EDITORIAL - Preparedness

Video footage taken recently shows streets and houses that remain empty and buildings still in ruins. With many areas still off-limits to the public except for limited periods, commercial activities cannot be revived. The lack of job opportunities has forced residents to leave home and find work elsewhere.

Five years after a magnitude-9 earthquake and apocalyptic tsunami razed large tracts of northeastern Japan, damaging a nuclear plant that caused widespread radioactive contamination, many areas in the disaster zone still look like ghost towns.

No amount of preparation could have saved northeastern Japan from the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Japan, used to powerful earthquakes and tsunamis and aware of the risks of nuclear power, is ahead of many countries in terms of disaster management. Yet no one expected the magnitude of the disaster that struck on March 11, 2011. The quake and tsunami left nearly 16,000 people dead and over 2,500 still missing. Property damage and economic losses have been placed at hundreds of billions of dollars.

Apart from an occasion to mourn the dead and missing, the annual commemoration of the event has become a reminder to the world of the urgency of disaster preparedness. The Philippines, like Japan, lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire and is prone to powerful earthquakes. Torrential monsoon rains and strong typhoons hit the Philippines regularly, spawning cataclysmic flooding and killer mudslides. But unlike Japan, the Philippines’ disaster mitigation and response capabilities are acutely limited. Super Typhoon Yolanda exposed the inadequacies.

Improvements in disaster response capabilities have been implemented since Yolanda, with a lot of help from the international community. Yet the Philippines still cannot respond adequately even to deadly landslides. With seismologists warning that a major earthquake fault is ripe for a powerful movement, studies have shown that Metro Manila and neighboring areas are ill prepared to deal with the catastrophe. Today’s commemoration of the Japan earthquake should remind Filipinos of what nature can unleash and the need to increase disaster preparedness.