There’s nothing like a crisis to bring out the best — and the worst — in people. We saw the best in President Aquino days before the super typhoon Hagupit/ Ruby made landfall when, presiding at a televised meeting of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), he declared that he would have no patience for excuses if the council failed to prepare adequately for the typhoon. Failure, he said, is “unforgiveable.” In fact, he wanted “zero casualties.” He went through a check-list of important tasks, stressing that the devil was in the details: evacuation, evacuation centers, stable prices of basic commodities, pre-positioning and distribution of relief packs, security, timely information, communications, PAGASA.
And government got it right. LGUs went to work making sure people who lived in vulnerable areas were evacuated. It wasn’t difficult to convince communities to leave after the trauma of Yolanda but one governor said he ordered the arrest of people who refused to heed the order. The DSWD had food packs in strategic places days before the storm hit. The AFP and the PNP went on full alert. DPWH had equipment for road clearing on the ready so that when the coast was clear, the machines and chain saws went into action making roads passable for relief goods to be delivered.
And the weather bureau, PAGASA, the most under-rated agency of government, proved to be the little engine that could. Recently trained and equipped with new gadgets, its forecasters tracked the typhoon expertly, providing the public with useful and timely updates, confidently sticking to their own analysis of the path of the storm in the face of variances in the analyses of more experienced foreign storm trackers.
From PAGASA, we knew that Ruby would take her sweet time waltzing across Bicol and the Visayas, linger long enough in Albay, Samar and Masbate to cause major damage, and make a brief appearance in Tacloban for a photo-op to please the foreign media that had positioned itself there. We watched as PAGASA forecasters announced cautiously that the storm had weakened, and by the time Ruby hit the southern fringe of Luzon, she was pretty much a spent force. Her nodding visit to Manila from around 100 kilometers away brought only light showers and mild wind gusts.
It was awesome watching PAGASA hold its own amid the differing reports of weather agencies in Taiwan, Japan and the US, seeing the black line on the map that indicated its forecast, confidently inching its way across the Visayas as other tracks with different colors went on their own directions.
The praise for the government’s response to the onslaught of Ruby has been close to unanimous. But in this ugly pre-election season, good news for government is bad news for those who don’t think much of it. To those who oppose government, everything it does is seen only as politicking. Fortunately, the critics were few and half-hearted.
There were those who questioned DILG Secretary Mar Roxas’ presence in Samar where they imagined him making political points being there when the full force of the storm hit. I cannot fathom how anyone would envy his job that requires him to put his safety on the line. And when Mar got on that motorbike to traverse the wet road littered with debris, and took a spill, all the social media trolls saw was a politician desperate for public approval. And heavens, he was not wearing a helmet! He broke the law that he was supposed to implement!
Then there were the bunk houses built by government in Tacloban, some of which lost their roofs. Storm-proof huh? someone tweeted, ignoring the fact that these were meant to be temporary shelters.
The DSWD reported that food packs with rice, instant noodles, canned goods and other basic supplies were being delivered to typhoon victims and evacuees by army trucks or by air-drops in remote places. To which someone suggested that it would be better if DSWD could provide typhoon victims with hot cooked food. Nice, but impractical. Perhaps a do-gooding NGO would like to take that on?
There were amateur weather forecasters who questioned PAGASA’s forecast, insisting that the US’s JWTC forecast was more accurate than that of our homegrown weather bureau. And when it was starting to look like PAGASA got it right this time, they found it hard to believe and made snide remarks on Facebook that it could have copied its forecast from others.
So well-managed has the government’s response been that the foreign media went home, disappointed that they didn’t have the sensational story of death and mayhem they came for. That’s too bad because they missed the real story of how the government, learning from the mistakes of the past, performed so well, even its critics were dumbfounded.
There were over a million Filipinos who were evacuated from harm’s way, making it the largest movement of warm bodies during peace time. The government’s extraordinary state of preparedness for Ruby has been declared a model for other countries facing natural disasters. The number of casualties is the lowest ever — 25, so far. In Governor Joey Salceda’s badly-hit Albay Province, there were zero casualties.
We got it right this time, and the world salutes us for it. Take a bow, Philippines. Now, to brace for the next big one.