Super Storm HAIYAN (Yolanda): SomeThoughts After

Leyte was the home of my father & grandparents & because of storms that visited them with constant regularity they sailed to the promise land Mindanao just before the 2nd world war through the rough Pacific Ocean & found a safe home in a cove in the Davao Gulf. Yes, Leyte & Samar and the eastern seaboard of the Visayas are in the typhoon belt. But, a storm like Yolanda, a year ago in November 2013, - a Category 5 storm – is rare & probably the first in our country.  

I was in the affected areas of Panay islands as part of an international team which was monitoring how the UK/ DFID funds were used in the storm affected areas.

     Tents at Estancia, Iloilo: 2 mos. after Storm Yolanda/Jan 23, 2014 

Picture credit : "HOPE FLOATS" Baby being rescued in Tacloban. (Courtesy of Gen. Charly Holganza/via Willy Ramasola)

It is said that hindsight is the lowest form of intelligence but still the lessons of Yolanda must be burned in our memory to inform knowledge on disaster preparedness. What were these lessons?

We need to understand storm surge or the rise in the level of water that swept through the inland killing thousands of our fellows in the Visayas.
Project Noah of our government gave ample warning on height of waves by area or towns a few days before Yolanda but it seemed too technical or the nature of its harm did not register with the ordinary person.
For example, 5-6 meters of storm surge did not register as about 15 feet high of water that is comparable to two floors as standard height of one floor level is about 8 feet only.
In fairness to our institutions- we have been using the metric system and using feet is not metric.
But- the strength of the Yolanda storm surge and the direction of the storm surge were not known.
Basic information is still a gap for now, such as shape of sea floor which is a factor in storm surges.

Help was immediate in cities but perhaps because of the volume and scale of need, many far flung areas were not reached immediately and whole villages did not have food for days. So, pundits and well meaning persons have suggested that helicopters from government and private sector could have reached these areas in a flash. Media and television networks reached these areas first but people were expecting food. We need to imagine the issue of transportation in disasters some more. Some of the road blocks could have been removed by immediate clearing.

A few days after a storm, the task is relief. After a month or so the rehabilitation begins.During the relief period, it is best to do water filtration and food production on site.
In relief, we attend to the needs of the living first. And, so in the case of Leyte, the burial of hundreds of dead bodies had to be postponed and so rotting cadavers lay strewn in streets for days.
That health personnel & morticians were gaps is an understatement. 

Disaster preparedness of local governments was impaired simply because our public officials were likewise affected by the storm itself.
Of course-the solution to this is our national government taking over.
This is the raison d’etre of a declaration of a state of a national calamity and or a national emergency.

While, we saw the unspeakable destruction of Yolanda in our own television sets and links in social media, people in the disaster areas were cut off from the wired world when digital & telecommunications structures were destroyed by the storm itself. Relatives abroad and elsewhere and our fellows in disaster areas were disconnected and for many being incommunicado meant worry that felt like the grief of death itself. So, do we include telecommunications kit as part of our disaster preparedness kit? Do we restore the inexpensive telegraph system?

Do we need a cabinet level national implementing line agency focused on disaster preparedness? What we have now is a National Risk Reduction Management Council that cascades to the local government levels. Do we need to budget a people’s survival funds as part of our disaster preparedness? For sure we need to review our building codes. And we need to pass pronto the National Land Use Plan.One thing sure, we have to rethink a lot of things creatively for disaster preparedness, with the use of state –of- the-art technology and with the tools for planning at national and local government levels.

The World Is Still In Super Typhoon Yolanda Areas 

Our government says there are 171 cities and towns affected by super storm Yolanda, even as the face of destruction was both Tacloban and Guiuan.

Our international team was in Panay islands and months after the typhoon, the women and men were still emotional about the loss of homes and livelihood. 

Panay was the cultural capital of the country in the late 19th and early 20th century.

We were stationed in beautiful Estancia, a coastal town, and one of the best fishing grounds of the Philippines. Aside from destroyed homes, Estancia  also suffered from oil spills from an overturned tanker which make fishing almost impossible for now.
The fisherfolks say that indeed, there is more dignity in fishing than receiving dole outs and so they are clamoring for more sustainable livelihood programs to help them get to their boats.

