DISASTER-PRONE FIRST PERSON By Alex Magno (The Philippine Star) | Updated October 19, 2013 We have been warned: the Philippines ranks among the most disaster-prone countries on earth. What happened in Bohol this week underscores that. The Philippines straddles the typhoon belt. We form part of what is called the Ring of Fire, a stretch of the most active volcanos on earth. The island ecology is the most precarious and we are among the Pacific economies most vulnerable to global warming. The archipelago is crisscrossed with active fault lines, large tectonic plates constantly pushing against each other. The quake that rocked Bohol is more powerful than the one that struck Haiti some years back. To this day, the tent cities that mushroomed in Haiti are still there. That forsaken country does not have the steely institutions of governance to quickly rescue its beleaguered population. A large portion of Haitians remain dependent on international charity years after being stuck by a strong quake. Compare the plight of Haitians to the condition of Japanese cities struck by a quake-generated tsunami. With a robust state and a civic culture envied by the rest of the world, Japan quickly rebuilt after the great tsunami. Normal life returned to the communities that bore the brunt of the tsunami. The Philippines lies somewhere between Haiti and Japan in institutional capacity to deal with calamities. The bad news is we are probably closer to Haiti and farther from Japan in having the institutional capacity to deal with large-scale disasters. As the extent of the damage the great quake dealt the people of Bohol seeps in, it is now clear the island will require many years to recover. Some of the edifices lost in the calamity we will never recover: those elegant old churches that stood proud for centuries before buckling in the face of the worst quake the Visayas experienced in memory. Opinion ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 It is odd, however, listening to the guardians of our cultural artifacts wailing about the loss of old edifices. No quarrel that these edifices are invaluable. The people of Bohol are in terrible shape. Let us inspect those churches and fret over the possibility of reconstruction later. The more immediate task at hand is to mitigate the human misery inflicted by this calamity. At the risk of being labeled a Philistine, I argue that the basic infrastructure needs more immediate attention. There are interior towns in Bohol that are now experiencing critically low supplies of food. Power is down. Safe drinking water is inadequate. Tens of thousands of Boholanos have no shelter. The administrative systems are impaired. On the heels of every great natural calamity are epidemics and malnourishment. It is the responsibility of national government to quickly bring in the manpower and the resources to mitigate the misery and head of a humanitarian crisis. Fortunately, we have a strong civil society that is able to quickly collect resources and bring them to areas hit by calamity. In most instances, civil society response is more immediate and more effective than state response — although it is always the politicians who hog the limelight in the relief efforts. This could be a civic virtue nourished by the very fact that we are so prone to calamities. Supplementing our strong civil society institutions are large amounts set aside by our largest enterprises for corporate social responsibility programs. Many of our volunteer groups rely on hefty corporate donations to respond quickly to emergencies. For recovery to happen, however, the central government’s response is most vital. In the first days after the quake, Manila’s response appears tepid. The President did tour the devastated areas before going a-visiting to Korea. He mumbled something about checking the surviving buildings. He left without issuing reassuring words about the central government’s plan to help the devastated communities recover. Surely, our government has much in its hands at this time. The fiasco in Zamboanga produced tens of thousands of evacuees who will be reliant on government aid for a very long time. The politicians guising themselves as generals ordered urban warfare to be mounted, reducing to rubble thousands of homes and business establishments. To date, there is no clear program for reconstructing the devastated city. A stray typhoon last week crossed Central Luzon, wreaking much havoc. The damage to agriculture on the eve of harvest could put pressure on our rice supply. There are many roads to be rebuilt and many homes to be repaired. No new infrastructure was built in the last three years. Those lost to the sequence of calamities we experienced suggests a widening of the infrastructure gap. The tediousness of this government does not encourage the victims of a large quake that official response to their plight will be decisive, immediate and determined. The ineffective response to the Bohol disaster magnifies concerns about our institutional capacity to deal with high-casualty incidents. Experts have again called our attention to the vulnerability of the National Capital Region. On any weekday, Metro Manila holds about 15 million people. It has one of the highest population densities on earth. One shudders to imagine the consequences of a quake of the same magnitude as the one that struck Bohol striking the metropolitan area. With a government that cannot even manage traffic properly, can we handle this? For a nation so disaster-prone, public safety ought to be the cardinal concern of the state. But for a state as weak and corrupt as the one we have, there is little assurance the first responsibility of governance will be met.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 23:16:49 +0000
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