Solidum

The aftershocks from the last 7.9 (Richter) quake are still being felt in this Gardener’s little town by the Pacific: a hundred ninety three aftershocks now, according to Director Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs).

Solidum said the disaster of September 1st could have been catastrophic were it not for a merciful miracle happening – with “ scientific explanations”, he rushed to add. The earthquake packed energy “equivalent to 32 Hiroshima atomic bombs,” but a combination of factors spared the Filipinos destruction from this big one.[1]

He said that the quake would have been more strongly felt had its epicenter been on land or if there was more vertical displacement of ocean water, triggering a destructive tsunami, as what happened in the Moro Gulf quake that killed thousands of people in southern Mindanao and Sulu in 1976.[2] So, the big one came and a miracle saved us.

Outlawing Disaster 

Years and years ago the popular joke each typhoon season concerned a congressman’s serious habit of rising to file a bill to outlaw typhoons. But this is no longer a joke today. Republic Act No. 10121 of 2010 is law and now provides a legal basis for policies, plans and programs to deal with disasters.

The law acknowledges the need to “adopt a disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) approach that is holistic, comprehensive, integrated, and pro- active in lessening the socio-economic and environmental impacts of disasters including climate change, and promote the involvement and participation of all sectors and all stakeholders concerned, at all levels, especially the local community.” 

By law, the Office of Civil Defense formulates and implements the NDRRMP (National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Program) and ensures that the physical framework, social, economic and environmental plans of communities, cities, municipalities and provinces are consistent with such plan in addition, of course, to being quite dependent on these local plans and resources in the first place.

So, the law need not be toothless, as its vision does not hang in the air but touches ground with the provision of a concrete administrative mechanism for implementing an agreed-on over-all plan. There is a national-local chain of councils that contribute to and are aligned with each other in implementing doable, fundable, high impact, interconnected/interdependent, and sustainable projects.

Of course, the first most important question concerns funding – is there any funding for the program, and where do the funds come from, with what velocity?

Well, funds can be tapped from the General Appropriations Act (GAA) – through the existing budgets of the national line and government agencies; the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund (NDRRMF); the Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund (LDRRMF); the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF); Donor Funds; Adaptation and Risk Financing; and the Disaster Management Assistance Fund (DMAF). These are funds that can be released immediately and without corruption (almost) if PNoy and DBM’s Abad so desire.

Aside from these fund sources, the NDRRMP will also tap into non-monetary resources such as community-based good practices for replication and scaling up; indigenous practices on DRRM; Public-Private-Partnerships; and networks of key stakeholders.

Over-all, then, there ought not to be any scarcity of funds for disaster-preparedness. 

What is the basis and vision of this Plan 2011-2028 (spanning, like the new Chief Justice’s tenure, three presidential terms)?

In any disaster area today, the government’s overall vision is “safer, adaptive and disaster-resilient Filipino communities toward sustainable development.” It is quite a mouthful. It is supposed to convey a paradigm shift from reactive to proactive DRRM wherein men and women have increased their awareness of DRRM toward increasing people’s resilience and decreasing their vulnerabilities.

So, the focus is not on physical infrastructure alone (which the government should be doing) but on an enlightened people who understand how things can go wrong and who are willing to do something about it. Nonetheless, of course, there is no escaping the need for appropriate infrastructure and new infra and building designs such as the Palafox group has been egging the government to adopt.

In this over-all context, one hears talk, for example, of establishment of DRRM Training Institutes, setting up of local flood early warning systems through integrated and sustainable management river basins and water sheds – like the Cagayan River Basin in Region 2, End-to-End Early Warning Systems in the Provinces of Bulacan, Leyte, Albay, the Municipalities of Kitcharao and Santiago, Agusan del Norte and Butuan City and the establishment of local DRRM Councils and Offices and their operations centers…

Following this year’s flood crisis, the government upped the budget for flood control by 42 percent, to P17.489 billion from the year’s program of P12.326 billion. The DBM said that this will cover the Pasig-San Juan-Marikina River System, and the National Capital Region. So, we are hearing substantial sums following the last crisis.

