Are we prepared for more calamities?

Today the unexpected flooding that hit Metro Manila last weekend, considered by PAGASA as the worst ever recorded in history, is just one of those news reports that will slowly fade and replaced by more urgent matters of the day. The Filipino’s strong spirit and faith in God is such that any bitterness caused by the worst trials is quickly forgotten. It is either sheer determination to go on with life or preoccupation with ensuring the next meals for his family’s survival that life has to go on as if nothing bad has happened. What is always taken for granted are the lessons that should be learned so that mishap is avoided the next time catastrophe or trial hits again.

We used to experience the first rains in May called siyam-siyam, when we have nine days of continuous rain, but there was no such flooding as we recently experienced. PAGASA Director Nathaniel Cruz reported that the amount of rainfall brought by Tropical Storm Ondoy in nine hours exceeded the average rainfall in a month. Here we clearly see the impact and effects of climate change.

However, another factor for the strange heavy and rapid flooding is the release of water from the Angat and Ipo Dams in Norzagaray, Bulacan. This compounded the overflowing of the rivers around the metropolis. Hence, in many barangays, flood waters reached 10 feet deep with many houses completely submerged in water. Residents were stranded on rooftops for many hours without food and water. Some people died in their own homes as they were engulfed by the raging flood waters. In some areas, people were electrocuted due to cable lines in the water. The latest count yesterday was 95 dead and almost 250,000 people affected. The number of casualties will surely be more as reports come in.

For some reason, government authorities were caught unprepared despite early warning signals from PAGASA. We heard reports that those in charge of the rescue teams were also trapped by floods. Nobody even knows who gave the orders to release water from the dams, and if the order was official, it should have been coordinated with all the local government units so that their leaders could have warned their constituents and the necessary and immediate relief and rescue operations coordinated with all the agencies involved. This gives the impression that disaster preparedness is not being prioritized at all.

In lesser floods before, the military and the marines would deploy dump trucks to get off stranded people from the streets. We hardly saw any major rescue effort this time, except the heroic and selfless efforts of a few military and marine personnel who risked their lives to save as many people as they can. If there were airlifting helicopters, only two were sighted in reports; if there were pump boats, these were one or two in some municipalities; there was no way this kind of contingent and fragmented efforts can save so many stranded people.

The government should immediately allocate funds (we heard there’s an amount from movie tickets that goes to government for Flood Tax and Road Users’ Tax charged by the Land Transportation Office, the disbursement in billions of which is now being questioned; government can add to these funds from other sources) to constitute a disaster contingency unit, complete with trained rescue personnel, vehicles and equipment that could immediately be deployed at the shortest time possible to save lives.

Definitely, we cannot predict disaster when it strikes especially in these times that the ill effects of climate change is being manifested. But when it does strike, we should at least have a contingency plan in place. We have read of so many mock rescue activities, multisectoral agencies practicing what to do when disasters such as earthquakes and bombings occur, we even observe the month of July as Disaster Consciousness Month, but what happened last week definitely showed a lack of preparedness, coordination and alertness.

It’s about time we become proactive rather than reactive. What happens is we always react to a situation. Seldom are we prepared for the unexpected or the worse. What about earthquake preparedness? If a major earthquake would hit Metro Manila today, would our authorities be able to cope with all the tall buildings around and its dense population?

Talk about preparedness. The best advice to counter these threats is the Boy Scout motto “Be prepared!”. Government should seriously sit down and take disaster coordination seriously this time before it’s too late.