In any calamity in this country, where more than 40 million people consider themselves poor, the poor expectedly suffer the most.
Surely a good part of the hundreds of people killed by Supertyphoon Yolanda belonged to the underprivileged class, who of course could not escape the wrath of the deadly storm, for instance by flying out to Hong Kong or the United States, which was what one senator did. He even timed his trip with the special appearance of ma’am Jenny (aka Janet Napoles-Lim) in the Senate which, in turn, was conducting an investigation on another kind of national devastation called pork barrel.
Anyway, after the widespread state of calamity brought on by the supertyphoon comes the hardest part for the government and, perhaps, even the business sector: The problem of immediate response.
Really now it is no longer a problem of disaster preparedness. Officials of the Aquino (Part II) administration were even congratulating themselves the day after the supertyphoon, for doing a good job in preparing the public. Indeed, the government sent out timely dire warnings, even forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuation sites.
The death toll was less than what the government expected, according to one report quoting public officials, because of the broad evacuation undertaken by the Aquino (Part II) administration.
From what I gathered, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin were on the ground, so to speak, the night before Yolanda struck.
They were supposedly right there in Tacloban City that night, personally overseeing things, and we knew that the city would most probably become ground zero in this weather attack—the most affected piece of real estate in terms of population density.
According to our info, in just one barangay in the city near the airport, hundreds were killed during the supertyphoon. The roof of the newly restored Palo Cathedral also collapsed. Even some schools and churches that were used as evacuation centers had to be abandoned. The supertyphoon also destroyed them.
Days before the supertyphoon was expected to make landfall, news were centered on the preparation being undertaken by the NDRRMC, or the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, which was created by law in 2010 as a response to the devastation in Metro Manila brought on by tropical storm Ondoy.
It has been estimated that this country suffers from about 20 natural calamities a year, mainly in the form of typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides and flash floods. Thus it is imperative that we must perfect an early warning system. You know—preparedness!
Okay, perhaps the government did a good job in terms of disaster preparedness. Still, nature gave us a big break by making sure that a typhoon with such powerful winds would go by fast enough to lessen the rainfall.
Whether we like it or not, in this country, the extensive flooding created by weather disturbances is mostly behind the high casualty count.
And so the government evacuated more than 750,000 people out of dangerous areas. We know now that the needs of the victims would be immediate—such as food, potable water and medicine.
Based on reports, as preparation of the supertyphoon, the leading response unit of the government in any calamity—our very own DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development)—apparently “prepositioned” some 80,000 packs of relief goods.
Now let us do the math: there are more than 750,000 evacuees versus 80,000 packs of “prepositioned” relief goods.
Really, how long could we expect those packs to last in this scale of calamity that we have never seen before?
Based on info we gathered in the business sector, the damage to infrastructure such as roads and seaports is so extensive that bringing swift help to the victims has become a nightmare in logistics.
For instance, we have a private sector organization called CNDR (Corporate Network for Disaster Response), made up of business groups that have no internal disaster response systems.
The day after the typhoon, the organization was still clueless on the damage to infrastructure caused by the supertyphoon. As its name indicated, the organization would want to respond immediately to disasters like Yolanda.
In fact, the day after the supertyphoon, only the military aircraft C-130 (a circa 1950s type of transport plane, also known as Hercules, that could land and takeoff on makeshift runways) could actually deliver relief goods. As we all know, the airlifting capacity of the aircraft was rather limited.
From what I gathered, the Tacloban City airport has been totally devastated, its traffic control tower torn down, its terminal collapsed, forcing the airport authority to surrender supervision to the CAAP, or Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.
Unfortunately, the airport has always served as the gateway to six provinces in the Visayas, including Eastern Samar, where all communication facilities were down. It made it rather impossible to determine whether the military C-130s could even make deliveries.
Here is the thing with the Tacloban City airport: It has been long overdue for rehabilitation. Its undersized runway was actually built during World War II, and used by armed forces of the United States during the so-called liberation.
The gentleman from Leyte, Rep. Martin Romualdez, during his first term as congressman four years ago, pushed for the rehabilitation of the airport as a top priority project of the government. During the time of the cute administration of Gloriaetta, the national government in fact allocated P1 billion for the airport project.
When the Aquino (Part II) administration came into power, the DOTC (Department of Transportation and Communications) put the project on hold.
Here is another thing about the Tacloban City airport: The DOTC under our leader Benigno Simeon (aka BS) realigned a good part of the P1 billion for the project, or almost P800 million, to another fund called the DAP, or the disbursement acceleration program of our leader BS. The DAP is another kind of pork barrel, which is supposed to come from … well, government “savings.”
By the way, according to reports, only four senators so far have renounced the pork barrel system. We also know that six senators each obtained P100 million from the “savings” called DAP that our leader BS strongly defended, on top of their regular allocation in the other pork called PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund).
Boss, we surely could use the “savings” now!