A budget of P500 million in 2013 is proposed for the Department of Science and Technology’s National Operational Assessment of Hazards, also known as Project NOAH. Project NOAH is a national forecasting system for rains, typhoons, floods, and other natural calamities, launched just last month.

The common stats[3] 

Climate change, typhoons and floods

The Philippines, as most people know, gets hit yearly on an average of twenty times or more by dangerous storms from the Pacific Ocean with increased flooding as typhoons become ever stronger.

Earthquakes

Worldwide, over the last few decades, a marked increase in more powerful earthquake activity is painfully obvious, with lots of talk about an inevitable upheaval, and its unimaginable casualties.  The Philippines is in the middle of the most active earthquake zone in the world called by many “The Ring of Fire”. By Richter scale measurements, the one that hit us the other day was a big one that could even have become the big one – but, miraculously, didn’t.

Who can really understand earthquakes and tsunamis? Our planet is alive. And its life is characterized by so much activity from the inside out.

Volcanoes

There are 37 volcanoes in this archipelago, of which 18 are still active. Most of our 7100 islands are actually of volcanic origin.

Water-related disasters and the need for water-based survival training

A nation surrounded by water sees many water-related accidents and disasters on a yearly basis.  How many thousands of people have been killed by ferry and boating accidents in our country?

Bad weather and poor shipping maintenance combined with overloading of vessels — especially during the Christmas season as families return to their villages for reunions — and lax enforcement of regulations have brought many tragedies to Philippine waters. 

The gospel of preparedness, according to Architect Palafox[4]

Urban planner architect Felino “Jun” Palafox, a Director of the Lay Society of St.Arnold Janssen, has some practical suggestions. Here are a few.

Create an open park area for every barangay or city block to serve as both a firebreak, and an evacuation center. Construct emergency water supply tanks near these evacuation sites.

Improve waterways, creeks, canals, rivers, and lakes, to control the flow of rainwater, mud, and garbage.

Promote local disaster drills and see that disaster preparedness is taught in schools. Designate local leaders in barangays, towns, and cities to create citizens’ awareness of the importance of disaster prevention.

In the long term, as a line of defense against flooding, reforest hills and mountainsides and plant more trees in urban areas. Construct safe buildings that are both flood proof and fireproof. The technology exists. It is a question of public awareness and public demand.

Monorails, walkways[5]

Because San Juan, like Marikina and many other places in Metro, gets flooded during heavy rains, when the San Juan River overflows, and the floods are high, urban planner Jun Palafox proposes new building designs.

He says an elevated covered walkway should connect establishments, and there should also be a monorail system, way above the highest flood water level.

“May mobility pa rin, accessibility sa mga nababaha. This is not new, kasi like sa Venice, Italy, maski nagbabaha madaming tourists kasi they have interconnected walkways,” said Palafox.

Palafox said the local government can make a flood overlay zoning to determine which areas are most prone to flooding. To make sure residents are safe, Palafox says there should be a special building code when constructing in flood-prone areas,  and homes there should be remodeled.

“Let’s say every year binabaha, doing nothing is no longer an option. Do something and you have several alternatives,” he said. Palafox says homes in flood-prone areas should have stilts and at the very least, be 2 to 3-storeys high. The bedrooms should be at the floor above the highest flood line and there should be an emergency exit to the roof.

Constructive critic criticized[6]

Philvocs officials had been saying after the 8.9 (Richter) quake in Japan that the Philippines was already due for the “big one.”

Felino Palafox Jr. had cited many studies made by Japan and the US as to the extent of damage that the county could have should a magnitude 7 earthquake hit the metropolis. – studies that frankly painted an apocalypse for the Philippines.

