Involving communities in disaster preparedness

AROUND 1,350 people are still missing in the village of Guinsaugon in the municipality of St. Bernard in Southern Leyte, after last Friday’s massive landslide.

Rescue efforts are ongoing, but officials do not want to raise false hopes, despite the “faint knockings and scratchings” being heard from beneath the piles of mud.

St. Bernard is in fact one of 400 priority areas listed by the Mines and Geo-Sciences Bureau for the mapping of geophysical hazards, or what is defined as those natural phenomena that could lead to a disaster. The mapping of the municipality has been scheduled this year, to identify areas vulnerable to specific hazards based on natural geologic factors such as rock and soil characteristics and ground instabilities.

But Friday’s landslide magnifies the need not only for geophysical hazard mapping, but for community-based programs that inform people about the hazards they face and engage them in the preparedness plans.

Development organizations say the effects of disasters, such as recent ones like the flooding in Quezon in 2004 and the landslides also in Southern Leyte in 2003, would have been mitigated if the communities were evacuated in time. And while other factors such as logging contribute to the risk of a disaster, their consequences could be lessened if the communities are prepared.

“People matter the most,” Lilian Carreon, director of the NGO Oxfam here in Manila, says. “They should be involved in disaster preparedness.”

The importance of community-based disaster preparedness is best illustrated by Lugsongan, a small fishing community on Limasawa island in Southern Leyte, that was hit by a strong typhoon in 1984; the community of 215 families was devastated, as 23 people died and many of the houses and fishing boats were crushed by the storm. In 2001, another typhoon hit the fishing village; by then, the community was prepared. The families safely evacuated until the typhoon subsided, without injury or loss of life.

Following the 1984 typhoon, the Philippine National Red Cross engaged the community, initiating a program for disaster preparedness. The community created a 10-member “Disaster Action Team,” and public meetings were held to identify which households were most vulnerable to natural hazards. From those discussions, they found out that while the community most feared typhoons, they were at risk as well from landslides and poor access to safe drinking water.

The community then made plans for how to improve their safety, and, using volunteer labor, built an evacuation center on a hill behind the village. The municipal government provided engineering assistance and funded transport and other costs.

“Foremost,” Oxfam’s Carreon says, “the communities must be informed of the hazards they face. They then have to be involved not only in the planning of disaster mitigation efforts, but in the mobilization of resources to undertake those plans.”

Oxfam works with impoverished communities all over the world. Its Philippine office has had many years of experience working with communities devastated by natural disasters.

“Disaster preparedness has to be seen from a more thorough perspective, and not just a technical one,” Carreon adds.

Celine Vicente of the environment NGO, Manila Observatory, says communities should know what type of disaster could hit them, “so that they could organize themselves and learn to read the precursors.”

Precursors are signs warning of an impending disaster. “In St. Bernard’s case,” Vicente illustrates using the most recent disaster in Southern Leyte, “the precursor was the continuous rains.”

A community that is prepared will have a contingency plan for each type of disaster that may occur, Vicente says.

Manila Observatory completed last year a study mapping the various vulnerabilities to environmental disasters throughout the country. They are at present working on programs that will enhance the capacity of communities in disaster preparedness.

Claro Jose Manipon of the Mines and Geo-Sciences Bureau can only agree with NGOs about the need to involve communities in disaster preparedness. “In fact that’s what we want to accomplish,” he says. “We want to train local communities in the reading of hazard maps so they will be involved in preparedness programs.”

It is the MGB that spearheads the mapping of areas according to their vulnerability to what are called geophysical hazards like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.

Sound hazard mapping is key to how prepared the country can be to cope with natural disasters. Our very location in the tropics makes us vulnerable to a host of natural disasters; anywhere from 20 to 30 typhoons visit the archipelago each year.

But as recently as “10 or so years” ago, Manipon admits, government’s disaster response program has mostly been reactive. “After a disaster happens, that’s when we send out our experts to investigate.”

But with the acquisition of new sciences and technologies, including satellite imagery analyses and computer modeling, the Bureau has become “more proactive” in the 1990s, Manipon says, able to undertake predictive mapping.

MGB’s hazard mapping is “multi-level,” explains Manipon: “The first level provides a bird’s eye view of the threats in the entire country, pointing out the general susceptibility.”

The result of this work is what MGB refers to as the susceptibility ranking of provinces. Southern Leyte is ranked number 5, with some 82 percent of its land area susceptible to landslides.

Once these areas are identified, Manipon adds, more detailed mapping is then conducted at the municipal level. “Here we see how the roads run, how the rivers bend.”

In Southern Leyte, detailed mapping has been completed for several municipalities, and St. Bernard is scheduled to be mapped this year. “Our field geologists schedule the mapping based on limited time, manpower, and budget,” Manipon explains.

It is no simple feat, he says, with MGB’s annual P95-million budget for operations being eaten up by other tasks.

“In fairness to the national government,” Manipon says, “after the Quezon disaster in 2004 they promised to give us P60 million to complete the mapping.” Manipon is referring to the massive flooding that devastated the province of Quezon in November 2004. “After that disaster they realized we need more money if we must do our job,” Manipon says.

He happily announces that yesterday, he was told that MGB would get P16 million, enough to cover the 150 areas they have prioritized for this year.

Mapping efforts in one municipality costs an average of P100,000. These expenses will cover the equipment and experts, and the actual printing of the maps.

“If we have some spare money,” Manipon sheepishly says, “we can print extra maps for the community leaders.” But those spare funds are hard to come by.

Oxfam’s Carreon knows that. “But it should not be that hard,” she says. “As long as the government sees it from a development perspective.” Mitigating a disaster’s effects is a continuum, she says. “It includes the preparedness and economic capacity not just of the national government, but of the LGUs and the people themselves.”

Read the Red Cross’s booklet describing its Community-Based Disaster Preparedness program in the Philippines here. And this is Manila Observatory’s study on Mapping Vulnerabilities to Environmental Disasters.

(The Visayan Forum Foundation Inc. accepts donations for the families of Guinsaugon. You may drop your donations to its office at 4F RFM Corporate Center, Pioneer Street Mandaluyong. You may also give them a call: +632.6340683 / 6340684 / 6318101 local 7401. Or you may send cash donations to VF’s account: Bank of Commerce-Sta. Ana Branch, Pedro Gil cor. Embarcadero Sts., Sta. Ana, Manila, Account #031-00-000432-7.Visayan Forum is an NGO that works with marginalized migrants, especially domestic workers and trafficked women and children. In 2005, its co-founder, Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, was given the Anti-Slavery Award for her work.)

for her work.)