crops, dead farm animals

ruined houses, buildings, vital installations and much more other forms of damage

A really sensible government will take every means to prevent people from getting caught in floods. Sadly enough, this is never true in the Philippines and not in many places around the world. They will simply snort: Expensive solutions! No one specially me needs them! So they let whole communities drown or suffer getting submerged waist or neck-deep in murky, life-threatening floodwaters

Both children and adults brave the waters in floods. No one puts the fear in their hearts that doing so is extremely dangerous to their health and the effects may only be felt after a long time.

 

Posted Under Themes:

#MarioPH

#Fong-Wong #Fung-Wong

#Flood

#Philippines

#FloodControl

#RescuePH

#Rescue

Read more from here.

On the Tacloban Declaration: A simple message with hint / clue for ‪#‎ASEM‬ Manila

The ‪#‎Tacloban‬ experience of ‪#‎Haiyan‬ / ‪#‎Yolanda‬ is both challenging and fraught with danger. Within the context of a world community slowly becoming more aware of the diminishing validity of certain combines that still keep going through the very same motions of guiding and leading this planet's population into their perceived state of well being.

It cannot be overemphasized that the new normal will have to incorporate the very resources with which to nourish disaster preparedness, risk prevention and response. In the Tacloban experience, many governments opted to donate directly to a lot of towns outside of Tacloban and if possible, in an incognito manner whereas it is public knowledge in that area that more or less tens of thousands died in the Tacloban tragedy and only measly 20s or 50s or a few hundreds perished in the other places.

Months after #Yolanda, the stench of death still hang in the air, no one will be able to contest that. How many in Tacloban and in the provinces hit got their lives back really in terms of power supply, food, children being able to go back to their classrooms, people getting back to their livelihood... a terrible statistic to swallow but the reality is there, glaring and accusing.

For some, the acceptable assumption was to provide succor to those people that were supposedly left behind in the gargantuan efforts to resuscitate Tacloban. However the resulting product was the opposite of those altruistic intentions. When fires started happening in the United Nations donated tent homes, the predicament of a people who were said to be receiving the lion's share of disaster and humanitarian aid became exposed to one and all. Thousands still living in tents long after the calamity and to be honest, not only the fires but scores of other causes kept killing the survivors. It was not a blessing for some to have survived. In the throes of death post-disaster, they should have been thinking what a curse to have lived through all that bedlam and sham.

All the fanfare about construction projects getting bogged down by corruption, complaints at the highest levels by rehabilitation managers of the stiff resistance of key national leaders to pushing the disaster-hit locality towards fuller and better recovery was not just hype. These were real circumstance that were happening as if the nonchalance and cold treatment of the early days of post-#Yolanda were not enough.

That the Taclobanons have not really been truly helped, but have instead become the butt of too much aggrandizement and enrichment by some sectors, the shameless public infighting within the public sector, the frustration of many who have the real desire to be of help not out of great and grand ideas but out of new approaches and ways of dealing with old problems that have never been fully understood is the loss of the world community.

In the end, the cliches and all the damned rhetoric will apply, indeed it will not just be #Haiyan, or other much vaunted mega disasters like Japan's. But cliches and rhetoric do not help and lighten the day for the victims in Tacloban and elsewhere that there was real catastrophe and not sheer descriptions in paper and oratory.

What it cannot be helped to be preached is that with the people of the world shifting their own personal paradigms, isn't it clear enough that the leaders attending ASEM and future other events like this try at least to go with the flow?

For true leaders at heart, it is really sad to be clearly left behind, albeit still talking and writing voluminous diaries of things past and future, holding on to spoils and many other things unpleasant. That's the danger.

Shifting gears and getting hands really, really dirty might get the rehabilitation and resurging development in Tacloban clearly going in more truer terms. That is the real challenge and heaven not forbid, it might even cleanse some soul...

Clue #1:

A Philippine scientist and a Russian counterpart argued who among them had the lowest salary and worst treatment in the world.

Clue #2 - 400:

Please find out for yourself, it might just be right beside you.

The Story of the Haiyan Forecasting Fiasco

Over the more than a week we have been engaged in preparing a paper on the subject of Philippine forecasting with higher level of confidence. The paper is due to be published soon. Due to the timid and shy forecasting by the Philippine government, thousands of helpless victims lay dead floating in the seas off Tacloban and other towns as well as littering the streets in many areas devastated by Super Typhoon #Haiyan codenamed #Yolanda.

