National calamity

Because so many provinces were affected by tropical storm “Sendong” in Mindanao, a state of “national calamity” was declared yesterday by President Aquino.

Such declarations are meant to speed up the delivery of relief services to affected communities.

At the same time, an investigation is underway to determine if anyone can be held liable for acts or omissions that led to the grievous death toll and destruction from a weather disturbance where the worst warning issued was a Signal Number Two.

Last year, Prisco Nilo was sacked as chief weather forecaster for much less. Nilo got the goat of newly elected President Aquino, barely a month into the new administration, for failing to predict that typhoon “Basyang” would hit Metro Manila.

This time, science and weather officials are insisting that they issued appropriate warnings about the expected amount of rainfall from Sendong, which triggered the flashfloods that swamped Cagayan de Oro, Iligan and other areas in Mindanao.

Perhaps something got lost in translation, or else no one bothered to translate at all, so that local government and disaster officials would understand clearly, for example, that this amount of rainfall could trigger that much flooding, and it would be prudent to order an evacuation.

Also, no weather expert in Metro Manila could have predicted that the flashfloods would bring down all that corpus delicti of illegal logging from the hills: logs and lumber that crashed into houses and vehicles, worsening the death and destruction.

In the first place, some of those who should have issued the appropriate warnings about denuded watersheds and the high risk of killer floods are suspected to be involved themselves, directly or as protectors, of illegal logging in the mountains around Cagayan de Oro and Iligan.

Several geohazard experts have pointed out that warnings about such a catastrophe were issued several years ago, but no one paid attention.

This attitude, unfortunately, is more the rule rather than the exception in our disaster-prone land.

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I know a Las Piñas resident, for example, who until three years ago liked to boast that if the street where she lived ever got flooded, it would mean that the entire Metro Manila was underwater.

Today there are low, concrete flood barriers in the doors leading to her backyard. The barriers were constructed after several instances of flooding so heavy even portions of the house had an inch of water within less than an hour from the onset of rain.

Those weren’t typhoons but simply sudden downpours. In each case, however, the amount of rain was always unusually heavy, and the speed by which the floodwaters rose always astonishingly swift. Believing that such flashfloods were no longer freak occurrences and were here to stay, the household had the concrete barriers constructed.

That attitude of disbelief is not unusual when it comes to natural calamities. It takes more than one disaster to warn people that preventive measures must be implemented, or that a place has become too dangerous for human settlement and must be abandoned.

The attitude is stronger when the natural calamity is experienced for the first time. The event is described as a freak phenomenon, with the implied belief, or hope, that it’s unlikely to happen again. We like to say that lightning does not strike the same place twice, but records show that in fact it has happened in several places around the world. There have even been documented cases of certain individuals being struck more than once in their lifetime by lightning.

Geohazard warnings in particular tend to be ignored by the public. The science on which such warnings are based is generally regarded as inexact, and the time frames involved can cover several decades or even centuries.

One well-known example is the prediction about a major earthquake in California. I’ve heard warnings about “The Big One” since I was a child and some of my relatives were preparing to move to the United States. Some of them are still in California, and still unmindful of the doomsday predictions.

“The Big One” did strike this year in the Pacific… in Japan. And no one foresaw that apocalyptic tsunami that swept away tens of thousands of lives. If anyone had warned of that kind of destruction from a tsunami, the warning might have been heeded by some Japanese, mainly because powerful tsunamis have also struck in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean in recent years. But the warning would also have been met with some skepticism.

If anyone had warned about the cataclysmic destruction brought by typhoon “Ondoy” in 2009, that person would have been advised to have his head examined. To this day, the Laguna de Bay floodplain, where communities bore the brunt of Ondoy’s flooding, remains densely populated.

Several years ago, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) released a geohazard map, showing a major earthquake fault running across Metro Manila from the east to the south and on to Cavite.

A number of residents and property owners along the path of the fault line had a common response: they complained that the release of the map brought down the value of their property.

As far as I know, there has been no mass exodus from the fault. In fact there has been a boom in property development, including high-rises, shopping malls and cemeteries, along or near the fault line.

In August 1999, two days of incessant heavy rains triggered a landslide on the slopes of Barangay San Luis in Antipolo City. The avalanche brought 379 houses in Cherry Hills Subdivision crashing down the slopes, killing about 60 people. Geohazard experts later said the slopes were not solid enough for housing construction.

Similar warnings have been issued in other hilly or mountainous areas in the country, but I haven’t heard of any case where a warning has stopped property development or informal human settlement.

Maybe we Pinoys are truly fatalistic by nature. What will be, will be; worrying makes one old and ugly.

Or perhaps we’re overly optimistic. Faced with the worst calamity and warnings of a recurrence, our first thought, as we touch prayer beads or amulets, is, “It can’t happen to me.”

When disaster does strike, we tell ourselves, it won’t happen again. It doesn’t make us safe, but maybe it keeps us sane.