“We haven’t learned anything and seem to be always starting from scratch”
GIVEN that we are considered the most vulnerable country to the effects of climate change, it stands to reason that our disaster response capabilities should be one of the best in world. Unfortunately, however, we have proven time and again that our efforts are always wanting. Typhoon Tino just proved this once again.
And the fact that we did not lose as much with Typhoon Uwan is not because of anything we did but because the strength of Uwan weakened considerably, sparing the country from a lot of casualties.
Agriculture and infrastructure damages, however, were still considerable.
If it is not one of the 20 typhoons that visit the country every year that is causing so much misery, it would be an earthquake or a volcano erupting.
Sometimes all three are happening at the same time.
This is due to the fact that our country is in a region in the Pacific Ocean called the Ring of Fire.
By now, we should no longer be suffering from that kind of devastation caused by Typhoon Tino and our President need not be apologizing for the many casualties if we have been doing our homework.
But we never seem to learn.
One would think that Typhoon Yolanda should have made us resilient but, unfortunately, as Typhoon Tino just showed us, we haven’t learned anything and seem to be always starting from scratch.
It should now be obvious to our leaders that the current emergency response system that we have is no longer responsive and should be replaced by a more efficient and more flexible program more suited to the kind of emergency situations that are happening nowadays.
For instance, the kind of flooding that devastated Cebu at the height of Typhoon Tino was so rapid and apparently totally unexpected that any response would probably have been unable to stop what happened.
If there was anything learned from that flooding, it is the value of properly assessing the situation before the event – and that is called forward planning.
It is the ability to evaluate and make a forecast to what might happen and plan accordingly.
Our current system does prepare for food packs to be prepositioned but forward planning is often seldom done which is unfortunate.
But long before Typhoon Yolanda, then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo did in fact try a new approach to emergency management by trying to adopt the Cobra system of the United Kingdom to be applied here.
Since I was in her government then, she sent me to the UK for a series of meetings which resulted in us selecting about 18 government officials to take the initial two-week course.
These officials formed the core group and eventually resulted in the late Secretary Roilo Golez being appointed as the Cabinet official in charge of any emergency situation whether natural or man-made.
The next step was to bring a training team from the UK that went all over the country training local officials to form the first generation of the Cobra system.
Unfortunately, however, when PGMA left office, the new administration completely eliminated the program with other climate mitigating projects like dredging the heavily silted Laguna Lake.
The Aquino government maintained the old system which was the one in place when Yolanda struck. The UK Cobra system was never really tried which was a shame.
Up to now, we continue to rely on our very bureaucratic system which is no longer responsive. For instance, it should not be the President directing the search and rescue effort.
That is not his job.
In the UK Cobra system, the responsibilities of every level of government official are well defined.
All that the President does is to receive briefings from those on the ground.
But from what happened in Cebu during Typhoon Tino, most of the mayors were apparently gallivanting in Europe when their municipalities were being devastated.
So, who do we blame?
It is clearly time to change. There are many good models around the world that our government can look into to see what fits our needs.
But we have to do it now.
We should never have to experience what Typhoon Tino did to us ever again.
