Still unprepared for disasters

Habitual failure to mitigate the impact of natural calamities is a serious investment disincentive. We all saw how large investors from Toyota to Honda among many other big multinationals suffered from the disastrous impact of Thailand’s recent floods. But investors are ready to take such occurrence as affordable risk if it doesn’t happen all the time, year in and year out. In our case however, floods almost always catch government and people by surprise not once in a while but many times in a year.

It doesn’t seem to matter who is in control… Ate Glue or P-Noy. As it happened, we had killer typhoons named Ondoy, Pepeng, Sendong and a few others in between. We were always unprepared. This time around, the weather bureau said they gave ample warning. The local officials in Cagayan de Oro and elsewhere in Northern Mindanao claimed they got no warning, at least not on the severity of the flood risk. A victim interviewed by ABS-CBN said they got no warning. The weather bureau said they informed the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (formerly more simply known as Office of Civil Defense based in Camp Aguinaldo).

Did the Manila-based bureaucrats at NDRRMC fail to communicate? Did DILG know and also failed to communicate? Did the military and police high commands know and miserably failed to inform their local units? In this age of instant communication where distance is no longer an issue, failure to communicate is a mortal sin. All it takes is a cheap ‘unli’ prepaid phone card.

On the other hand, the local officials in Northern Mindanao should have also been more proactive. I don’t think they have a disaster prevention, mitigation and response program as comprehensive and tested as the one Gov Joey Salceda has in Albay. If they did, they need not wait for the incompetent bureaucrats in Manila to warn them. I think Gov Joey has his own early warning system that uses the weather bureau but does not depend solely on that poorly equipped and staffed government unit.

I remember Gov Joey being so prepared for a storm that people were actually evacuated and the storm turned out a lot milder than anticipated. But that’s alright. When lives are at stake, it is better to err on the side of maximum public safety. Maybe Gov Joey should visit the disaster prone areas of the country and show the local officials there how to prepare the way he has prepared. That would be even more meaningful than the million pesos the province of Albay donated to the relief fund.

After the disaster happened, it was also unfortunate that the response time for relief operations was far from instantaneous. Why should relief goods still have to be airlifted from Manila? We only have one big transport plane (maybe two, max) in the Air Force that can be used for the purpose. So if airlifting is done in a hurry, there are severe limits on how much that overworked plane can carry. As of Monday evening, Ted Failon was reporting from a barangay in CDO that had not received any assistance.

As a consequence of what happened in Northern Mindanao, the President should sit down with the PAGASA people again and try to figure out where they should go from here. It is important to list down things they should do in the light of what went wrong so that next time we are better prepared. Sounds obvious but don’t expect bureaucrats to think that way.

Maybe the weather bureau needs more modern equipment in that area of the country. Typhoons rarely visit Northern Mindanao which partly explains the complacency. But with weather patterns changing drastically these days, the assumption of a typhoon free Mindanao is probably outdated. They should have equipment that not only tracks typhoons but also estimates the rain volume.

The communication chain from the weather forecasters to the disaster response people and local government officials ought to be reviewed. It is apparent that failure of communications was partly or even largely to blame for the tragedy. Pinpointing where the breakdown happened is important. I checked out the “severe weather bulletins” issued as posted in the NDRRMC website and these were written in bureaucratese without the sense of urgency needed to make people move.

At the local level, the tragedy will hopefully make every resident a forest ranger. The flood waters wouldn’t have been as deadly very quickly if they had more forest cover around Cagayan de Oro, Iligan and the rest of the affected areas. The DENR has limited capacity to safeguard our forests. They don’t have enough forest guards to do the work. And they also have to contend with local officials who profit from illegal logging operations.

Now that they know from first hand experience the dangers of deforestation, the residents of Northern Mindanao should take it upon themselves to make sure reforestation happens and what is left of their forest defended from loggers. Because it is their lives on the line, the residents should not depend on government to do its job in this regard. Should something like this happen again, they will have to blame themselves because they didn’t learn the lesson of Sendong well enough to do something about it.

As for P-Noy partying while the victims are desperately seeking lost relatives, water to drink and a dry place to sleep, I see this as another communication failure of Malacañang. I see nothing wrong with P-Noy gracing the Christmas party of his guards. This is after all, the season for that sort of thing. What was amiss? Malacañang failed to do some basic things before the party. P-Noy must never forget that everything he does or fails to do reflect on the quality of his leadership. There are expectations in our society for leaders to very visibly show they are commiserating with victims of tragedy… just ask Jojo Binay. It was unfortunate P-Noy was largely invisible in the early hours after the tragedy. P-Noy should have gone live on radio and television, preferably at some bodega full of relief goods or at a briefing room with officials getting orders on the conduct of relief operations. It didn’t help that the NDRRMC website announced P-Noy will visit the area on Dec. 27, which made him look callous indeed. It was later claimed to be a typo error because they meant Dec. 21, but serious damage was done.

It doesn’t matter that P-Noy had spent hours at the operations center and already caused a lot of things to quickly happen behind the scenes. The public still wants to see the Chief Executive directing operations. That’s just the way we are. His public absence communicated the message that he was detached from the tragedy... emotionally unable to care. His Comm team should worry not just about what he says but also by what he communicates by his actions or inactions.

I get the impression that his Comm Group folks are afraid to tell him anything… much less how he should behave. If that is the case, he is being sold short. A good Comm team should be able to tell the boss anything and make him say and do things that will deliver a consistent public message. In this age of social media, they have to be even more engaged. As it happened, the news of the partying came from a tweet from one of the movie stars in the party who meant no harm. The social media castigation of the partying P-Noy may be unfair but it should have been anticipated.

It is also not advisable for P-Noy to just brush aside such sniping because all these consistent attacks from his detractors eventually have a negative cumulative impact on his effectiveness as a leader. It doesn’t help that he is already seen as someone who has done nothing significant so far, after one and a half years.

His popularity rating based on sheer hope is still high but the trajectory is downward and this must be arrested before it is too late. I know it is more complicated to package a President these days, but that only makes it imperative for the President and his CommGroup to get their act together and always appear in control. They have been too defensive for too long.

I hope the President, in particular, learned something from Sendong. Natural calamities and disasters are part of our lives in this country. P-Noy must show improvement in how we deal with such things from mitigation to relief efforts. Let us do better next time.

Definition

Gilbert J defines acupuncture as “a jab well done.”

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