In the province of Capiz, 77 thousand houses were destroyed by the storm. And so, there was a sub national hub in Roxas City, its capital. A hub is a coordination camp for humanitarian aid by both local and international agencies. A hub is where issues are addressed by what kind of response and by which agencies or clusters. Humanitarian work is according to clusters: camp coordination & camp management, food & agriculture, nutrition, shelter, logistics, health, emergency telecommunications, education, protection, water, sanitation & hygiene, early recovery & livelihood cluster. There are constant inter - agency assessment sessions and cluster meetings.

The international respondents come from all over the world: from UN offices and agencies all over the world and from offices of international aid agencies. Most are deployed three months at a time. The locals are now are into the task of the early recovery phase: shelter, livelihood, food security, among others. 

After the temporary tents, families are moving back to where they were or to bunkhouses. Many are informal settlers and I find families going back to houses located in private lands with no security of tenure. Thus, our local line agencies and international funders can look into more secure housing projects through land acquisitions and community mortgage programs. As we observed earlier in other typhoon and conflict affected areas, buying lands for our displaced communities is a potential source of corruption by overly pricing of lands which makes housing projects expensive for poor mortgagors. And as well,there are standards for a good and safe housing and this is small comfort for our families who have just been through tragedy. 

At this stage of rehabilitation, is it best to donate cash or in kind or facilitate programs on sustainable livelihood? The community should be part of planning durable solutions. There are costs which need to be paid in cash, like a single mother or households who need to pay in cash to obtain the services of a carpenter or other workers. In one case of a poor community, where the beneficiary selection for food items was based on criteria like existing government list of poor, a third were excluded but those excluded ended up receiving the package because those who received also shared what they got. After all, the entire community was affected by the storm and indeed, who will prevent them from sharing what they received by virtue of their being in the list of the poorest among the poor? Perhaps, Filipinos are naturally magnanimous or that after the super storm, who needs to hoard material things at the expense of those who could also need the same food? 

When super typhoon Yolanda struck, several international military personnel also offered civil military humanitarian services and they came in big aircraft carrier ships and they had to spend Christmas 2013 here in our country instead of in the comfort of their homes and loved ones. 

From all the international aid coming to our shores, there is great respect for engaging and honoring local social infrastructures at both national and barangay level line agencies. And for sure, there is a lot to learn from all these international humanitarian response to super storm Yolanda in the name of climate change adaptation which could benefit the entire humanity.

The Philippines is one such laboratory for humanitarian response and here is to hoping that we are learning large lessons very well in this era of changing climes.

                                            Isla de Cana, Carles, Iloilo
                                          

Resilience or Disaster Preparedness? 

A Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation & Recovery (PARR) or a reconstruction "Czar" was appointed & which will, among others, focus on mobilizing the private sector to play a part in the recovery process of the super storm Yolanda affected areas. The office of the PARR headed by Secretary Panfilo Lacson has been urged by various stakeholders to incorporate all current multidisciplinary state of knowledge and lessons on disaster preparedness. The proposed timetable of full implementation of Rehabilitation & Recovery of Yolanda areas program (RAY) in the 24 areas of intervention and development (AID) in the 171 affected cities and towns is by 2017 and with substantial completion by the end of President Aquino's term or on June 30, 2016. A Yolanda rehabilitation plan is in place as of October 2014. 

But, even before Yolanda struck, the eastern provinces of Leyte and Samar are already listed by the Philippine government as some of the poorest provinces of the country. So, any rebuilding should take into account the political economy, culture, understanding of patronage politics & resilient political dynasties and potential corruption. Already, charges of corruption has been leveled against the Department of Public Works & Highways which was later cleared by PARR Panfilo Lacson, but it was nevertheless determined that these bunkhouses in Tacloban did not conform to international standards such as safety, security & privacy, etc.

Also, many of these towns are located in the typhoon belt, and it is visited by typhoons regularly but not in the scale of Yolanda in recent memory. But, archived reports record super storms in the years 1898 and 1912 when thousands also perished. 

