From Saturday evening, when flood waters rose to many low lying areas of Metro Manila, the entire city was caught unprepared. Rescue efforts started only several hours after frantic calls for help have reverberated to all media and government outlets. Only after people cling to their precious lives on rooftops.
Ondoy's teaching #I: Be prepared for any kind storm, no matter how small or how far. Be prepared as a community (rescue mission members organized and equipped and instructions on roles and responsibilities) and as a family or inidividual.
Ondoy's teaching #II Precautionary approach to disaster is better than rescue missions. Anticipate and let us not wait for disaster to happen before we act.
Ondoy's teaching #III Locally organized rescue and relief missions are better placed to handle disasters than nationally coordinated ones. This is true both for rescue and relief and mopping up operations. National coordination should simply provide necessary support and logistics to the local missions. This would prevent small areas from being left out.
SOME LESSONS LEARNED TOO
1. Evacuation Centers - i could understand the use of school buildings as immediate solutions to locate victims but when such things happen in cities like metro Manila, the best place would be the Sports Complex like Rizal Colliseum, Amang Rodrigues Sports Center. Big churches could also be used. Sports complexes could handle more people, our problem with toilet facilities would be lessened, accomodate more people and more importantly, free the schools for the students to get back to school. In short, these structures were built to handle lots of people and therefore have more facilities than schhools have.
Evacuation centers need not be the immediate areas especially where conditions are not optimal. Moreover, sports complexes have gates that entry of people could be managed, thus eliminating a lot of non-calamity victims.
2. When disaster strikes, the first thing that develop countries do is call in the national guards to prevent looting. Had the police and military been immediately deployed, it would be easier to evacuate people because they will fell safer that their properties will not be stolen.
3. Again, in disaster activities, rescue and relief would be a lot more simple if we have an easy documentation system. But this is impossible when we do not have a 1) national ID, nor a 2) well documented list of addresses. Imagine the difficulty for a rescuer (particularly those new to the area) in locating an address and where all street names are under water. The numbering of houses are chaotic in many areas, and in places where we have illegal settlers, an individual identity card would go a long way under such circumstances.
WE, as a nation responded well and our generosity, volunteerism is very much alive within our hearts as Filipinos. But we could even be much much better, save more lives, if only we have the proper plan, infrastructure to support us.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Anatomy of the Metro Manila flood: Part I- It is Expected to Happen
It came to me as a no surprise that we have deadly floods in Metro Manila. The reasons are not because we have denuded our forest (well partly yes,), nor because of climate change, nor because the storm (mind you, only a category 2) that carried lots of rainfall. It is because of two main reasons:
First, we have cemented, asphalted and built over large tracks of land that rainwater could no longer be absorbed by the land. This is the natural process and in so doing replenish our ground water. So what happens when we covered and built over raw land, we simply diverted rainwater into small canals, sewage system(is there one?), reclaimed our small creeks (just compare today's map with those in 1950's), silted our major tributaries and built on or covered our catchment areas.
This last one is one of the two main reasons why we have disaster. People complained of high water along Pateros, areas around laguna lake, areas along marikina river. But you know what, these places like Provident subdivision and others are situated in FLOOD PLAINS. These are natural catchment areas. Nature has created it so that excess water will have someplace to go before they are drained out. The area and extend of these FLOOD PLAINS have been designed by nature over tens of thousand of years. It also tells us that nature has provided these catchment areas as there will be times when more rains will come that rivers and tributaries could not handle.
But our planners, architects, engineers and politician cum businessmen thought they know more. Who let and why were housing units were allowed to be built on these flood plains bespeak of extreme ignorance on laws of nature. How many times have we heard businessmen convince our planners that they will make a wasteland profitable?
Reason #2: We, as a family or individuals are not prepared. I grew up in Quezon province where i experienced typhoon almost every year. I learned in my early years the preparations we do everytime a typhoon is expected to hit us. At least two days before typhoon arrives, we make sure we have kerosene (or used oil)and matches for our light (we have no electricity then), we have enough batteries for our radio (to keep track of typhoon) and for our flashlight, we buy sufficient rice, salt and animal lard and dry firewood to last for a week, stock up water in two clay jars. To protect our house, we put support structures both at the lee and alee side, put used fish net and lots of weight on our roofs so it will not be blown away. To protect our crops, we trim excess leaves of the bananas and put extra support for the fruit bearing ones, trim excess branches of fruit trees. All our animals (pigs, chickens, ducks) are beneath our houses and extra fodder is collected. In short, imagine the amount of work just to prepare for the worst.
During the passage of the typhoon itself, it was fun for us kids to put those tin cans, pails and basins where our roof drips. This we need to keep our sleeping quarters dry. it is also a nice time with all family members present, a time for story telling, a time for prayers. Compare this with a typical Metro Manila family. Because it is a weekend and raining, most people are glued to their television set, or glued to the computer and children playing computer games. Unmindful of the threat of the storm, they go on with their normal weekend life. Only when the power was cut off did they realize that flood was fast rising. Not knowing what to do, the rest is history.
First, we have cemented, asphalted and built over large tracks of land that rainwater could no longer be absorbed by the land. This is the natural process and in so doing replenish our ground water. So what happens when we covered and built over raw land, we simply diverted rainwater into small canals, sewage system(is there one?), reclaimed our small creeks (just compare today's map with those in 1950's), silted our major tributaries and built on or covered our catchment areas.
This last one is one of the two main reasons why we have disaster. People complained of high water along Pateros, areas around laguna lake, areas along marikina river. But you know what, these places like Provident subdivision and others are situated in FLOOD PLAINS. These are natural catchment areas. Nature has created it so that excess water will have someplace to go before they are drained out. The area and extend of these FLOOD PLAINS have been designed by nature over tens of thousand of years. It also tells us that nature has provided these catchment areas as there will be times when more rains will come that rivers and tributaries could not handle.
But our planners, architects, engineers and politician cum businessmen thought they know more. Who let and why were housing units were allowed to be built on these flood plains bespeak of extreme ignorance on laws of nature. How many times have we heard businessmen convince our planners that they will make a wasteland profitable?
Reason #2: We, as a family or individuals are not prepared. I grew up in Quezon province where i experienced typhoon almost every year. I learned in my early years the preparations we do everytime a typhoon is expected to hit us. At least two days before typhoon arrives, we make sure we have kerosene (or used oil)and matches for our light (we have no electricity then), we have enough batteries for our radio (to keep track of typhoon) and for our flashlight, we buy sufficient rice, salt and animal lard and dry firewood to last for a week, stock up water in two clay jars. To protect our house, we put support structures both at the lee and alee side, put used fish net and lots of weight on our roofs so it will not be blown away. To protect our crops, we trim excess leaves of the bananas and put extra support for the fruit bearing ones, trim excess branches of fruit trees. All our animals (pigs, chickens, ducks) are beneath our houses and extra fodder is collected. In short, imagine the amount of work just to prepare for the worst.
During the passage of the typhoon itself, it was fun for us kids to put those tin cans, pails and basins where our roof drips. This we need to keep our sleeping quarters dry. it is also a nice time with all family members present, a time for story telling, a time for prayers. Compare this with a typical Metro Manila family. Because it is a weekend and raining, most people are glued to their television set, or glued to the computer and children playing computer games. Unmindful of the threat of the storm, they go on with their normal weekend life. Only when the power was cut off did they realize that flood was fast rising. Not knowing what to do, the rest is history.
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