Safe and sound

I could have titled this piece “A tale of two buildings,” to describe how Typhoon “Pedring” got me to better understand two very different worlds.  One is a condo building while the other is UP’s iconic Palma Hall (known to generations of UP students as “AS” or Arts and Sciences).

After Pedring knocked out electricity at home, a friend very kindly offered me his condo so that I could work on my Inquirer column and send it out.

Talk about the marvels of modern engineering.  I drove into the bowels of the earth to park on the 6th floor, counting downwards.  As I drove deeper into the basement, I was greeted by the deafening roar of the building’s huge back-up generators.

I felt like a country bumpkin, because I was somewhat nervous as I stepped into the elevator, wondering if the backup generator was enough to keep it delivering passengers to the building’s 40 plus floors?  Deliver it did—at high speed.

The wind was howling outside but within the condo unit, it seemed like another normal day.  All of life’s comforts—appliances, sound system, TV—were running.

I got my article done, and e-mailed it, thanks to the condo building’s WiFi set-up, and still had time to spare for a tour of the condo building.  I asked if there was a risk of flooding and my friend said that even during Storm “Ondoy” they didn’t have problems because there were drainage systems and pumps.

The day passed quickly and I was beginning to feel at home, knowing where the different shops were in the building.  I knew where to get chocolate molten lava cake, or a haircut, or a massage, or a spa.  I could even have had a barong made and sent overseas because there were shops with those services as well in the building.

Toward the end of the afternoon, I had to go to my parked car to get something. As I took the elevator to go back up, it jerked to a halt, and the lights went out.  “The end,” I muttered in a quick moment of despair, imagining the building crumbling like the Twin Towers in New York.  But within a few seconds, the elevator opened up and there was a security guard waiting to explain that the building had switched to regular electricity.

AS Building

That night I got a text from our UP Diliman chancellor, Dr. Caesar Saloma, requesting deans and directors to prioritize, for the next day, our checking of buildings for damage.  I quickly relayed the message to several people and got feedback early the next morning.  We had electricity but all phone lines were down.  The university’s Internet system was down, too, which meant that even if the AS Building’s WiFi routers were running, there was no Internet.

I have an excellent team when it comes to disaster response.  The veterans are the non-academic staff, with our main building administrator Norman Boro having seen it all when it comes to natural disasters (and not-so-natural disasters like frat rumbles).

I also have a young team of professors who don’t just talk about disaster response but are at the forefront of disaster preparedness.  Dr. Neil Santillan, whose name you see as one of the history consultants for GMA’s Amaya, is associate dean for administration.  Months back, he organized a disaster-preparedness workshop intended for the college but ended up with participants from all over Diliman.  Just before Pedring he had a first aid training workshop running for our staff.

Neil works closely with Jely Galang, another historian, on maintenance issues, which means spotting anything that needs repair or replacement, from light bulbs to broken windows.  It’s keeping track, too, of less obvious maintenance tasks, for example, refilling the fire extinguishers (which, I found out after becoming dean, were all expired).

Then I have Ging Gutierrez, a sociologist, who is in charge of environmental concerns. When I first recommended her appointment, I was asked by university officials to defend the need for such a coordinator.  In the two months she has been coordinator, she has shown why every college in UP should have such a position, pointing out how the wrong trees planted for beautification are now cracking our pavements and threatening our buildings.

You don’t need a PhD in environmental science when it comes to disaster preparedness, but we do need people who understand disaster preparedness as something that goes beyond prayer.  What was that saying? “Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang gawa.”  God’s mercy isn’t enough; you need people doing something as well.

And, I might add, we need money, too.  And that’s where we face so many limitations at UP.  Our chancellor is very conscious about disaster preparedness and recently sent people to ask what my college needed by way of fire extinguishers for the building, which my team really appreciated.  But when we got to talking about fire alarms, we were told the budget would have to be reviewed.

If people like Norman are so good at their work, in part it’s because they have had to improvise so often, extending the life of equipment for as long as they can, but there are limits to the lifetime of these machines, and the rehabilitation becomes something like putting band-aid on a patient in intensive care.

We are hobbled not just by a small budget but also a requirement that government institutions get at least three bids when buying equipment and supplies, as well as for any construction or renovation project. Then we accept the lowest bidder… Which is why we ended up with a new faculty center that took seven years to build, and remains unoccupied because the contractor can’t get the finishing touches right, and I don’t mean the wrong shade of paint.  Neglect the finishing touches and you increase risks in times of disasters.

I feel bad that our building administrators and maintenance and environment coordinators are paid the grand amount of P1,500 a month  in extra honoraria and subject to withholding tax, but we have learned to live with that kind of financial remuneration.

We can live, too, without a back-up generator: it’s good for our faculty to learn to go back to using “chalk” talk (actually we have graduated to whiteboard pens) instead of a PowerPoint computer presentation.  We don’t need a back-up generator for elevators that don’t exist. Besides, I suspect one reason UP faculty live so long is that we are constantly climbing stairs.

But we can’t dispense with many basics.  We need good-quality light bulbs that last, so that night classes can go on and people don’t get into accidents or get robbed.  We need fire extinguishers (and fire alarms).  We don’t even have saws for pruning the trees, or cutting down those that fall after a storm.

We manage, but we could do better.  So when we talk about a decent budget for UP and state universities and colleges, it isn’t just about books for the library or supplies for laboratories.  It is about building and maintaining an environment for learning that is safe and sound.