The PARR reports that there is inflation in Yolanda affected areas and the government's Department of Trade & Industry will deploy container warehouses and depots where communities can buy construction materials. For the fishing industry, the government will build processing plants for fish. 

The office of the PARR says said no new “bunkhouses,” meant to serve as transition shelters between evacuation centers and tents and permanent houses for the homeless survivors, would be built. Instead of bunkhouses, the homeless will be given money to rebuild their ruined homes even as they wait for permanent housing to be put up.  

At LGU levels, a local government’s land use plan looks at location of human settlements in relation to danger zones.  There are already local models for land use policies as required by the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board’s (HLURB) Program, which aims to complete updating the CLUP of all local government units (LGUs). The HLURB has ordered the review of old Comprehensive Land Use Plans of local government units severely damaged by Typhoon Yolanda. The housing sector has already pushed for initiatives to include climate change response actions in national and local government land use policies.The HLURB is the national government agency primarily tasked with assisting LGUs in drawing up their CLUPs. In 2011, the HLURB began to require all LGUs to integrate climate change adaptation and disaster risk mitigation in their CLUPs.

But, the Philippine Congress has yet to legislate the proposed National Land Use Law that determines usage of land in relation to human habitation, agriculture & fisheries, urban and agrarian lands, business formation, social and physical infrastructures, vulnerable sectors, security, public works, and management of land resources in the context of sustainable development and climate change.  

The budget for a calamity fund at village, town, city or province levels is a measly 5% of total budget.
A people’s survival fund is a proposed legislation which should be part of disaster preparedness.  

Project NOAH of the Philippine government can help with protecting communities through measures like installing early warning systems, upgrading weather forecasting equipment and tools for disaster risk reduction & management planning for villages.  So, local government units which prepare DRRM plans can learn from Project Noah. 

Let us question our so called "resilience" because it is limiting and not enough. Just because Filipinos can bounce back after weathering storms should not mean, we should suffer through with each disaster every time, as poor & vulnerable as ever. In this sense, preparedness and adaptation are the more preferred ways to go.
In practical terms, this means that towns, cities and provinces must prepare social infrastructures such as DRRM plans, an updated Comprehensive Land Use Plans, capacity to read weather warning maps & tools and that the state of multidisciplinary knowledge on disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation are translated to national & local policies and programs for impact. 

The Philippines with its cohesive communities will have to strengthen existing local political and social systems, physical infrastructures, natural systems and defenses towards disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation. 

Manila Monsoon Flood Aug 2012

I am still shocked to talk about the flood because this time the flood came to the doorsteps of my daughter’s home in Makati. I had the scare of my life. I am still analyzing my young daughter’s nonchalance to the flood. She said, “Yesterday I woke up to see that the thigh-high flood that took a two-day residence upon our neighborhood in Makati was gone with minimal trace. Like nothing happened! It was surreal but not nice. I am reminded of the African Serengeti, a place far away from modern civilization, untouched by modern agriculture. It is bone-dry and transforms into a desert during the dry season and when monsoon season arrives, the land is transformed into vast arrays of lakes and rivers. I like to think that resilience is the best weapon against natural calamities---most of which had already been going on for millions of years, long before we came about. The "wisdom of the crowd," like a herd of African wildebeest, knows best to brush off the dust, move on and fight or take flight to survive.”



I hope like many others in Manila, my daughter is not in disaster denial and not so traumatized. She stayed the night in the office sleeping lounge at the height of the flood & had to ride a water raft for a hefty sum from office to home in the morning. Maybe it helped that she knows she can swim like a fish. And thanks to modern communications, we were in touch moment by moment during the flood. Tons of words have been twitted & posted in media on this massive flood brought about by torrential rains from this August Habagat Southwest monsoon. One would think that after the Ondoy flood of 2009, we would be much better off in coping this time. Maybe we were & our evidence for this is that there were fewer human lives lost, compared to the Ondoy flood. The solutions are so simple that they almost defy analysis. One that needs mention was offered by Antonio Oposa Jr who in a few words said, “Again, why is there flooding? Because excess waters do not have a place to go. Solution: Find a place for it to go. How difficult can that be?” See, it is not rocket science.

