The heat is on

 It’s back to “normal” operations at Sofitel Philippine Plaza in Roxas Boulevard immediately after the state visit of United States President Barack Obama. Normal, in the sense that the five-star hotel is no longer on heightened security alert. It was so while Mr. Obama and his official delegation were billeted at Sofitel for their overnight stay.

A day after Mr. Obama left Manila, Sofitel formally launched the hotel’s Mothers’ Day special promotional activities starting second week of May. Top Sofitel executives were obviously still on cloud nine. But they were all tight-lipped on how it was having the US President as a very important guest.

Though the US President was here less than 24 hours, it was considered a state visit which the host, the Philippine government, paid for the hotel billeting and related expenses. Still the talk of the town is the estimated P330,000 per night executive suite where President Obama stayed. This is not to mention the rooms blocked off for other members of Mr. Obama’s official entourage, including US Secret Service agents.

My good friend, DzRH news anchor Deo Macalma — who also writes a regular column for our sister tabloid paper Pilipino Star Ngayon — had an interesting postscript anecdote about the just concluded US presidential trip. According to Deo’s trusted “bubuwit,” one of the US Secret Service guys was reportedly left behind in Manila when Mr. Obama left before noon last Tuesday. 

According to Deo’s “bubuwit,” the unnamed US Secret Service agent was not left behind by mistake. It was because the agent was reportedly treated for dehydration at the St. Luke’s Medical Center-Global City in Taguig City. He was rushed there by his colleagues last Tuesday morning. He allegedly fainted while helping secure Mr. Obama at the gymnasium of the Philip some morepine Army Headquarters in nearby Fort Bonifacio.  

No amount of extensive training they go through as Secret Service agents prepared them physically for exposure to extreme heat and very humid tropical conditions. Perhaps, fatigue caught up with them in this Asia trip of Mr. Obama that first took them to Japan and South Korea — which are both still having their post-winter cool temperature — and Malaysia which is a tropical country like ours.

They should have taken the cue from President Obama who himself visibly could not take much more of the extreme hot weather that day. In fact, President Obama was already feeling the heat of summer on the first hours of their arrival. After he joined and marched with President Aquino in the full military arrival honors at Malacañang grounds last Monday, he instinctively wiped his face and head with the cold face towel offered him after wiping his hands on the same towel. 

At the sweltering Army gym the next day, the US President showed up without his jacket on before about 500 uniformed personnel and guests. Appearing informally wearing only his white long sleeves with blue tie and dark blue pants, Mr. Obama told his audience outright: “Now, I’m not going to give a long speech, because it’s hot and people are in uniform. I hope you don’t mind me not wearing my jacket.”

But members of US Secret Service and several other American Embassy personnel were all wearing coat-and-tie. The Philippine male officials, however, were clad in our national attire barong Tagalog which is, of course, adapted to our kind of tropical weather.

The US embassy media advisory much earlier alerted people going to the venue of this event to ”wear light, cool clothing. The gym will be very hot.” Well, apparently, the Secret Service guys could not heed their own embassy advisory even if they wanted to.

When it got hotter here, Mr. Obama and the rest of the US presidential entourage were lucky to have left Manila before the thermostat pushed up some more.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) reported yesterday the hottest temperature recorded so far this year.

We in Metro Manila experienced the brunt of the 36.4 degrees Celsius around 3 p.m. yesterday. The warmest temperature was gauged at the agency’s station in Quezon City science garden.
Largely because of climate change, PAGASA earlier alerted us to expect warmer weather than we usually have in the country during summer season. PAGASA is warning us this would most likely develop into full-blown El Niño phenomenon by next month. Ironically, June is the month in our country when rains start. Instead, PAGASA forecasts we may have yet another El Niño, a weather phenomenon characterized by below normal rainfall, this June.
 In a press conference yesterday, Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Secretary Mario Montejo announced the developing El Niño weather situation as “almost certain.” The country experienced the worst El Niño in 1997 to 1998 where estimated damage to agriculture reached more than P3 billion.

Montejo could not say yet how intense the projected El Niño phenomenon would be this time. But he admitted this is expected to trigger drought and stronger storms. As DOST secretary, Montejo supervises PAGASA as among the agencies under his department.

Based on the assessments of weather experts of PAGASA, Montejo echoed a dire warning. This latest El Niño event in the country, he cautioned, might usher in another tropical storm in the magnitude of typhoons Ondoy and Milenyo, two of the most destructive typhoons that we had in our country. The two typhoons were preceded by long El Niño drought in our country in 2009-2010 and 2006-2007, respectively.
  With less than a month to prepare, Montejo’s heads up may have come too late as water reservoir level in several Luzon dams has gone down to critical. For now, he cited, the Department of Agriculture is conducting cloud seeding in some parts of northern Luzon to augment the water level of dams due to less rainfall this dry season.

Unfortunately, a cloud-seeding operation ended in fatal plane crash last week in Nueva Vizcaya  where two of the four people killed were cloud-seeding experts.

The heat is on. However, we are again seeing yet another case of “teka, teka” (wait, wait) among Aquino administration officials before taking action much sooner than later.