New prospects and directions

The recent disaster in Visayas as shown in the photos below from open sources, galvanized our resolve to take new directions and work on new prospects. We will do our share in the rebuilding of these lost social enclaves in all of 9 regions, formerly lively, dynamic, alive and healthily breathing communities now reduced to tatters, broken down to no-man's lands.

Will there be more Killer Quakes?

From over 40 casualties, the death toll has risen to nearly 100 in the Carmen, Bohol Province-Cebu City earthquake. At that figure, the Carmen-Cebu tremor can qualify as a Killer Quake. Cebu and nearby areas has to be declared to be in a state of calamity. There are limited manuevers that aircraft can make at the Cebu airport due to the cracking and opening up of the airport's runways.

The six million dollar question is: how many more incidents like those in Carmen, Bohol and Cebu City and the other ones in Leyte, Samar will we be expecting?

Were the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) prepared adequately enough with equipment to monitor ground movement, tectonic plate disturbance, the nearly 100 deaths could have been avoided. 27 Billion Philippine Pesos is earmarked for pork barrel in the 2014 General Appropriations Act out of a total expenditure program of 2.26 Trillion Philippine Pesos. Would it be difficult to allocate even half of that pork barrel budget for emergency preparedness, disaster risk reduction, equipment upgrade?

Past Warnings of Big Disaster

This site has been warning the public for more than four years since the time of the former President, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Due to the total torpedoing of the private sector (Corinthian Gardens, Forbes Park, Dasmarinas Village, the owners of high rise condominiums at the left side of EDSA southbound, among others), of the program for predicting highly lethal effects of a major tremor in Metro Manila and the replication of this effort in many urban areas in the country by the same sector in collusion with some corrupt officials in the government, a large disaster and environmental hazards summit was proposed to be supported by the Philippine Government and the United Nations, among other institutions from many other sectors - including the non-profit (minus the Napoles et al NGOs).

Wanting responses

It is reiterated that in the time of Mrs. Arroyo, only the then Administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA), Ms. Elaine Bautista, now Mrs. Horn, had the small effort to make an email message to the proponents of the 2010 Disaster and Environmental Hazards Mapping Summit. And that was only because the United Nations Environment Programm (UNEP)  told the former Ms. Bautista to get in touch with HMES 2010 organizing group. At the time, concurrent to her post in MARINA, Ms. Bautista was considered a friend of UNEP and a significant point person for the Philippine Government in relation to selected UNEP concerns - particularly about emergency and assistance.

When Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino 3rd became President, the organizing group wrote to Ms. Corazon Juliano Soliman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Gen. Voltaire Tuvera Gazmin. Ms. Soliman did not respond. It was noticed however that several days later, Gen. Gazmin, the Secretary of the Department of National Defense gave an interview to national media.

Local People Starting To Move

Politics and Science should meet

On Monday, October 26, 2009, the ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) held an ANC Forum dubbed as “Wired for Disasters”. Figures from the academe and science were invited by ANC and participated in the forum. The ABS-CBN website published a brief item about the forum on the internet.

Mahar Lagmay of the University of the Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences (UP-NIGS) said that they are developing a map of flood-prone areas with the help of UP-NIGS research assistants and the Ateneo de Manila University's Manila Observatory.

The map will serve as a warning in future disasters. Lagmay said, "That [Ondoy disaster] happened because we were not aware that that kind of disaster could happen."

DENR on Climate Change Act

Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Jose L. Atienza, Jr. says:

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE LAW – SEC. LITO ATIENZA

October 26, 2009

The Climate Change Act of 2009, which President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed into law, puts local government units into the center stage of governance, given the important roles city, town, and barangay leaders play in the implementation of whatever plans and programs on climate change adaptation and mitigation measures that will be crafted by a body tasked under the new law.

The substance and efficacy of Republic Act (RA) 9729 will only be as good as those executing climate change measures. The new law may even be a potent tool in bringing about a stronger green-minded electorate because of the centrality to local elected officials in mainstreaming the climate change agenda into their platforms of governance at the provincial and down to the barangay level.

See more about Sec. Atienza's post here...

Policy Regime Change, Re-engineering

Climate part of still bigger problem

My colleague Earl, one of the organizers of HMES 2010, recently visiting from Kuala Lumpur complains:

• They are building a high rise tower in Shaw Boulevard. The edge of the building is the very edge of the sidewalk, hugging the street with all the affection it can give.
  
• Who approved that kind of design? Who gave permission for that building to be built?
  
• Look at Manila Water and Maynilad, they've been cutting all streets in several pieces and not returning them to their original shape. And the MWSS and MMDA, the DPWH doesn't care about sewerages. Just keep building the streets, repairing, rebuilding, but all for terrible waste of public funds.
  
• That kind of mentality makes people here prone to risk, danger, disaster, etc., etc.
  
• Back in Malaysia, you look at the streets, they're all wide and spacious and no buildings impose themselves on the streets nor on the sidewalks.
  
• Now in Malaysia, all permits for building are evaluated through the criteria of Green Technology. That's how they are now in Malaysia.
  
• The Philippines is doing the opposite; clearly we are headed for bigger disasters in the future.

Returning from Japan last year, Mr. Michael Buquid says: "They build their streets, bridges, etc. differently in Japan. They build them in layers and layers that when it rains, you can't even see water piling up to a few millimeters on the street surface. All of the rainwater get's soaked up inside the layers. It might be raining hard in Tokyo streets and bridges, but you can see the surface. No rain piles up on top. Amazing!"

And of course we were told long ago how a Japanese architect instructed a local contractor: "You Filipinos build street first. Then when remember, you build sewer. Japan, many years ago already, we do not first build street; we build sewer. If sewer working, we put street on top." Good. But that was said in 1990. It is now 2009.

Well, one doesn't have to go all that far. In Sendakan, that is only a stone's throw away from one of the Philippines' last island in the far Southerns, Taganak Island (it's so small you wonder how they even got a Chinese Mayor there), they're so environment conscious. Sendakan people have been very guarding and protective of their home towns and home province and the even birds frequent their place. That made them a bird watchers' paradise. They earn so much tourist revenues just from bird watchers. I'm even writing a book slowly about that subject.

Some coordination the soon-to-be created, new Climate Change Commission will be doing indeed.

And what about the Philippine version of the Japanese buraku min who thrive in our own sewerages and the sewers and other areas underneath bridges?