We like to live in cities & certainly no one is advocating for us to return to the so called frontier lifestyle and so another real honest solution is good urban land use planning. Needless to say, even if floods affect all, floods affect our poor the hardest. Much blame was wrongly heaped on the poor & the colonies of informal settlers who have settled in river banks & clogged floodways with garbage. But, all these are real governance & urbanization issues such as housing, solid waste management, urban land use, drainage, transportation which are now conflated with global warming & climate changes. As Dr Mahar Lagman of the Department of Science & Technology (DOST) said, “Disasters happen only when people are in harm’s way.”
To adopt a line from a famous comedian, if we live near the crater of a volcano, we should not be surprised if hot lava enters our living room. Likewise, if people live near rivers & waterways, these informal settlers will always be at the mercy of river outflows & floods & storm surges. But, if decent housing were available to our poor, do you think they would like to live in harm’s way? Maricris Valte of the Development Academy of the Philippines says our poor are the people that serve many of us & who perform important jobs in our cities: ordinary employees, drivers, market vendors, beauticians, messengers, security guards, community organizers, even some teachers. If only one or a few families are hard hit by a preventable flood, in Sociology, we call this a personal tragedy but if hundreds & thousands suffered because their homes were in harm’s way, this is a social problem worse than the flood itself.

photo credit : Instagram by Christian Lacsina   

Forests, Farms, Fruits, & Flowers Forests, Farms, Fruits, & Flowers

I spent the eve of the Chinese New Year in the beautiful Garden by the Bay near our home here in Davao City and my thoughts were all about forests & farms & fruits. I was alarmed that the high tide of the new lunar moon covered to the brim the jetty for boats to a nearby beach across the Davao Gulf. Certainly, it is not due to the mythical water dragon of the lunar New Year but for sure it is another evidence of climate change. 

I am grappling about forests because my next advocacy is about reforestation. Anything that relates to policy, laws & development & disadvantaged communities are within my area of interests. Also during the week, I met with women informal settlers from the downtown coastal area of Davao City; they were women who have made homes in a sandbar in Isla Verde which grew out of siltation and mud from the denuded mountains of Davao City. I was so touched by their tale during Southwest monsoons ( Habagat). They said their belongings are always packed for quick evacuations in the event of strong storm surge. So, their dream is to be relocated to a safe place to be able to sleep soundly.

Oceans & mountains are so intimately related. In the case of resort islands with beaches, much of the garden is under the sea in its coral reef. The siltation and mud which flows during floods through its riverways to the sea will destroy the marine coral reefs and various marine fishes. Various communities will have to be taught the concept of Agro Forestry for their own sustainability and to preserve the tourism industry of the island cities. Also, since forests constitute a very small percentage of total land use in many of our islands, our water systems will not be sustainable.   

Can our farmers still have income if their farms are planted to forests? I recall now a line or so from P-NOY’s 2011 State of the Nation Address (SONA). The two words for environment were about trees and floods. A stipend program was proposed for the safeguarding of trees while farmers are waiting for the harvest of coffee and cacao and will be offered to informal settlers. For now, most farmers are very poor and they use few purchased inputs and adopt cultivation techniques which maximize current incomes. The agricultural practices of planting corn, vegetables, & other cash crops tend to be neglectful or destructive of the environment in particular and of soil cover in particular. There is convincing evidence, verifiable by ocular inspection that the long term implications are potentially very serious. They include both the direct loss of productive potential and thus the impoverishment of the already poor farmers who are dependent for their livelihood on farming in slopes.

I have seen one environment conservation technology worth replicating on a large scale in Mindanao : A Sloping Agricultural Land Technology ( SALT) to prevent soil erosion and siltation of marine corals, flooding, and gullying in water worn ravine. SALT has been a project of the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center, whose former director, Harold Ray Watson was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award (“Asia’s Nobel “ ) for peace & international understanding and promoting this farm forestry project here and abroad. 

