Still unprepared

A joke going around is that the provincial police director of Benguet was sacked for telling the truth and giving the correct death toll from Typhoon Lando in the province.

Police Senior Superintendent David Lacdan of course isn’t laughing.

With 14 fatalities, Benguet had the highest body count. The “lack of preparedness” that led to the 14 deaths was blamed on Lacdan, who was relieved by Interior and Local Government Secretary Mel Senen Sarmiento.

Lacdan, who had been in his post for only three months, obeyed without a fuss, even as Benguet Gov. Nestor Fongwan said yesterday that the provincial police “did their work very well” during the typhoon. I guess a scapegoat was needed for the 58 fatalities.

Perhaps Sarmiento also wants Lacdan to undergo “stress debriefing” – the reason given by the interior secretary’s predecessor when Chief Superintendent Elmer Soria was sacked as Leyte provincial director amid the devastation from Super Typhoon Yolanda in November 2013.

As bodies piled up and began decomposing in the streets of Tacloban, Soria, collating estimates from around the affected areas, famously said the death toll from the monster howler could reach 10,000.

Apart from placing Soria on “floating” status, daang matuwid, which had bragged that it wanted “zero casualties” during typhoons, stopped the official body count at a little over 6,300 even as victims’ remains continued to be found. Never mind if pesky officials of Tacloban said there were still many people unaccounted for and bodies to be retrieved under the ships that ran aground in the city.

Mar Roxas, at the time the interior secretary, said it was SOP in the Philippine National Police in such circumstances to undergo “stress debriefing.”

Lacdan will probably need stress debriefing – over his relief.

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It’s good to have goals, and “zero casualties” should always be the goal in disaster preparedness.

We have to be realistic, however, and accept that attaining the goal is hit-or-miss in our country. Our resources for disaster preparedness and mitigation are so limited we often have to wait for help from other countries to carry out emergency rescue and relief efforts. Attaining “zero casualties” is also iffy in the age of unpredictable, extreme weather disturbances.

Yesterday President Aquino visited Casiguran in Aurora, where Lando made landfall, and lauded the town’s preparedness. But even the town that P-Noy touts as a model for preparedness suffered two casualties.

In the case of Yolanda and its killer storm surge, we had to wait four days for the Americans (with their planes on their aircraft carrier) and other foreign contingents to arrive before food could be airdropped and rescue missions carried out in areas isolated by the typhoon. By that time, looting and riots over food had erupted in several areas.

In Guiuan, Eastern Samar where Yolanda made landfall, US troops riding Ospreys took over the battered airport. When I visited, they were serving as air traffic controllers for the various foreign aircraft, mostly military, that delivered relief goods and flew out residents to Cebu until late in the night when Guiuan was pitch-black because power was out.

Our disaster preparedness has improved since then, but I’m not sure if we are ready to deal on our own with another typhoon on the same scale as Yolanda. The avalanche of foreign assistance might have even lulled some of us into complacency.

As other typhoons and massive flooding after Yolanda have shown, there’s a wide room for improvement in preparedness and emergency response, whether in Metro Manila or in rural areas.

Little has been done to improve evacuation facilities. The inadequacy of these temporary shelters is one of the biggest reasons for the refusal of people to leave their homes for safer ground despite warnings about landslides and torrential flooding. Another reason is the valid concern that houses, even when locked, will be burglarized if abandoned even temporarily.

The refusal to evacuate, in turn, can lead to a high body count. It should be the task of the government at the grassroots – the barangay offices – to persuade residents that they must leave their homes, which will be protected from thieves. And it must be the task of governors and mayors to mobilize evacuation at the grassroots.

Even during forced evacuation in cases of extreme emergencies, the police must be supervised by civilian authorities in moving out people from danger zones.

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We also need to work on long-term recovery. In the Yolanda-hit areas, rehabilitation can move faster and unemployment remains high.

It will take from six to eight years for the coconut plantations of Samar and Leyte to fully recover as sustainable livelihood sources. Several foreign groups are assisting the affected areas in shifting to other crops such as vegetables.

Yolanda flattened the plantations. The sight of that agricultural wasteland, with the prospect of long-term unemployment, was as depressing as the destruction of houses.

Even the provision of shelters in the Yolanda-hit areas remains a work in progress. The tent communities are still there – and the best tents, I was told by several of the foreign donors, are good for only three years before deterioration starts.

In the aftermath of Yolanda, national officials blamed the local government in Tacloban for lack of preparedness and failure to evacuate residents particularly in coastal communities. Local officials in turn slammed the national government for its disastrous initial response to the calamity. Both sides were right.

After two years, we should all be getting our act together in responding to disasters. Lando showed that we have a long way to go.