However, presidential mouthpiece Abigail Valte preferred to shoot down the renowned urban planner, saying that he should stop infusing fear and panic among the people.  She said he should just submit his proposals to the government instead of being all over radio and TV. Palafox, however, was quick also to point out that he had been coordinating with presidents past and present about issues on the country’s readiness regarding an occurrence of a monstrous earthquake.  He showed official documents citing and proving that the government was the one who was sleeping on its watch – including the present administration.

So, where are we now in disaster-expectations and preparedness?

2012 and cataclysmic events 

Modern science looks at the universe and sees great waves of energy pulsing across the Cosmos, making time merge with the space it travels through, moving scientists to use the term space-time. 

They also see these waves of time repeat as cycles within cycles. “Every 5,125 years,” said Dr. Gregg Braden, summing up the views of indigenous peoples and modern science in his new book Fractal Time, “the earth and our solar system reach a place in their journey through space that marks the end of precisely such a cycle. With that end, a new world age begins. Apparently, it’s always been that way.”

Thus, “we’re living the end of time. Not the end of the world,” Dr. Braden emphasizes, “but the end of a world age – a 5,125 year cycle of time – and the way we’ve known the world throughout that time. The present world age began in 3114 BC and will end in A.D. 2012,” December 21^st of this year to be exact.

And, “who said so?” Indigenous peoples like the Aztec and the Maya, and now modern cosmologists – scientists who study the origin and history of the universe. Of course, it’s only quite recently that modern scientists have made sense of the meaning of a world age, and they have done so only now because of technology, or the lack of it.

“More than 51 centuries ago,” going back to Dr. Braden, “our ancestors did their best to inform and warn us of what they knew would be an era of powerful transition in a future that they could only imagine in their dreams. That era is now.”

The data from one United Nations’ conference after another, and daily from all the front pages of all the journals in the planet, and hourly from all the broadcast and video channels world-wide show very clearly that the changes are intense. We are definitely living a very intense time in the history of our planet.

It is a good time surely to do a cosmic reality check. Let’s look at 5,000 years of history since the last world age; find out what works and what doesn’t. The systems that begin to buckle and collapse under the stress of a changing world are the systems that are not sustainable in the long term.

Let’s have a longer take from Braden:

“We actually entered into the 2012 window of change right around the year 1980… And the zone closes right around the year 2016. So … we are over halfway through the window of time and well into the changes, whatever changes we’re going to see; we’re well into those changes. The very changes that so many people are anticipating and fearing and preparing and waiting for, they’re already happening. So we’re already living the time of abrupt climate change, certainly, and extremes of heat and cold. We’re already seeing the rise of the sea level and super storms and mega earthquakes that are wiping entire communities off the face of the earth. And we’re already seeing multiple fires raging out of control on multiple continents and diseases killing millions of people that we have no medical cure for. Those are the worst-case scenarios in so many of the predictions and prophecies that we are anticipating. Well they’re already happening.”

His all-important observation is, however, not in the physical phenomena:

“The great danger is in our response to the changes of the world. How do we treat one another as individuals and as a society, as a community, as nations? Those great civilizations that collapsed had been around thousands of years. They buckled and collapsed and disappeared under the stress of the change in their time that we’re seeing in ours. And what the studies are showing is that the reason they disappeared is because when they didn’t understand the change, they began to fight one another, and fight to sustain unsustainable ways of life. And that’s what led to their collapse.”

The aim of our country now, officially speaking, when it comes to disaster-preparedness is not too bad after all: “increasing people’s resilience and decreasing their vulnerabilities.” Given what cosmologists are talking about as our solar system reaches the center of the galaxy in a few months – something it does every so many thousand years – our puny, little preparations should not be viewed as insignificant.

Science after all is about understanding and harnessing the forces of nature. So maybe, like the Palafox architecture, it should be less about harnessing and controlling and more about working with nature in a sustainable way. The natural world – wild, tameless, swift and proud – must be held up as the real charter of science. When this happens soon with the advent of 12.21.2012 we would have signed at last a true planetary peace treaty to last us another world age. FINIS

Charles Avila – The Gardener