Swamped

The calamity that struck Cagayan de Oro and Iligan reinforces our claim to being the Disaster Capital of the World.

The worst thing we could do at this point is to blame global warming and exculpate all the negligence that led to this calamity. Climate change is a relatively slow process that is not beyond the remedial reach of authoritative action.

Lory Tan of the World Wildlife Fund, several years ago, produced simulation studies on the effects of rising waters, warming seas and inordinate rainfall. These studies accurately warned of the sort of flash flooding that hit Northern Mindanao last week.

When the studies were presented to policymakers, they were dismissed as being too alarmist. Well, the consequence of that dismissal is the gross unpreparedness that enabled the floods to take so many lives.

It is easy to dismiss geo-hazard maps as being too alarmist. Attending to possible hazards require too much work. Bureaucrats, as a rule, do not want to be swamped with work mitigating mere scenarios.

Now we are swamped with the sheer magnitude of rescue and relief operations, and then later with the repair and rehabilitation of the awesome damage done.

Many of those killed in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan were run down by logs coming down from the slopes with the surging waters. All the logs magnified the impact of the torrent on anything that stood in their way, much like a giant bulldozer mowing down houses. Then the logjams trapped the water, to be unleashed with even greater force when the impromptu dams give way.

There is something eerily familiar in the video coming out of Cagayan de Oro after the floods struck. We saw this before, particularly in the case of Ormoc many years ago. This is a man-made calamity.

Early this year, President Aquino declared a logging ban. All the logs that invaded Cagayan de Oro were obviously cut after the ban was declared. There was clearly no enforcement of the ban.

Someone should tell the President it is not enough to declare things and expect them to happen. There must be determined follow-through — which, of course, requires putting in work.

Many of the most influential political clans in Mindanao made their wealth on logging. The deforestation is most visible from the air. There has not been enough effort the past few years to reforest the denuded areas. That is almost an invitation to flash flooding.

Reforestation costs. It requires the mobilization of people and resources to be done. Government’s reforestation efforts have been meager, to say the least. The denudation continues unabated and we are far from reversing the pattern that reduced our foreign cover to under 15 percent what it was a century before.

As in many areas throughout the archipelago, sheer population pressure human settlements into perilous areas: sandbars on the mouths of rivers, slopes vulnerable to landslides, coastlines exposed to storm surges and on river banks where homes impede the flow of water.

Removing all the informal settlers from river banks and sandbars will require a massive housing effort on the part of government. Ironically, some low-cost housing projects — as in what was once called “Erap City” in Antipolo — moved informal settler from flood-prone areas to landslide-prone areas.

 Starting with the dislocated in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, government should help finance new settlements in areas free of hazards. The river banks were cleared by the floods. A ban on rebuilding in these same areas needs to be strongly enforced.

 We have a housing backlog estimated at about three million units. Socialized housing is nominally high on the agenda of every government — but the volume of financing required to actually begin closing the housing gap is probably beyond the reach of government financing, certainly beyond the reach of this penny-pinching administration. From today, the housing program needs to be made complaint with the geohazard mapping, possibly raising costs but surely protecting lives.

Many governments today have organized full-scale departments focused entirely on mitigating the effects of climate change. We might consider organizing one here. With a vulnerable island ecology made worse by the wanton destruction of our forests, with overpopulation pushing communities to the sea, we desperately need an agency concerned exclusively with program mitigating the adversities of climate change.

In the now habitual attempt to deflect criticism away from the national leadership, some officials of this administration actually blamed the victims for their fate. This might not be entirely untrue, but it is definitely impolitic.

After finally visiting the devastated areas, albeit almost entirely from the air, the President ordered the usual investigation to determine culpability. This is so characteristic of the present dispensation: instead of studying changes in policy and procedures, it looks for people to indict.

From Ormoc to Guinsaugon to Cagayan de Oro, we see a recurrent pattern. Surely there will be enough blame to lay around. The devastated communities are half as interested in seeing their local officials thrown in jail as they are to see a clear policy framework from the national government to mitigate natural disasters.

Let us hope another Ondoy does not strike the metropolitan area. When the administration cancelled the foreign-assisted contract to dredge the Laguna de Bay, it has also exposed millions residing around the lake’s edge to the horrors of a great flood.

Let us get our priorities right here. There is no greater responsibility on the part of government than to ensure the safety of its citizens.