We couldn’t have escaped joining the SARS club

It was inevitable. Sadly, a 46-year-old Filipina nursing assistant who came home from Canada, a country which is among the hardest-hit in the rampaging SARS epidemic, died last week in San Lazaro hospital. The "probable" cause was SARS, health authorities said, so while it’s not yet official it’s practically confirmed. (I've just been informed that the nurse's father has just died, too – in the same hospital!)

And what about the 64-year-old German frequent-flyer between Manila and Hong Kong who’s being mentioned in whispers (well, really on TV) by Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit, Jr.?

We might as well resign ourselves to the fact that the SARS onslaught is worldwide, and admit our vulnerability to the galloping virus. Why, after all, should we be exempt? We cannot prevent our returning OFWs, those heroes and heroines as we usually call them, from coming home, for holidays or for good. What put our overseas workers even more at risk is the fact that quite a number of them are doctors, nurses, and other workers in the health-care service. Sixty percent of all our nurses trained in the Philippines are working abroad, a hospital director told me the other day.

Then we’ve continued to keep an "open door" for tourists from every point of the compass, bragging foolishly about our "SARS-free" status. Every arrival, not to sound inhospitable or churlish, brings along with his or her persona the prospect of contagion.

The awful truth is that we don’t have any systematic "quarantine" procedures in place at either airports or ports. So it’s time we worked doubly hard to catch up with the modern gadgetry, methodology, and procedures of disease-detection, quarantine, and disease-prevention.

I won’t attempt to reel off any more statistics, other than that the virus has struck 26 countries and killed 209 – and counting. The most sufferers are to be found in China itself, where the virus was first spotted, Hong Kong, Singapore and other nearby capitals. The risk of death from SARS is 4 to 5 percent of those afflicted – not really terrible statistically, but dismaying in prospect.

Despite all scientific claims and laboratory hoopla, no "cure" or preventive vaccine has as yet been discovered. Before the pandemic plays out, what’s feared is that the coronavirus outbreak’s toll might yet assume the proportions of 1918-19 flu epidemic which killed 22 million people – half a million of them in the United States (including the US President Woodrow Wilson no less) and 200,000 in Great Britain. India lost 12 million people in that influenza attack which, incongruously, was called the "Spanish flu", despite the fact it had originated, by most accounts, in Tibet in 1917!

Why was that? According to Leonard G. Horowitz, this was because the Spanish newspapers at the beginning were the only ones "reporting on the great plague".

Arnold Bennett, in his book, The Card, remarked that "there was no influenza in my young days. We called a cold a cold."

You bet. The "new" virus has been diagnosed as similar to that which causes the common cold – but very much fiercer. Should we panic? The Filipino bahala na attitude seems to prevail, despite all the warnings. Who knows – perhaps that’s all to the best. The greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself. This is not an original thought: It was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the US President who turned back the black tide of the depression, who originally said that.

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Speaking of "panic", I think it’s time to review the pros and cons of all that loose talk about shutting down the Pandacan Terminal – which, by the way, has stood in that old Manila district for the past 80 years. I’m referring to oil and gas storage tanks belonging to the major oil companies, Petron, Caltex and Shell.

The mindset in the media, including my own before I studied the matter more closely, was that the presence of the Pandacan Terminal in that urban area was "a disaster waiting to happen". What if terrorists "bombed" it? (The recent incident in the New York-New Jersey harbor area added fuel to the speculation – remember those "shocking" plumes of smoke that shot sky-high a couple of months ago on television? The explosion, however, turned out to have been an accident involving a refueling barge, and the flames had been doused very quickly. CNN, BBC and FOX News, which had been chattering excitedly about a possible terrorist bomb assault directed at the oil depot, subsided very quickly, too.)

Of much the same nature, I guess, is the concern over the Pandacan oil storage area. And yet, last April 21, the residents supposed to be most affected by any danger, represented by the majority of the barangays in Manila’s 6th district, presented a petition to Energy Secretary Vince Perez to allow the continued operation of the terminal. In tandem with this, while still insisting on the "low risks" arising from depot operations, the oil firms involved entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with the City of Manila and the Department of Energy (DOE) to scale down the Pandacan Terminal, scheduling the decommissioning and dismantling of 28 tanks (half of the terminal’s total tankage) including all Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) storage spheres.