Below are samples of the Severe Storm Warnings by the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) that were prepared with the data generated by the Philippine weather bureau:

Thursday, 07 November 2013 00:57

NDRRMC Update and Advisory re Severe Weather Bulletin for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) Attachments: [issued on 09 November 2013, 3:30PM] 256 Kb NDRRMC Advisory re SWB No.12 (FINAL) for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 09 November 2013, 3:30PM] 265 Kb NDRRMC Update re SWB No.11 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 09 November 2013, 11:00AM] 279 Kb NDRRMC Advisory re SWB No.11 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 09 November 2013, 11:00AM] 289 Kb NDRRMC Update re SWB No.10 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 09 November 2013, 5:00AM] 924 Kb NDRRMC Advisory re SWB No.10 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 09 November 2013, 5:00AM] 964 Kb NDRRMC Update re SWB No.9 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 08 November 2013, 11:00PM] 283 Kb NDRRMC Advisory re SWB No.9 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 08 November 2013, 11:00PM] 294 Kb NDRRMC Update re SWB No.8 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 08 November 2013, 5:00PM] 400 Kb NDRRMC Advisory re SWB No.8 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 08 November 2013, 5:00PM] 417 Kb NDRRMC Update re SWB No.7 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 08 November 2013, 11:00AM] 390 Kb NDRRMC Advisory re SWB No.7 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 08 November 2013, 11:00AM] 387 Kb NDRRMC Update re SWB No.6 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN) [issued on 08 November 2013, 5:00AM] 1202 Kb NDRRMC Update re SWB No.6 for Typhoon YOLANDA (HAIYAN)

How many more Negros, Bohol Earthquakes?

From over 40 casualties, the death toll has risen to nearly 100 in the Carmen, Bohol Province-Cebu City earthquake. At that figure, the Carmen-Cebu tremor can qualify as a Killer Quake. Cebu and nearby areas has to be declared to be in a state of calamity. There are limited manuevers that aircraft can make at the Cebu airport due to the cracking and opening up of the airport's runways.

The six million dollar question is: how many more incidents like those in Carmen, Bohol and Cebu City and the other ones in Leyte, Samar will we be expecting?

Were the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) prepared adequately enough with equipment to monitor ground movement, tectonic plate disturbance, the nearly 100 deaths could have been avoided. 27 Billion Philippine Pesos is earmarked for pork barrel in the 2014 General Appropriations Act out of a total expenditure program of 2.26 Trillion Philippine Pesos. Would it be difficult to allocate even half of that pork barrel budget for emergency preparedness, disaster risk reduction, equipment upgrade?

Past Warnings of Big Disaster

This site has been warning the public for more than four years since the time of the former President, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Due to the total torpedoing of the private sector (Corinthian Gardens, Forbes Park, Dasmarinas Village, the owners of high rise condominiums at the left side of EDSA southbound, among others), of the program for predicting highly lethal effects of a major tremor in Metro Manila and the replication of this effort in many urban areas in the country by the same sector in collusion with some corrupt officials in the government, a large disaster and environmental hazards summit was proposed to be supported by the Philippine Government and the United Nations, among other institutions from many other sectors - including the non-profit (minus the Napoles et al NGOs).

Wanting responses

It is reiterated that in the time of Mrs. Arroyo, only the then Administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA), Ms. Elaine Bautista, now Mrs. Horn, had the small effort to make an email message to the proponents of the 2010 Disaster and Environmental Hazards Mapping Summit. And that was only because the United Nations Environment Programm (UNEP)  told the former Ms. Bautista to get in touch with HMES 2010 organizing group. At the time, concurrent to her post in MARINA, Ms. Bautista was considered a friend of UNEP and a significant point person for the Philippine Government in relation to selected UNEP concerns - particularly about emergency and assistance.

When Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino 3rd became President, the organizing group wrote to Ms. Corazon Juliano Soliman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Gen. Voltaire Tuvera Gazmin. Ms. Soliman did not respond. It was noticed however that several days later, Gen. Gazmin, the Secretary of the Department of National Defense gave an interview to national media.

Talking with sectors in Davao

Our corporate fellows wrote this article about the Davao trip and dialogues:

Davao: Development imperatives

Like the determination of the people of Fukushima and Sendai, Japan to transfer habitat centers from low-lying areas to higher ground, this should be the resolve of government in Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan City and other areas severely hit by flash flood: immediate and comprehensive relocation. We don't care at all if the United Nations is promoting resilient communities. God bless all those hardworking people at the U.N. but to hell with that campaign of building resilient communities. We are amazed at what that very good Korean Secretary General is actually doing at his office in the U.N.. More of this item here.

Eco Summit 2010 Manila

Event Details

Time: April 8, 2010 at 8am to April 16, 2010 at 9pm
Location: Manila Hotel, Philippines
Street: 1 Rizal Park, Roxas Boulevard
City/Town: City of Manila, Philippines
Website or Map: http://savetheecology.org.u...
Phone: +639212384228,+6327102609
Event Type: conference
Organized By: Resource Recovery Movement (Philippines)

The 2010 Hazard Mapping and Environmental Summit (HMES) is intended to develop better approaches to mapping risks and dangers to communities in the Philippines and other countries with tropical climates.

It takes a cue from the recent experience in China, Indonesia and the Philippines, notwithstanding the previous experiences in Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan where scores of people died due to unforeseen occurrences during the incidence of a natural disaster: earthquake, typhoon, tsunami and other calamities.

The databasing, mapping and full coordination of efforts towards use and sharing of a full function GIS on hazards, crisis and hot spots is long due because of the long-running phenomenon of Climate Change in the planet.

Note: The organizers reserve the right to make minor changes in the Conference details prior to the actual Event.