Storm surges

All the foreign media reports on Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: “Haiyan”) have attributed the high death toll in Tacloban City to “storm surges.”  It’s a term that is rarely used in the Philippines despite a spate of such surges accompanying storms (for example, “Ondoy”) or even nameless monsoon rains.

The best lay explanation of storm surges I’ve found, in relation to Yolanda, is in an article titled “Why Typhoon Haiyan Caused So Much Damage.” It’s found on the National Public Radio website (npr.org) complete with weather maps.

A storm surge is, in simple terms, a rise in ocean waters caused by a typhoon (also known as tropical cyclone).  It’s not quite the same as a tsunami, which is a tidal wave set off by an earthquake.  A storm surge happens when there’s already a high tide and a typhoon comes in, pushing up the height of the water and sending large volumes inland. In Tacloban, the surge was said to have been as high as four meters.

Besides the tide cycles, geography can play a deadly role.  A part of Tacloban juts out into the sea, so when the storm surge struck, it had water flooding in from both Panalaron Bay and Cancabato Bay.  But there’s more to geography: Tacloban was particularly vulnerable because of a sloping terrain that allows waves from the sea to move up a great height before crashing on land.

We’ve learned to fear flooding from nonstop rains but storm surges are worse.  If it’s rain water alone the levels rise slowly, but with storm surges, a deluge rapidly occurs, leaving people little time to seek higher ground.  Initial reports say that many of the deaths in Tacloban involved residents who had sought refuge when the typhoon first struck in what they thought were safe grounds: a church and a stadium.  But when the surges occurred, these places flooded quickly and turned into a watery grave.

Mountains of water

Photographs of a large merchant ship that had been docked at sea but was pushed inland by the storm surges reminded me of an even more dramatic account in the Jesuit Francisco Ignacio Alcina’s book “History of the Bisayan People in the Philippine Islands,” where he said a great wave “hurled an average sized ship so far into the forests and left it there … at the top of the trees from which it could hardly be taken down.”

Note that Alcina’s book was published in 1668, and translated and published in English by the University of Santo Tomas a few years ago.  Alcina served as a missionary in different parts of the Visayas, but mainly in Samar and Leyte.  He wrote about typhoons (baguios, tifones) as well as monsoon winds (brisas).  He said that when one of the baguios rage, “not even the trees are safe in the midst of the forests, or the animals in their caves or people in their houses…”  He also wrote about how churches, “the largest buildings existing here,” are destroyed: “Sometimes the winds chop them off like one would do a radish…”

This passage could well have described what happened in Tacloban: “[N]ot even a person can stand on his feet nor can such manage except by laying hold of another or hugging the ground in order to flee the dangers or assist those who are in danger.”

Alcina also described what is clearly a storm surge: “The sea enters the domain of the land… For tall mountains of water, which form devastating waves, enter, extend areas of the lands…”

What struck me about Alcina’s accounts of the typhoons, which are scattered in different parts of his book, is that they were clearly so much a part of life in the Visayas. He was also impressed by some of the older people being able to predict, with great accuracy, a coming typhoon within “four, six or ten days in advance.” The elders seemed to be able to predict the typhoons by observing the color of the sky and the kind of winds prevailing.

This should not be surprising because, as Alcina observed, people in the Visayas had been seafarers for so long, and the expertise was not just for approaching typhoons but also for sea storms (tempestades del mar), which could be predicted “by the condition of the air or by the many-hued clouds in the sky … by the more or less heavy or light clouds, or by the color of the moon or the sun…”

Alcina noted how deadly Spanish impatience could be: “The choleric Spanish temper kills many over here very quickly because they do not follow the opinion of the native pilots in their sea travels.”

‘Walo-walo’

We don’t seem to have local terms for a storm surge although “walo-walo” (“eight-eight”) comes to my mind. The term is still used in some islands in the country, especially in eastern and central Visayas, and refers to large waves eight feet high that are whipped up by storms for eight consecutive days. The use of “eight-eight” is of course a metaphor to dramatize the fury of a storm surge.

We need to highlight the threats of storm surges in our disaster preparedness programs.  That will mean rethinking evacuation centers like stadiums and churches because people could end up trapped inside.  On the other hand, I’ve heard of plans to have large catchment areas or basins to trap the surge waters (as well as ordinary flood waters) and to be able to “pull the plug” on these giant sinks, allowing the water to subside quickly.

While relief work remains the priority, we should look into documenting what happened not just in Tacloban but also in many other islands in central and eastern Visayas.  The walo-walo have been going on for centuries, but it is possible that more rural coastal villages may have been better able to cope with these disasters, first because population density is lower, and second because they can still access food resources after the storm.  Tacloban was an example of urbanization, and population growth, conspiring with Nature for a major cataclysm.

Going back to Alcina, we might look into local knowledge about the weather, building on folk wisdom for disaster preparedness. I am sure local knowledge about the weather is disappearing, but we can convert this last disaster into an opportunity to create a collective memory among people: What did they see as the typhoon approached, and when the storm surges struck?  What did they learn from the aftermath?

Finally, I am told that our meteorologists had predicted the surges and had warned people about these.  But the message does not seem to be getting through.  We need to review our communications strategies, the words being used, the imagery.  We will have time before the next monsoon, but we will have to work fast, to save more lives and, amid the losses, to rebuild lives and communities.

(E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph)