Mindanao down under

It’s good that President Aquino has seen personally the devastation brought upon Central Mindanao by flooding unleashed by ceaseless rains as a result of erratic weather for more than two weeks now. Because of its distance from the metropolis, Mindanao, despite its calamities, doesn’t seem to elicit the same concern as, for instance, the main island of Luzon when disaster strikes. Its remoteness is both its blessing and bane—blessing because it’s far from the usual paths of typhoons; bane because it’s far removed from the radar of the metropolis, which is hopelessly self-absorbed, self-fixated. In an archipelago, Mindanao is just one island among several thousands. But since the floods it has been experiencing lately may be a microcosm of what has been happening in the archipelago, especially the flood- and disaster-prone capital, the center cannot but feel concerned. Mindanao could as well be the metropolis, and vice-versa.

The scenes of devastation are very familiar to Metro Manilans: more than half a million persons displaced in Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and North Cotabato; at least seven people dead; and several riverside villages along the Rio Grande inundated and overwhelmed.

The battle against floods has been made problematic by tens of thousands of tons of water lilies coming downstream from the Liguasan Marsh and clogging the Rio Grande. The military has to resist calls to bomb the water hyacinths so as to declog the rivers and prevent further inundation of villages and towns, but it has to send hundreds of troops to clear the waters of the plants.

What has also compounded the disaster are mismanagement and corruption. When Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo called on the Department of Public Works and Highways to dispatch with urgency all available backhoes and barges, the district engineer said that while there was money for fuel, there was a lack of barges to haul tons of water lilies. The lack seems a symptom of the lack of disaster preparedness among regional officials despite their admission that flooding in Mindanao has become chronic lately. Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, who chairs the Presidential Task Force on Mindanao River Basin Rehabilitation and Development Program, said Cotabato City has become the catch basin of flood waters from rivers in Bukidnon, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao. But flood-control and other civil-defense measures are hounded by issues of fund irregularity. Quevedo didn’t want to point fingers at this time and would rather include his observations in a report to the President. “This is a time to unite and not to finger-point,” he explained. “The people need our immediate assistance.”

Despite growing evidence that climate change may be fostering irregular weather patterns, the civil-defense establishment has yet to fully realize the urgency of the situation and come to grips with it. Last January, for instance, the New Year announced itself by flooding the Bicol Region and parts of Eastern Visayas. Although Bicol and Eastern Visayas are often visited by typhoons, heavy rains aren’t really normal during January anywhere in the Philippines.

But sadly, civil defense officials and the national leadership have not evinced as much sense of urgency over the regional natural disasters and emergencies as a result of climate change and other unpredictable twists and turns of the weather. While the cold front is expected at this time of the year, the rains that have come along with it are not. Yet considering the experience of the past years, the lessons from the wages of climate change seem not to have been consolidated. They seem not to have impressed civil defense officials and policy planners. In many instances, even the simplest early warning system has not been put in place.

The lack of urgency is very worrisome considering that the weather bureau has long warned about the capriciousness of the weather because of La Niña.

Meanwhile, storm warnings have been raised in many parts of Luzon because of tropical depression “Falcon.” Manila and the rest of the country will now get a dose of what Central Mindanao has been suffering and perhaps our civil-defense establishment may now be finally possessed with the sense of urgency needed to prevent further disasters. But don’t hold your breath. As its track record shows, its sense of disaster-preparedness is tepid and stagnant as water.