The newspaper I write for in Hong Kong gave me permission to share its editorial and my stories on Typhoon Ondoy International Code Name Ketsana). The pieces remain relevant since horrific typhoons continue to batter the Philippines and the unfulfilled promises recently contributed to needless deaths.

The editorial is entitled “Arroyo must make good on radar systems pledge.” It was written by Peter Kammerer, SCMP’s International Editor. Earlier I asked Ellen Tordesillas to post the editorial in her widely popular blog and she very kindly did it.

Below the editorial are my two stories on the storm -

1. The sidebar -No one warned us,’ says villager searching for her lost children

2. The main piece – Understanding why Manila drowned

My newspaper agreed to have these disseminated on my blog and Facebook, in the hope they will help do some good. Thank you for finding the time to read them – Raissa Robles, SCMP senior Manila correspondent

Arroyo must make good on radar systems pledge

Editorial of South China Morning Post
Oct. 5, 2009

A government’s priority is to protect the well-being of its people.

There is no better test of its commitment than when disaster strikes.
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration has, in
this regard, failed time and again. It did so spectacularly with
Tropical Storm Ketsana, again revealing how little it cares for its
constituents.

The Philippines is pounded by as many as 20 typhoons a year. Dozens,
sometimes hundreds, of people are killed and many millions of dollars
of damage is caused. Nature cannot be tamed, but in the case of severe weather events, technology means its wrath can be anticipated. Arroyo for the past five years has repeatedly promised to have advanced forecasting radar systems installed; politicking, corruption and government waste means they remain a pledge.

What happens when such systems are absent was demonstrated by Ketsana. (Ondoy)

Manila has not experienced as violent a downpour in 40 years. But in
the hours before the storm struck on the morning of September 26,
state weather forecasters were predicting only moderate to heavy rain.
No alert was issued and the city of 10 million was caught off-guard;
about 300 people were drowned by floodwaters and 300,000 made
homeless. Some parts of the city are still flooded.

The government’s failure extends beyond forecasting. Disaster response
mechanisms broke down. Emergency phones went unanswered. Rescue teams
had insufficient equipment and numbers. Citizens were forced to fend
for themselves.

Arroyo has promised, as she did after devastating storm-caused
landslides in 2004 and 2006, that there will not be a repeat. The
first two of up to 10 new weather radar systems could be in place by
the end of the year. Filipinos have learned not to hold their breath:
they have watched millions of dollars that could have bought such
systems several times over frittered away and Congressional debate
focused on seemingly more pressing matters like constitutional change.
But this time has to be different. Too many lives and livelihoods have
been needlessly lost and remain at risk.

No one warned us, says villager searching for her lost children

Raissa Robles
Updated on Oct 05, 2009

Victoria Tutor was beyond tears. She had just seen the body of her 16-year-old daughter, Vinaflor, and signed for the release of her remains.

That was Wednesday. Yesterday, there was still no sign of three of her other children who, like she and Vinaflor, had been swept away by rampaging waters caused by Tropical Storm Ketsana a week ago.
Her village, Bagong Silangan in Quezon City, was one of the hardest hit by the storm. Thirty-one bodies have been found, but a further 90, mostly children, are listed as missing.

Staff at Tajuna Funeral Home told Tutor they could only wrap Vinaflor’s body in cloth since they had run out of coffins. She said village officials, not just the incessant rain, were to blame for the tragedy. They had received no warning.

“There was none,” she said. “I only knew there was rain but had not heard news about a coming storm.”

Villagers were used to annual flooding brought by the rainy season, and normally just moved to higher ground when the water started flowing through, she said.

But on September 26, the floods came without warning. “We were inside the house and suddenly there was water. We went to the highest point in the village, and then the rushing waters met and we were forced to clamber onto rooftops.”

The water rose higher than the roofs and at 11am she and her six children were swept away. Two were saved. The others – Via, 11, Biancaflor, five, and Jonren, three – have yet to be found. Tutor managed to remain afloat by holding onto a piece of wood for three hours before being pulled to safety. “I bumped into a bridge and people on the bridge threw me a rope,” she said.

Her rescuers said Tutor was in Marikina City. Dazed and without money, she rested then started the long walk back to Bagong Silangan. Abandoned cars, buses and jeepneys jammed the roads. She arrived after an eight-hour trek in the dark.

