Like a thief in the night

Parties suddenly came to a halt and merry-making suspended. It’s the season not of sorrow until the coming of a disaster. For a natural calamity could strike in any season, day or hour. Worse, we are now in the era to face the evils of climate change.

We consider Christmas as a celebration of the Lord’s birth, thus, a celebration of life. But for the worst typhoon-hit Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City, Christ may have come like a thief in the night. Look at the extent of the devastation, the massive destruction to properties and the hundreds of lives that perished to the muds and debris. With the fierce of nature mangling cars and crushing houses the night of December 16, you cannot take to your heart even a single glimpse of how scores of lives ended there.

The least that we can do now is extend whatever help we can to the victims and their families. Sending help with dispatch for typhoon Sendong victims is the highest priority; second, the demand for explanation. There must be a massive information drive about how climate change transforms any place in the country into a potential path of destruction. Like CDO and Iligan, Davao City’s worst flash flood in Matina the night of June 28 until dawn was also unpredictably enormous. People were caught unprepared. Common denominators: lack of information and freak weather.

In that recent Davao City flash flood, Engineer Gerry Pedrico, chief meteorologist of Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said the heavy downpour was caused by the intertropical convergence zone (ITZC). Pagasa’s rain gauge has recorded only eight millimeters of rainfall at the Davao International Airport and another at Bago Oshiro with 50-60mm of rainfall but that could be irrelevant unless evidence would show these waters were leading to Matina. Pagasa does not have any gauge installed near Matina area. With the lack of information, people crammed against the impending danger of raging waters that later chased them up to the roof.

City Planning and Development Coordinator Roberto Alabado III in an interview to assess the Matina flash flood had said: “We have the Matina watershed. Outfall is the Matina river. The flow of the water leads to the barangays affected. The heavy volume of water came from the rural areas. If we are going to look at the amount of water, it was I think, phenomenal because the water can only hold so much. I may have my own calculations but this is a very rare occurrence. From personal accounts of those living for many years near the affected areas, it was first time such heavy rains occurred”.

With a thousand lives lost in the cities of CDO and Iligan, Pagasa forecaster Jorie Lois has recorded a phenomenal 181 mm of rainfall, which lasted for many hours due to tropical storm Sendong which accordingly surpassed the average rainfall in the city for the month of December. Problem is, residents had little time to react. Violent flood waters were already all over them, before they could send SOS signals and before they could face the fiercest battle of their lives.

When I interviewed Central 911 Chief Operating Officer Mario Verner Monsanto after that tsunami scare in our city, he said, emergency communication system and people’s discipline are effective ways to reduce risks during natural disasters. He however cautioned people to filter information about emergency alerts on impending and on-going calamities, adding that it must come from a credible source. People must put their trust to the government in emergency situations and heed the calls on immediate evacuation before time runs out.

People living at the edge of death as their dwellings are classified as “danger zones” must now think about the possibility of  relocation even before the government will tell them to do so…for the sake of their families’ safety. But after that Matina flash floods, our city officials got a marching order from Mayor Sara Duterte about the relocation of those living near the riverbanks.

I recalled then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte forming Davao City Task Force on Climate Change (DCTFCC) which he signed as Executive Order 23, mandating key officials to formulate the city-wide plan for climate change.

The functions and purpose of the DCTFCC include the following: a. To oversee, coordinate, facilitate the preparation, implementation, and evaluation of a Summit on Climate Change; b. To conduct rapid assessments on the impact of climate change in the city and to formulate, prepare the Climate Change Plan that would address the situation; c. To recommend measures that would enhance cooperative efforts and mutual assistance among stakeholders that would mitigate the impact of climate change in the city; d. To serve as a repository of all reports, documents, technical papers, and other relevant data and information generated by it; e. To submit monthly reports on its observations and recommendations to the City Mayor;

The United Nations International Panel for Climate Change (UN-IPCC) reported that climate change will likely result to rising global mean sea level, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including drought, heavy precipitation, heat wave and intensity of typhoons.

Whatever is our city-wide plan for climate change, we should be obliged to cooperate and participate. More rain gauge please for Pagasa and install better alert system before it’s too late.