In the wake of Typhoon Ondoy, the latest reports show that at least 246 people have died, with 37 still unaccounted for; one in every 11 families in Metro Manila and Central Luzon were affected by the flood, with over 567,000 people still crowded in evacuation centers.
Property damage has been assessed at least P4.67 billion. And no one has yet tried to estimate the loss in economic productivity as well as losses from dislocation.
No one questions that Ondoy was a natural calamity. But the damage wrought cannot be wholly attributed to nature alone.
Human acts and omissions contributed substantially to that damage, and must not be exculpated.
To wit:
PAGASA has equipment that will allow it to detect, among others, the wind velocity of tropical cyclones and their possible path.
What PAGASA still does not have — which is available — is the equipment, called Doppler radar, which, I am informed, allows the rain content of such storms to be determined as well — and therefore the intensity of flooding that might occur.
The irony of it is that this Doppler radar costs — and I got this from Google — a mere $300,000 to $1 million, or roughly P15 million to P50 million pesos.
Why “mere”? Because it is much less than the P70 million that is reportedly the yearly pork barrel allocation of a single congressman, and peanuts compared to a Senator’s annual P200 million share of that same pork.
Or how about comparing it to the cost of a Presidential foreign trip?
The cost per day of her trips two years ago (2007) came out to $255,000 from $46,000 thousand a day in 2002.
It is safe to say that by 2009, these trips average about $300,000 a day.
Therefore the Doppler radar would cost roughly equal to anywhere from one day to a little over three days’ foreign travel of the President.
In any case, it would pay for itself almost immediately, in terms of the number of the number of lives saved, and property damage reduced.
Yes, PAGASA did issue flood and landslide warnings as early as September 24 – but saying that there may be flood and landslides is a different kettle of fish then saying something to the effect that “400 centimeters of rain is expected in the next ten hours — more than the average rainfall in a whole month.”
That will surely catch everyone’s attention, including the Authorities.
Has anyone noticed lately that Pinoys live on a bunch of rocks surrounded by the ocean? We picked a spot dotted by active volcanoes, sitting on fault lines and lashed by monsoons.
I guess there came a point in the lives of our nomadic ancestors when they went, “Okay, that’s it, no more wandering around. This looks like a nice place: great seas, big rivers, fertile plains, regular rains, nice sacred-looking mountains with smoke billowing from the top on some days.”
It seemed like a good idea at the time. When the sun is shining, all bright smiles and loud laughter. Disasters: still smiling and waving to cameras. Then we fight or grieve, and it’s all slapping and wailing and beating our breasts. f course it’s not their fault that we’ve now got.
. We have kids having swimming competitions at the flooded Recto underpass (watch the incredible Ondoy Olympics video on YouTube).
We have got gay men organizing relief goods and calling themselves MaderPackers. We have socialites tending soup kitchens.
And – I was particularly moved by this – we have also got prisoners who not only dance to “Thriller” en masse but also skip meals so they can donate food to flood victims.
We’ve got a judge going around on a jet ski mounting personal rescues, movie stars surfing floodwaters to rescue neighbors, and an 18-year old construction worker saving dozens of people before losing his own life.
Compare this to the response to Katrina in 2005 when a “First World” city broke down in a matter of hours, policemen abandoned their posts, shops and homes were looted swiftly, wackos shot at rescue helicopters and the poor and black were left behind.
Yes, government failed and it continues to fail us but we take care of each other and make each other laugh. We are shaped by hurricanes and we are stronger than them.
Good thing we’ve got Pinoy genes..
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