Tutor sadly described her missing children in the desperate hope that someone would remember seeing them among the countless hordes of Manila.

Via was wearing a blouse with spaghetti straps and white pyjamas. Biancaflor was wearing a big white T-shirt, while Jonren was wearing a blue shirt and  and has a scar above his right eyebrow. “Please help me find them,” she said.

Filipinos received little warning and almost no official help

Raissa Robles, Updated on Oct 05, 2009</span>

When the typhoons and catastrophic rain they carried hit the Philippines, many of the impoverished residents received little warning. Hundreds died, and in the grief-filled aftermath, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pledged “never again”, ordering the deployment of advanced Doppler radars capable of detecting the scale of potential rainfall.

That was 2004.

About five years after the devastation in Quezon that claimed 1,800 lives, the Doppler radars have yet to be constructed. Their continued absence is just one link in a tragic chain of events that culminated in the deaths of about 300 people in the Philippines just over a week ago and paralysed Manila, as 80 per cent of the capital city went under water. Rescue services seemed at a loss, incapable of dealing with an emergency that, at its peak, left tens of thousands of people stranded, waiting in vain for rescuers who never came.

It is a sequence of events that began with the failure to detect the huge amount of rain being carried by then Tropical Storm Ketsana. But as the situation worsened, warnings failed to reach those most in need, who were then forced to fend for themselves as the muddy waters rose, and the chain of command began to break down.

Dr Prisco Nilo, the head of the Philippine weather bureau (known as Pagasa), acknowledges that Doppler radars would have given forecasters a much better idea of what to expect before Ketsana dumped about 40cm of rain on Manila in nine hours on September 26.

Doppler radars – which have been installed by Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan, among other places – give real-time data on rainfall intensity in highly specific areas, said Nilo’s deputy, Nathaniel Cruz. He said the Philippines’ first Doppler would go online by year’s end, in Zambales province, “to guard Metro Manila against future Ondoys”, the local name for Ketsana.

But Nilo conceded that the radar’s US-based manufacturer, Enterprise Electronics Corporation, “only said they’ll try”. In fact, he said, the 100 million peso (HK$16.5 million) contract states a delivery date in the middle of next year for two Dopplers – just before the typhoon season.

In all, eight Doppler radars are to be built, five of them taxpayer-funded and three paid for by the Japan International Co-operation Agency (Jica). In addition, two existing radars will be upgraded, which it is hoped will give the country 10 Dopplers by 2013.

Nilo said the failure to have Dopplers in place so long after the Quezon disaster was because “the budget process in the Philippines takes long and we also have to go through a bidding process”. Critics of Arroyo have blamed the slow process on the government’s skewed sense of priorities.

The weather bureau chief doesn’t share such sentiments. Nilo said bureau staff referred to the new equipment as the “PGMA Dopplers” – after President Arroyo’s initials – to give her credit for the initiative of purchasing the gear.

Yet even with sophisticated new radar in place, Cruz was reluctant to predict that a repeat of last week’s disaster couldn’t occur in the country. “Even if we say, `Manila should get ready’, if `Pedro’ does not listen to the news or the village leaders don’t tell residents or residents refuse to leave, deaths will still happen,” he said.

The suggestion that Manila residents themselves bore part of the blame for the extent of Ketsana’s impact was first raised by Cruz’sboss. “Instead of just watching soap operas on TV, they should also watch the news,” Nilo said on September 27, a day after the deluge.

Yet judging by Pagasa’s weather bulletin issued on the eve of the storm, Ketsana would be a typical tropical storm, of which about 20 visit the Philippines each year.

Nilo was quoted by the Philippine Star newspaper on the day Ketsana struck saying “the storm will not cross Metro Manila … [but the metropolis would experience] moderate to heavy rains”. He said later that the forecast changed overnight – too late for the Star to change.

By September 26, Ketsana was drawing huge amounts of moisture from the southwest monsoon, causing the deluge over Metro Manila, he said. Pagasa would try to devise flood intensity warnings, he said, but added that this might not work all the time because “sometimes people respond only when they see the actual floodwaters, but then it might be too late”.

