Did we get enough warning about Pedring?

For someone like me who is constantly checking Twitter, I would say that we got some warning on Pedring. Whether they gave us enough information or whether they communicated enough the gravity of the on-coming typhoon are two different things.

What did PAGASA do? They told us there was this typhoon that was going to hit Luzon... gave the impression it was one of those that constantly hits the northeastern coasts at Aurora and Isabela. They said it was fairly strong... but Metro Manila was not highlighted... it was on the bottom of the list of areas under signal number 2 and they said it had a wide rain cover of 600 kilometers or so.

Thus, we knew we were going to have a lot of rain. But I guess not many of us realized we were also going to get a lot of fairly strong winds... strong enough to topple trees and power lines in Metro Manila. We all went to bed on Monday evening knowing we will feel the typhoon’s peripheral effects but we didn’t realize such will be serious enough to cause power outage in some areas for as long as 25 hours and even longer in nearby provinces.

In fact, a lot of people still went to their offices Tuesday morning only to find out that government and businesses including the stock exchange were calling it a day. Pedring paralyzed Metro Manila and I don’t think our weather forecasters had that in mind the night before. Or they would have been more proactively warning people to stay home the next day and not risk being hit by flying debris or falling trees, power poles and in the City of Manila itself, a falling statue of a once beloved mayor.

One more thing... they didn’t roll down those giant billboards like they used to if a strong windy storm is expected. Surely, PagAsa would have recommended to MMDA to act on those billboards if they knew the winds would be as strong as it turned out to be.

And they did not tell us about the possibility of the surge happening at Roxas Boulevard which flooded the US Embassy and damaged Sofitel. Not that we could have done anything about it but MMDA could have closed Roxas Boulevard that morning and saved all those stranded motorists a lot of grief.

And maybe too, if warned about the surge, Sofitel management could have barricaded Spiral with sandbags to minimize damage from the surge. Now they will have to fast track repair and rehab of damaged areas because we are hosting the ADB annual conference about the middle of next year at PICC and Sofitel is the major hotel housing the key delegates.

I am no expert on weather forecasting but someone posted something on my Facebook wall that disturbed me. Maybe the PagAsa guys would care to comment and explain so here is that post:

“The ‘STORM SURGE’ phenomenon is a well understood and routinely predicted occurrence in the international scientific community given necessary data and hydro-geophysical research and assessment. Over a year and a half ago, I sent an unsolicited advice to the Office of the President, key executives and legislative leaders particularly the DOST to hire American or Japanese atmospheric scientists as consultants to augment their local staff.

“Usec Yumul of PAGASA who is trying his best to fill-in the role of an atmospheric scientist is a geologist. We need well qualified atmospheric scientists and disaster management professionals to provide the necessary expertise in analyzing and forecasting increasingly complex disaster events. The President traveled to the US to attend the Open Government forum which prescribed the use of new technologies such as Geographic Information System (GIS) as a new tool for improved governance.

“I have been knocking on their doors offering these advanced technologies over a year ago... the same technology now being prescribed in the said forum. Fortunately, a handful of pro-active LGU’s have responded. I’m about to give up on DND-DRRMC and DOST, and declare these departments hopeless! Hopefully, HUDCC and MMDA are able to appreciate the value of advance technologies as applied in disaster planning and management and the broader land use and resource management solution.”

I am not saying government should buy whatever this person is selling if he is selling anything at all but he does make a good point about having qualified people in PagAsa working with as close to state of the art equipment as we can muster financed if not from our budget, from ODA.

These disasters come with regularity many times each year and are very expensive in terms of life, property and opportunity cost. An emergency shut down of Metro Manila for a day must be more expensive than acquiring whatever expertise or hardware we need to have more accurate and useful forecasts.

Maybe Pedring was just too fast for PagAsa to react to appropriately. Perhaps we can even say PagAsa did better than usual but obviously, they were not good enough and P-Noy can’t be complacent about it. He fired a veteran weather forecaster for saying a typhoon was on track to the Cagayan Valley area but instead its effects were quite severe in Metro Manila. The same thing seems to have happened this week... while he was in Tokyo.

Maybe we got warned about Pedring’s arrival but we didn’t discern the impact of a Signal number 2 well enough. They gave out the information about the typhoon but failed to communicate the danger. I don’t suppose I will get too much argument if I say we could have done a whole lot better.

China ties

In his remarks during the National Day Reception to celebrate the 62nd Founding Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, Ambassador Liu Jianchao recalled that Confucius once told us, “Consider the past, and one shall know the future.” If this is so, we have reason to believe that our country’s relationship with China holds much promise indeed.

Carmen Guerrero Nakpil in her book, Heroes and Villains cites Harvard historian Laurence Bergreen who observed that “Filipinos had long been literate when Magellan came.” The Filipinos at that time were more used to visits of the Chinese treasure fleet for they have been trading with China for over 500 years before Magellan.

Filipinos had never seen white men before Magellan, Ms. Nakpil relates, and never thought the strangers would be as rapacious and predatory as they would prove to be. “The Chinese, on the other hand, were not interested in conquest or territorial aggrandizement. Their purposes were trade and diplomacy...” 

Ms. Nakpil also observed in her book that historical records show “Chinese traders visited Ma-I (Luzon) regularly, leaving silks, porcelain and metal utensils on the beaches of designated islands, and returning weeks later to collect payment in the form of beeswax, gold dust, carabao horn, ginger, cinnamon or garlic. An honor system with unquestioned good faith.”

Ambassador Liu is correct to say in his National Day reception speech that “indeed, our countries are natural friends. Our peoples and cultures are intertwined by blood and history...” He was confident we will “rise above and beyond the narrow confines of national interests and create a regional environment of peace and stability.”

Calling the recent state visit to China of P-Noy a success, the ambassador announced the signing of a Five-Year Development Program for Trade and Economic Cooperation. It is a blueprint of our future cooperation in agriculture and fishery, infrastructure development, mining, energy, IT, tourism, engineering services and forestry... During the visit, China affirmed its support for the Public Private Partnership (PPP) program of the Philippine government and committed to encourage Chinese companies to be contributing participants.

Goals have been set: “Our two countries agreed to raise the total two-way trade to US$ 60 billion by 2016... our leaders declared 2012 and 2013 as ‘China-Philippines Years of Friendly Exchanges’ and agreed to double the two-way tourist arrivals between our two countries to two million by 2016.”

Looks like China is ready to start fresh and put the questionable relationship with the previous administration behind. Now the difficult part: converting all those good intentions into reality. We shall see soon enough how China responds in renegotiations of bad Arroyo deals like NorthRail. The proof of sincerity in China’s words will be its actions.

Weatherman

Speaking of weather forecasting, here’s a good classic joke.

A husband and his wife were sound asleep when suddenly the phone rang. The husband picked up the phone and said, “Hello? How the heck do I know? What do I look like, a weatherman?” He then slammed the phone down and settled into bed.

“Who was that?” asked his wife.

“I don’t know. It was some guy who wanted to know if the coast was clear.”

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. He is also on Twitter @boochanco