Preparedness

HONOLULU – There was a double rainbow over Manoa Valley where the East-West Center is located here at the end of my last full day in Hawaii over the weekend.

Earlier in the day the sky was a bright blue and the sun was scorching as I hiked up to the top of Diamond Head, which provides a breathtaking, panoramic view of Honolulu.

Still, a Category 1 hurricane pummeling the US East Coast also made its presence felt here, with three flights to New Jersey canceled. Many other flights to and from the United States’ eastern seaboard were canceled even before Hurricane Irene made landfall.

As I wrote this column, the death toll from Irene stood at 10. New York, whose last experience with a powerful hurricane was several decades ago, prepared for a direct hit, with 370,000 people asked to evacuate.

Irene roared into the US mainland with peak winds of 130 kilometers per hour. Compare this to the 165 kph peak winds of Typhoon Ondoy, a Category 2 on the hurricane scale, whose official recorded death toll was 464 after it hit the Philippines in late September 2009.

For me, and the other Asian participants in our East-West seminar who are used to powerful tropical cyclones visiting our countries several times every year, it has been fascinating to watch the American reaction to Hurricane Irene.

 We’re getting a blow-by-blow account of the movement and strength of the hurricane, storm surges (up to 11 feet expected), and the amount of rainfall (up to 15 inches). Governors of all the affected states hold regular press conferences to inform their constituents about measures being undertaken and what people must do to stay safe.

I guess no one wants to be criticized for the lack of preparedness that aggravated the fury of Hurricane Katrina, which left over 1,800 dead when it struck in August 2005. Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, was a Category 5 hurricane with peak winds of 280 kph.

Video footage of the areas affected by Hurricane Irene showed no major flooding so far, indicating a weather disturbance that didn’t come close to Katrina. Irene even weakened from a Category 2 to 1. Scenes in the video footage reminded me of a typical stormy day in the Philippines: fallen trees, flooding, blackouts.

What was not typical of the Philippines was the American response to the hurricane. Philippine disaster and relief officials can learn a lesson or two on preparedness from the US response.

* * *

To someone like me from the tropics, the American response can seem like overreaction. As state governors pointed out, however, it was better to prepare for the worst.

 New York, which was expected to be in the eye of the hurricane and faced a tornado warning, shut down its subway – a major problem in a city where many people don’t have their own cars. Mandatory evacuation was ordered in low-lying coastal areas. There were long lines in supermarkets for food, flashlights and generators. Times Square was eerily empty.

A million people evacuated the New Jersey shore. Among those who refused the mandatory evacuation were elderly people.

The nuclear power plant in Maryland went offline. Airports were shut down and there were blackouts in the affected areas. Mass media monitored the high tide that could worsen flooding from the hurricane. Communities in the Atlantic seaboard looked like ghost towns.

New York and Washington have not experienced such natural calamities in a long time. If this freak weather keeps up, it will no longer be farfetched to believe that the volcano in this city that is classified as extinct, whose highest point on its crater rim is Diamond Head, might not be dead after all. One day it might do a Pinatubo, waking up from a long sleep and erupting.

You can’t accuse public officials in the areas on the path of Irene to be unprepared, or disorganized, or lacking a coordinated response. At dawn on Sunday in the East Coast, governors of the affected areas were already up, issuing warnings and telling their constituents what they should do, and what the state was doing for disaster mitigation. Weather experts provided detailed information on the hurricane. Thousands of members of the National Guard were mobilized for relief operations.

Compare the reaction to that of disaster authorities in the Philippines. With all the typhoons and massive floods that hit the country every year, we should have given priority decades ago to disaster mitigation.

Yet we still cannot accurately predict the amount of rainfall to be brought by an approaching weather disturbance. Many squatters cannot be driven away from waterways despite the high risk that rampaging floodwaters could wash away their shanties. When floodwaters rise in Metro Manila, impoverished children play in the water and pouring rain.

The country’s disaster response has improved since Ondoy triggered torrential flooding. But the damage caused by recent typhoons show that there’s still a large room for improvement in disaster mitigation.