Slopeland areas, officially classified as those of a slope between 18% and 40% contain a third of all farmers in Mindanao. These slopeland areas are also exempt from agrarian reform.

This agro forest technology as practiced in a few pilot areas in Mindanao ( i.e. Bansalan, Davao del Sur, ) includes combinations of land shaping, terracing, contour ploughing, mulching or use of crop residues ; management of cropping patterns to increase soil cover; changes in tillage practices (especially reductions in tillage frequency); and especially introduction of forest species which reduce tillage requirements and help stabilize soil. The forest cover will preserve the water resources found in many parts of Mindanao. 

I recently passed by Bukidnon & Malaybalay on my way to Cagayan de Oro & I find again that many parts of Bukidnon are rockies and so trees will not grow on them. But, also, many parts of Malaybalay just before Cagayan de Oro are planted with cash crops such as pineapple and grains. Should we not also convert these to agro forests? Also alarming is that Marawi City, source of hydro- electric power supplying energy for Mindanao is already in need of serious reforestation. We found out that the landscape artist who developed Baguio City, a hill station, is the same landscape artist who designed another hill station that is Marawi City, during the colonial period. Both cities are now denuded, with Baguio much worst as a mall mania threatens the cutting of precious pine trees.

A decade and a half ago, I literally planted with my own hands almost a hundred trees and now it is a beautiful orchard & a forest: my legacy to the next generation.   

photo credits :
a) MSU Marawi City by Kim Loraine Castillo
b) Hagimit Waterfall and Forest by Leah Marie Moral

Still Beautiful After All These Years

“You can go back to the place but not the time”
- from a song by Paul Williams, Waking Up Alone


After decades, and with the help of electronic gadgets, two friends & I were able to happily summon ten former classmates from Ateneo de Davao University to a wonderful powwow here in Davao City.

An important part of the preparations was what to show as the best places of Davao City to someone who used to live in the good old Davao City. It is easy to list the usual Davao city showcases if one is just a day or a two day visitor. We went to the Peoples Park with greens and with the monkey eating Eagle sculpture, which is a conspicuous icon in our park by Kublai. The EAGLE is also incidentally the symbol of Ateneo. Linda Altarejos, the Manila resident former classmate remarked to us, “Where else to find the best symbol of Ateneo if not in Davao?”

We capped our Davao City tour with songs by Popong Landero and group at Taboan. I must say that the Matina Town Square where the music literati congregate is also one of Davao’s best artistic sites.

We also spent time returning to Ateneo at Roxas St, and Agnes Miclat, the writer & my modern Babaylan recalled that the area where the Ateneo Finster building is located was a grassland swamp when we were students. Today, Ateneo students fear the expected flood at the slightest hint of rain. Pet shared an indigenous knowledge that Davao City was the rice fields of our Bagobos in recent history. Which is why, a major drift in the conversation during the reunion proper was about the recent floods of Davao City & for this, realtors (represented by Genette Ledesma in our group) can play a crucial role in advocating for proper land use regulation.
Father Finster, SJ, was our teacher in Theology and we burst into laughter recalling how our dear classmate, the late Bernadette “Benjie” Ledesma, would act out in coaching a classmate during class recitation and the Father Finster could read the sign being acted out and instead of getting mad would equally & quickly respond in profound humor by urging the coaching student to belt it out. “Say it, Bernadette,” the late Father Finster, would say. Benjie, of course, before she died, became active at PETA as a stage and movie actress. Even now, that scene could draw heaps of laughter from us that draw the attention of diners at Bistro Rosario where we held the pocket powwow over the weekend.