The MOU further stipulates providing an added safety buffer in the form of a "green" linear park on a land area of 2.1 hectares for recreational use – i.e. playgrounds and playing fields. Finally, the companies will establish a reduced and integrated oil terminal.

As for security, it appears the terminal is monitored on a 24-hour basis by 105 security personnel, augmented by police and Armed Forces patrols as well as the Presidential Security Group. Fire-fighting equipment is in place, including chemical foam sprinklers, hydrants, fixed water spray systems and special foam hardware. Three fire pumps have been installed to ensure a combined capacity of 5,000 gallons per minute, drawing an unlimited supply of water from the Pasig River.

No facility is completely secure, of course, I must add as a caveat. That’s where public vigilance must also come into play.

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There is no doubt the terminal will be decommissioned on a staggered basis, probably within three years, and moved elsewhere far from any urban center of population. But right now it would make sense for Manila’s Mayor Lito Atienza and the City Council to amend Ordnance No. 287, extending the tenure of "the nation’s energy lifeline". This is urgent since a disruption at this stage would provoke a fuel crisis of national proportions. We won’t even have to mention the prospect of sudden unemployment for the terminal’s employees, who are prominently among the residents of Pandacan in the surrounding area.

The problem is that the Manila City Council Ordnance No. 8027, passed with all the best intentions on November 28, 2001, states on section 1 that "for the purpose of promoting sound urban planning and ensuring the health, public safety and general welfare of the residents of Pandacan and Sta. Ana, as well as adjoining areas, the land use of several portions . . . were reclassified the land use of the area from industrial to commercial." (Please don’t ask me to explain the grammar, but you can easily get the gist of it).

In any event, the terminal’s permit to operate is about to expire on April 30, 2003 – Wednesday NEXT WEEK. Wow! If this requires the Pandacan Terminal to be removed, do you realize what it implies? It is estimated the sudden shutdown and "move" would cost Petron, Caltex and Shell no less than P20 BILLION, even P30 BILLION to relocate their terminals, acquire land on a "crash" basis and build infrastructure. Petron alone, my industry sources say, would have to shell out P10 billion to P15 billion (pardon the pun).

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In terms of your local gas pump, the supply of petroleum to Metro Manila would be cut by roughly half or 50 percent because the pipeline for Shell and Caltex and barge deliveries for Petron would no longer be available. The increase in the number of tank trucks plying the roads to bring in oil from "outside" would quadruple, thereby worsening the traffic congestion in the North and South Luzon Expressways. (The longer travel times would also expose the trucks to higher risks inherent in road travel – as well as "endanger" the Metro Manila communities through which they will have to pass.) At best, on a truck-in basis, the oil firms could only supply 40 percent of the current volume, i.e., only 715 gas stations in Regions 1 to 4 in the National Capital Region. (More than half of the 459 service stations in Metro Manila would be compelled to shut down, sharply reducing the source of supply for consumers.

Pump prices would soar owing to additional hauling costs and other penalties, including the slowdown in refinery processes. The Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) and the Manila Port operations would be crippled. This would slow down economic activity, with the commensurate domino-type results.

Here’s another negative: The operations of the military and the police would be jeopardized – with cops and soldiers unable to move about in pursuit of their task of assuring peace and order. As it is, they already claim to be short of gasoline!

Finally, the oil firms’ losses would amount to tens of millions of pesos per day – and you can be sure the bill will be passed on to us consumers.

Furthermore, I’m told that the Pandacan Terminal employs more than 1,500 people – 80 percent of them from Pandacan itself. Petron, in addition, employs more than 600 people from the same area. Thousands, including shopkeepers, storeowners, canteen operators, as well as vendors in the vicinity will be affected. That’s something our Manila Councilors, of course, might also consider.

In short, it seems to me: The cure is worse than the disease. It’s imperative that a better, longer-term solution be worked out – this week, not later.

We don’t need to brace for a crisis. This is the "crisis" itself.