More than 100 people remained missing after tropical depression “Agaton” caused landslides last week, disaster officials said Monday.
This developed as President Rodrigo Duterte blamed climate change for the great destruction wrought by the first storm on the country this year, and hoped the government succeeding him after the May 9 elections could do better in preparing Filipinos for natural disasters.
“I hope the next administration, mas maganda ang preparation or whatever efforts that would contribute to at least remedy the situation,” Duterte said in his pre-recorded Talk to the People aired last night.
“Unless there’s a radical change in the weather patterns, we will have it hard here in the Philippines… The damage we take is great, but our contribution to climate change is small,” the President added in expressing sorrow over the lives lost to landslides after the storm.
The death toll from Agaton stood at 172, while 110 people were still missing, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said in its latest report.
In a radio interview, however, NDRRMC spokesman Mark Timbal said 100 residents in Abuyog town, and about 70 in Baybay City, both in Leyte province, were missing. He said the authorities in these areas were expected to decide later Monday whether to stop rescue operations because the ground remained unstable.
Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda has renewed calls for the creation of the Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR), whose charter he principally authored.
“That kind of casualty level is unacceptable. We knew this typhoon was coming. We knew areas that were vulnerable. Those deaths were neither completely unpredictable nor unavoidable. More could have been done, but institutional handicaps are there. And those handicaps kill,” Salceda said.
“The problem, and we have been frustrated to repeat this all the time, is that the NDRRMC is coordinative. It does not have the personnel, resources, access to jurisdiction, or ability to overrule local handicaps. You need that during a disaster,” Salceda added.
Salceda said “being unable to preemptively declare a state of imminent calamity affected the ability of local government units to mobilize early preparedness, especially given election ban on spending.”
A party-list legislator, meanwhile, said there is still time for the Senate to pass a bill that calls for the establishment of permanent evacuation centers.
In a statement, Deputy Minority Leader and Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate said “a secure and safer evacuation place has long been the desire of our people living in disaster-prone areas and it behooves Congress to finally heed this oft-repeated lamentation.”
Zarate filed House Bill 5259 which proposed “evacuation centers should be typhoon, earthquake, disaster resistant to ensure the victims would be safer and would not be confined in tent cities as they are exposed to the elements especially now that most houses and structures in many areas are either destroyed or heavily damaged due to floods and landslides.”
He made the call as the death toll from Agaton climbed to 172.
Putting up a permanent evacuation center, Zarate said, will be “a departure from the common practice of using schools and multi-purpose halls as evacuation centers but are still in danger prone areas.”
HB 5259 provides that evacuation centers should also be located in between barangays so that more people can reach them at the soonest time and may also serve as the command center for disaster response.“It should have a stockpile of food and water as well as isolation centers and clinics. It can also house generators and secured cell sites so that there would be communications even if other towers are down,” Zarate said.
“The fact that the Philippines is a country often visited by typhoons yearly, the government has to undertake measures while waiting for the completion of a comprehensive disaster preparedness program and its eventual implementation.
“We can save lives by ensuring that sturdy and typhoon-resilient, climate change-adaptive evacuation centers are located at a distance safe from waters and landslide-prone areas in every two to three contiguous barangays,” Zarate said.