Someone commented on Facebook when we posted the picture that painted a “thousand” words that our Ateneo freshmen honors’ class turned out powerful & beautiful people : Ivy Abella, businesswoman & proud mother of three children & one of them is a vice consul in Madrid, Linda Altarejos, a finance expert who flew in from Manila, Dina de los Reyes, an Obstetrician-Gynecologist who had to excuse during the powwow to do a dilatation & curettage (d&c) but came back to rejoin, Bel Grandea, our sensual trainor & writer who also flew in from Cebu, Genette Ledesma, a Mutya ng Davao, realtor & proud mother of children working in Europe’s finest companies, Nelia Meren, an accountant at COA, Agnes Miclat, writer, teacher, & my modern Babaylan, Rosario Soriano, an accountant at PAGCOR, Miriam Tan, an entrepreneur & accountant & one of her kids is a Science wizard; and moi.

All of our male classmates except two or so are working out of town: a businessman in Cebu, doctors in Manila & abroad, or engineers abroad. Why, they could not come is another story. I was missing Mabel Gardose, our classmate because our friendship paced through the years from Davao through the Manila years to visits in New York. Mabel who earlier trained as a doctor now owns a building in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

To some of us, a source of pride was having raised children but who are now trying out “life’s uniforms” in their chosen work away from home. Some of us are experiencing the so called empty - nest - syndrome. And perhaps, it is one of the reasons why we now have time to organize our long overdue reunions and catching up meetings which can collectively be beneficial for our well being as we journey through the second half of our adult life.

Photo credits : Agnes Miclat   

Ondoy & Onwards

My cousin who lives here in Davao City in Bangkal bought a lifeboat in the wake of Ondoy. Such was the fear brought about by the horrors of the Ondoy storm even as we empathized with the flood victims, some of them our very own friends. Parents, children, everyone and all were traumatized. A lifeboat will not address the problem at the core. Still, we have to capacitate ourselves in disaster preparedness by organizing our neighborhoods and communities. We have been saying this before and it would be worthwhile to say it again – one year after the Ondoy floods. One of the major causes of such disasters is the unchecked urban sprawl and bad urban planning. Floods should be something that we should be preparing for – not unlike the planning of the ark of Noah of the Old Testament.

The architect's perspective is that function follows form. So, we are learning from architects again, particularly from Anna Maria Gonzales : that there is a reason for the stilts in our Bahay Kubo to keep us away from floods; that there should be a space in the perimeter of our homes for water drainage; the space around our houses should not be poured with concrete but should be just soil and vegetation to allow for water to drain; and our walkways should not be poured with concrete but just paved with grass or stepping stones or bricks.

Our asphalt jungle and cemented roads are causing the floods. Our garbage is preventing the run off of water to the watersheds and drainage systems. The concept of mega cities is bad urban planning. Urban experts are saying that our cities should be small and beautiful. I have been to some of the most beautifully planned cities (Vancouver, Amsterdam, New York ) in the world and their central business districts are small. I mean, the garden which is the Central Park of New York City is four square kilometers or as big as Baguio City; and less than a mile from central Vancouver is Stanley Park, a very, very big park planted with forest trees. Of course, the canals of Amsterdam were built to prevent floods as this city is seven meters below sea level.

It is never safe to build on edges of any waterway. And this is true of the coastal areas found in the central business district of Davao City from Magsaysay Park towards the banks of the Davao River in Bolton and Bankerohan and beyond. Not only that our human settlements are not observing the five meter easement, houses are built on parks and shores without building permits. Our people are not only building human settlements in places reserved for parks, their homes are in the sea and these could be danger zones in times of Southwest monsoons and strong storm surges. Goddesses forbid, these are accidents waiting to happen.

It has happened before with Typhoon Nitang in the early eighties. How can I forget? I spent a couple of years working with 231 families displaced by Typhoon Nitang. It was one of first cases handled by our center. These 231 families were hit by tsunami like waves caused by typhoon “Nitang” that destroyed houses & properties of these families. These victims were forced to move to a privately owned land and as expected, the landowner sued them for forcible entry. So, a delegation of women residents of this community, whose husbands were busy attending to their means of livelihood which was mainly fishing, sought the help of our center to defend them. Anyway, these families never went back to building homes in public shores. And it took them Typhoon Nitang to realize this. Therefore, this should be an indication for city planners to imagine another scenario for the coastal areas in our central business district currently inhabited by informal settlers who are technically living in danger zones as defined by our current Urban Development Housing Act (UDHA).