‘Consider how Japan in 2016 repaired a 30-meter sinkhole in the city of Fukuoka in eight days!’
AS if there was still any doubt, the Philippines has maintained its disreputable distinction as the riskiest place for extreme natural disasters, for the 17th consecutive year.
According to data released last Wednesday by the World Risk Report, the Philippines has a risk index of 46.56, ahead of India’s 40.73 and Indonesia’s 39.96.
The Philippines has been No. 1 since 2009. And no thanks to a handful of thieving contractors, officials, and members of Congress, we will be holding the hot potato for much longer. Before that, we trailed behind India eight times from 2001 to 2008, although by the slimmest of margins. The earliest release, in 2000, saw the Philippines at third behind Mexico and India.
Index publishers Development Helps Alliance (Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft in German) define disaster risk as the product of exposure to the elements and vulnerability.
I will skip quoting the Alliance’s official, technical definitions which can be found on their website anyway. Instead I offer my own, simplified and perhaps flawed, alternatives.
Exposure is a given. We chose to live in a place facing the Pacific Ocean and in the Ring of Fire. Our geography and geology leave us open to not-so-mild natural events like earthquakes, tropical cyclones, floodings, droughts, and rising seas. “Nando” was a 265 km/h super typhoon last week when it sliced through Batanes and Babuyan Islands. It was immediately labeled as one of this year’s strongest. And don’t forget, the strongest on record, “Yolanda,” was a 2013 visitor. Last Friday, “Opong” killed 14 people in Masbate, Bataan and Biliran, and caused widespread flooding in parts of the Visayas, Bicol and Mimaropa — on top of earlier floods in the past two months. Small wonder, the Bündnis update includes a special report on Flood Exposure in the Philippines.
Also, we experience dozens of earthquakes daily. Of course Phivolcs (the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology) for years has been repeatedly nagging us to prepare for a big earthquake which it said could kill thousands.
Phivolcs is likewise actively monitoring six volcanoes, three of them in Luzon. We still remember Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption brought a lot of misery in Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales. In the 18th century, Taal volcano forced the people of Lipa, Batangas to relocate — twice. A more recent memory: a few days before the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, we were wearing masks, but because of an ongoing Taal eruption.
Vulnerability, on the other hand, refers to people who are exposed to nature’s whims. As a disaster concept, it is a factor of susceptibility, coping and adaptation.
Susceptibility is the current fitness of a population to withstand a violent episode. We can liken it to a person who can be described as “sákitin,” “sípunin,” “híkain” or “matíbay.” To the innately feeble, a mild incident could be life-threatening. Vice versa, someone with the immunity of Tarzan would shrug off normally big challenges. The World Risk Index looks at socio-economic development or deprivation, and societal disparities as indicators of susceptibility.
Coping capacities are the resources we have to respond to a crisis. These could be survival skills, funds, monitoring systems, rescue services, health-care services that could save lives during an event. We should credit agencies like PAGASA (the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration) and Phivolcs, and projects like the University of the Philippines’ NOAH (Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards). But recent discoveries — despite years of suspicion and indifference — of staggering public works corruption do set us back big time.
Adaptive capacities are what we do to correct mistakes in policy, funding, engineering and education, thereby improving our preparedness when disaster should strike again. There’s a lot to learn from the Dutch and the Venetians who managed to thrive despite adverse conditions.
The Philippines is only fourth in exposure, behind China, Mexico and Japan. Yet these countries have lower vulnerability scores.
Consider how Japan in 2016 repaired a 30-meter sinkhole in the city of Fukuoka in eight days! In the same city last June, a smaller sinkhole was fixed overnight! That’s coping capacity in action.
As for adaptation, Japanese authorities and industry leaders adopted serious corrective measures on multiple fronts to prevent a recurrence of the 2011 nuclear disaster that was triggered by a magnitude 9 earthquake.
In contrast, many people in Calumpit, Bulacan, have been under flood waters for over a decade despite huge amounts devoted to flood control projects.
Recently, Marikina City has shown how a successful flood control project works, owing to a combination of political, engineering and behavioral factors. A glow in the dark. Also, the Independent Commission for Infrastructure is a big step in the right direction of adaptive capacities, although it will be a long arduous journey.
The World Risk Index is one dishonor we don’t need and can correct. Aside from the flood control scandals, we need to address other factors that could improve our adaptation. A few would involve trash segregation and recycling, implementing the National Building Code in earnest, retrofitting of substandard buildings, holding comprehensive and effective earthquake drills, and disaster preparedness.
It’s about time. And let’s not do these for the statistical points alone, but for our survival — and sanity.