In any event, none of the warnings reached Bagong Silangan village. Residents could not tune in to the news on the night of September 25 because of a power blackout, not uncommon in the Quezon City squatter village. Nor was there any newscast the next morning, even as the rain fell. And so Metro Manila – a city of 10 million residents crammed into 636 sq km – went about its usual business. Office and factory workers began their half-day at work, while families stayed home, or went shopping

In impoverished Bagong Silangan – the name of the official settlement camp for slum dwellers means “new birth” – residents were well aware of the dangers of flash flooding. Nine years ago, 300 residents were buried alive when an enormous mound of rubbish next to the settlement collapsed in heavy rain.

But with no warning of what was on the way, residents like Victoria Tutor and her six children simply decided to sit out the rain at home. They were all swept away in the torrent that surged through Bagong Silangan. Tutor and two of the children were rescued; of the other four, only the body of 16-year-old Vinaflor has been recovered.

As it became increasingly clear on September 26 that a major disaster was unfolding, the seeming lack of official action infuriated many locals.

Trapped residents cowering in the upper floors of their homes tried phoning the lead disaster agency, the National Disaster Co-ordinating Council, at the height of the storm. Most (including this reporter) were met with engaged signals or phones that rang unanswered.

By late on September 26, tens of thousands cowered on high points and awaited rescuers. Rescue boats were notable by their absence. Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro admitted that only one inflatable dinghy out of 13 he ordered made it to Marikina City – one of the worst-hit districts, where thousands awaited rescue.

There is some confusion about how many boats were pressed into action. Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner said that contrary to Teodoro’s comments, 17 inflatable boats had been sent into action. But he conceded that not  all were immediately put to their  best use.

“These boats could not penetrate right away due to the strong currents,” Brawner said. Ironically, traffic gridlock caused by flooded streets prevented the navy from sending more inflatable boats.

Brawner said that as a result of the experience, Teodoro had ordered the purchase of 50 more rubber boats.

Regardless of exactly how many boats were used, Marikina’s mayor, Marides Fernando, maintains that by that Sunday morning, not a single boat had reached her inundated city.

While state agencies were paralysed, it fell on Manila’s residents to take action themselves. Thousands simply waded, swam or paddled to higher ground.

The Manila Dragons dragon boat team used their traditional vessels and inflatable boats to pluck many people to safety. Team manager Romulo Valientes said the team, which has competed in Hong Kong and mainland China, had great difficulty paddling in waters filled with trash, dead rats, snakes, grease and diesel fuel.

Quezon City Judge Ralph Lee mounted his jet ski and rescued no fewer than 100 citizens. “I was so carried away by the very sad situation,” he said.

On Tuesday, Arroyo met her cabinet for the first time since the rain began. Many people were still stranded. Two senior ministers complained that local and village executives simply disappeared during the disaster. “The city and municipal disaster centres are not functioning now,” Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane told her.

Arroyo herself noted that the mayors of Cainta and Pasig cities were not answering her calls. And a senior executive from a private firm helping out in rescue efforts told the South China Morning Post that one colonel “nearly wept” at the height of the disaster because he had no one to co-ordinate with.

Armed Forces deputy chief of staff Lieutenant General Rodrigo Maclang reported to Arroyo that nearly 20,000 residents had been rescued by 2,000 soldiers and a thousand police officers. But in reality, many swam or walked out themselves, albeit guided by the rescuers. And the numbers represent a drop in a very muddy ocean – by mid-week, there were more than 300,000 people taking refuge in shelters across Manila.

Few doubt that another major storm will one day hit Manila and trigger flooding again, although perhaps not on such a grand scale as in Ketsana’s case.

To avert a similar outcome, Teodoro has said he will position rescue equipment in advance and enforce the mandatory evacuations for children next time.

Lawmakers also promised to enact a long-pending comprehensive law on reducing disaster risk that includes a controversial proposal to regulate land use. Metro Manila Development Authority chairman Bayani Fernando has blamed the flooding on unregulated growth of gated communities that filled in natural waterways so that floodwaters had nowhere to drain.

But such pledges come too late for people such as Muelmar Magallanes, a heroic 18-year-old who saved 30 people in Bagong Silangan before he himself was engulfed and drowned. The greatest tragedy is that the efforts of people like Magallanes were required at all.