New beginning

Mainly because of the private sector, relief efforts for the Mindanao and Visayan regions hardest hit by Tropical Storm “Sendong” have by and large stabilized the situation there, providing aid to victims and their families and restoring public services. But some areas in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan still have to see their water supply restored; as a result, those affected face the threat of an epidemic that may add to the casualties claimed by the flash floods. As we write, that number of casualties has been officially placed at more than a thousand, not counting those reported missing. The most that we can hope for is that the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) would make good its promise to work faster to restore fully the water supply. But considering this is the NDRRMC, the old National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) under a new name and with a longer and more officious nomenclature, we cannot hope too much. Rather, as with anything with government, we can only hope against hope.

Still it is not too early to plan now the rehabilitation of the affected areas. The most immediate question appears to be the resumption of classes and whether to hold them in the public schools that have been transformed into evacuation centers. The Department of Education has said it won’t suspend classes and will hold them in “alternative” sites. It promises to resolve the situation by tomorrow, Jan. 3, when classes resume. Meanwhile, the NDRRMC has said that local governments must donate lands so it could start building houses for the displaced communities. Earlier Malacañang had released P241 million for the construction of core shelters on a 10-hectare relocation site in Iligan City. It is hoped a similar allocation could be made for Cagayan de Oro and other areas in Mindanao and the Visayas once there are relocation sites. In Cagayan de Oro, for example, Xavier University, a Catholic school, has offered to donate five hectares for relocation efforts. The gesture is welcome and should be accepted at once by relief and rehabilitation officials.

But relocation sites would have to first undergo risk assessment by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, according to the NDRRMC. Only then could urban planning and construction commence. It is quite gratifying to know that government now has a checklist to govern the putting up of new villages and relocation centers. One could only wish that the same zeal at sticking to the rules and SOPs had guided it and the local governments in allowing human settlements and commercial development to be built in risk-fraught areas in the first place. How the national government would tame the local governments’ propensity toward namby-pamby planning (the relocation budget after all has been turned over by the Department of Social Welfare and Development to the local government) would bear watching. It is not as if the national government has any moral ascendancy on the matter. In Manila, for example, a large-scale private development ostensibly for the poor was built along the railroad tracks in Paco, Manila, ignoring warnings that it was unsafe and unfit for human habitation. Similarly, the Storm “Ondoy” killer floods of 2009 exposed the canker gnawing at urban planning right at the National Capital Region. In Marikina, one of the hardest hit by Ondoy, a mammoth mall was allowed to be built very close to the waterway, compounding the flooding that was traced to structures erected on creeks and natural catchments. There seems no limit to the capacity of government for shortcut and shortsightedness.

Therefore, the rehabilitation of the provinces ravaged by Sendong should be an occasion for honest-to-goodness urban planning and town building. And we’re not talking here of visionary architectural and design enterprises: We’re talking here only of the fundamentals, no quick fixes and shortcuts. It is, after all, a neglect of the basics that compounded the disasters in the South, especially in Mindanao. In Cagayan de Oro, the local government had allowed villages to be constructed on Isla de Oro, a sandbar; when Sendong came, flood waters swept away the settlement. Moreover, logger Pepito Alvarez had been given the contract to supply water to the city while being allowed to log around the watershed. The flooding was also compounded by logging and over-farming in Bukidnon. Along with real disaster preparedness—the weather bureau should sharpen forecasting and civil defense should really be on its toes-—the disaster in Mindanao is an occasion for urban and environmental planning to shape up. It’s a new beginning.