Lola Basyang gives first warning

It was the first typhoon for the new administration. Luckily it was a fairly mild one compared with the ones we had last year. It provides them an opportunity to check out their emergency response procedures. Fine tuning is certainly called for from what we have seen.

Like Ondoy and Pepeng last year, Basyang has given us lessons on the handling of potential calamities. Unlike earthquakes, typhoons are more easily predicted. But it would seem that our weather forecasting bureaucracy still needs to gain the capability of predicting a typhoon’s trajectory and giving timely warning to our people to take precautions.

The handling of Basyang was bad enough for P-Noy to dress down the weather bureau for being quite walang pag-asa. Of course we realize that the poor folks at Pagasa are not well equipped to do a good job of predicting and warning. But then again, they should be resourceful enough to check other possible sources of information so that they can function in spite of their handicap.

They shouldn’t be embarrassed or too proud to check the Japanese and the American government weather forecasting systems or some private sources including CNN. Last Tuesday evening while one of the weathermen was being interviewed on television, some of my Facebook friends were actively researching other websites for the latest information.

Thus, while the local weatherman was not too definite about Basyang’s impact on Metro Manila in a live ANC interview, former DILG Secretary Raffy Alunan posted information on Facebook that indicated the certainty of Basyang passing very close to the city. In effect, Raffy scooped the Pagasa guy being interviewed on ANC with this Facebook post:

“I got news that it’s being pushed southwards and will brush past north of Quezon City. This is the latest advisory from AccuWeather. Another site I go to other than Pagasa is the US Navy Weather website, Tropical Storm page. 10-20 inches of rain are expected to fall in places along the typhoon’s path somewhere in Northern and Central Luzon. So the folks out there should stay alert - don’t leave anything to chance.”

A couple of hours later, Raffy posted this “3rd update from AccuWeather. Dire warnings being given to Central Luzon and Cordillera residents about flooding, landslides and mudslides in the next 18 hours. Be careful out there!”

A Facebook friend of Alunan, Joey Kilayko Montalvo responded: “Typhoon2000.com, citing the Joint Typhoon Warning Center’s latest tracking says Conson/Basyang “shall be over the northern part of Metro Manila early tomorrow - passing very close to Quezon City between 3-4 AM tomorrow [2AM JUL 14: 14.7N 121.3E].”

No wonder P-Noy criticized the state weather bureau for not warning the residents of Metro Manila about how close the storm would pass the nation’s capital. “This is not acceptable,” Aquino told red-faced officials of PAGASA at an emergency meeting of rescue agencies. “We rely on you to tell us where the potential problems are.”

As the ABS-CBN News website reported, “many of the city’s 12 million residents went to bed late Tuesday having been lulled by forecasters’ bulletins that Typhoon Basyang (international codename Conson) would hit the northern provinces instead of Manila. However, the weather bureau failed to mention that the disturbance had a wide radius of 300 kilometers (185 miles), meaning that although the eye of the typhoon passed north of Manila, the city still suffered from fierce winds.”

I guess the lesson for government bureaucrats is to be more resourceful in getting their work done. We all know that their resources are limited but that shouldn’t be used as a perpetual excuse to give suboptimal performance. There are, as in this case, other sources of information that are available at little or no cost to them that could help them perform their responsibilities better. Pag-asa should also update their forecasts more often than every six hours when typhoons are within the country.

Of course government should prioritize giving them their radars and other forecasting equipment. But unless they are more creative in how they do their duties, I doubt if the availability of equipment will make them more effective. The difference is always on account of having people who are ready to deliver 101 percent rather than puede na.

The other lesson from Lola Basyang has to do with the private sector operator of the National Grid. Again the typhoon, relatively mild as typhoons go, exposed the weakness of a system with little or no redundancy. Albay Gov. Joey Salceda made this very important observation:

“Given the limited damage, how come it is taking longer to restore power when 80 percent of generation in the Luzon grid, 65 percent of distribution and 100 percent of transmission are now in private hands? So, where is that much-exalted efficiency dividend from privatization? Ay naku. System redundancy is certainly expensive but contingency plan on energy supply should be administered by public authorities during disaster situations.”

I totally agree with Gov. Joey. How can the world take us seriously if it will take two to three days for the National Grid to restore power transmission lines? If you were running an export processing operation, you can’t afford to close your factory that long in this age of just-in-time inventory management. It must be a nightmare too for call center operators. How can we attract more call centers in the country with a power infrastructure as unreliable as ours?

Typhoons are a fact of life in this part of the world and we should plan our infrastructure facilities accordingly. The private sector guys who bought the Grid should realize they have a responsibility to deliver service, not just collect from the consumers.Henry Sy Jr. should not damage the good image established by his father by a less than efficient service in the National Greed… ah, Grid pala.

Incidentally, the hyperactive Albay Governor also has something to say about the precautions we normally take during these sort of times. This is what the Governor had to say:

“The spike and spate of suspension of classes and office work is now being implemented after the storm has passed for three reasons (a) to allow students to help in disaster response (b) still Signal 2 over Metro Manila and (c) no electricity and damage on office equipment.

“However, there were no evacuation order, no suspension of office work and a more limited suspension of classes before the impact just when it posed a more significant threat (95kph gusting to 120kph, running at 22kph, clearly with a landfall track) to lives and property? At these warning parameters, a targeted or calibrated preemptive evacuation was in order.”

Yes indeed. Well, this is the new administration’s first typhoon. Hopefully they are able to fine tune their procedures for the next ones. As for me, I have to make sure that Raffy Alunan remains my Facebook friend. He is better than Pag-asa.

Waterways

Got this letter from PhilStar reader Carlos Tan.

This refers to the exhortation of Mr. Martin Ongpin (your column of July 7) for P-Noy to also run after those who blocked waterways, etc.

Blocked waterways referred to by Mr. Ongpin must be the result of unwarranted extensions of property lines by lot owners along natural waterways, ofcourse, there are those who simply occupied water ways.

It may be recalled that aside from “walang wang wang”, P- Noy also mentioned “walang lamangan” in his inaugural address.

Believe the practice of occupying a portion of natural waterways is one of the worst forms of “Panglalamang” since constricted natural waterways is one of the principal causes of flooding which, as everyone knows, brings about untold inconveniences and miseries to countless victims — “sa mga nalalamangan”. 

I therefore join Mr. Ongpin in his appeal to P-Noy to also wage a campaign against this form of “Panglalamang” as vigorous as what is being done on “wang wangs”.

Woman

Jose Villaescusa sent this one.

A ship is about to sink! A frantic virgin begins stripping off her clothes and shouts out loud:

”Can anyone make me feel like a woman before I die??”

A man, takes off his shirt, gives it to her then says:

”Here, iron this...”

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]