In the wake of this year’s most destructive typhoon, ‘‘Mangkhut’’ or ‘‘Ompong’’ (why do we insist on having a Filipino name for typhoons that already have international names, once they enter the Philippine area of responsibility?), one agency that deserves a pat on the back is the DoST-Pagasa, our weather forecasting apparatus.
Our Pagasa men and women gave us adequate and correct information, days before Mangkhut became Ompong. They gave government agencies and the public-at-large enough time to prepare for the worst as the typhoon approached Northern Luzon,
A week ago in Taiwan, the forecast was that Mangkhut would slam into northern Taiwan, after it had hit Guam, but our local weathermen warned that it could hit Batanes and the Babuyan Islands instead, later lowering their sights into the exact spot in northern Cagayan province, with landfall in Baggao and exit through Ilocos Norte.
I had a plane reservation for Saturday the 15th from Taipei to Manila, and decided, on the basis of Pagasa forecasts, to leave much earlier, Thursday afternoon, to avoid the typhoon which would definitely affect our flight path. Remembering what happened to me when the Xiamen Airlines plane got stuck in Naia, I decided not to take any chances, and indeed, I had a smooth flight back home last week.
By warning the public days in advance, the number of deaths and the magnitude of destruction left by Ompong was averted, thanks to DoST-Pagasa.
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Learning from the ‘‘Haiyan’’/‘‘Yolanda’’ experience, it would seem that a lot more people heeded the Pagasa warnings. What was unexpected though was the amount of rainfall that poured into the Montanosa, causing uncontrolled volumes of water to cascade into Kalinga, Benguet and Baguio City.
As we write this article, the whole picture of the devastation is yet to be seen and assessed. Deaths and injuries were considerably less than feared, but damage to property and crops have yet to be evaluated.
Gov. Manny Mamba of Cagayan was heard on radio and TV saying that some 69,000 hectares of ricefields were devastated. A number of these had been prematurely harvested a few days before Ompong, but one could only do so much, he rued. Assuming that 50,000 hectares were flattened by wind and rain, the storm-damaged palay could no longer be fit for human consumption. If the expected yield would be a low 4 tons of palay, or 80 cavans per hectare, that is 200,000 tons or four-million sacks of palay. Had this been milled into rice, that would be equivalent to 120,000 metric tons or 2.4-million sacks of rice with 50 kilos each.
Those palay farmers would go hungry, bereft of incomes after months of back-breaking work. And that is 2.4 million more sacks out of the national rice reserves. And that is Cagayan province alone, per Governor Mamba.
Indeed, if the path of Ompong went a few degrees lower, more of Isabela other than the northern section would be flattened of rice and corn due for harvest in October. A few more degrees southward, if Ompong had slammed through Nueva Ecija and the central plains of Luzon, woe unto us rice-eaters in the urban areas.
If our agriculture officials were insisting that there is “no rice shortage” the week before Ompong, even as prices were soaring to unbelievable heights and poor consumers were lining up for cheaper substitutes from commercial rice, courtesy of the NFA and it’s Vietnamese and Thai suppliers, now they have to re-calculate.
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In the wake of the rice crisis in 1995, President Fidel V. Ramos convened the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council, which then proceeded to mandate a “safe” rice reserve level which the National Food Authority must comply with. That level is 15 days of the average national consumption (less than half a million tons of rice) at any single time of the year, increased to 30 days (900,000 to a million tons) in preparation for the “lean months” which is June to September, or in-between our two traditional harvest months of the staple crop. This “lean” period is also when we are normally beset by heavy rainfall and typhoons.
That Ledac mandate was violated by the NFA last year when mercifully, no strong weather disturbance happened during the lean months. That was pushed to extreme lows when we reached one-day inventory in March to May and even beyond, the lowest in the agency’s history. It is only now that imports have been arriving after prices of commercial rice had gone haywire, and the long queues or “pila” have been the economy’s “optic” of the year.
Acting too late took its toll in terms of public suffering, discontent, even anger perhaps.
And now there was Ompong.
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By and large, the NDRRMC and other agencies of government were also better prepared for Mangkhut. The President’s deputizing his cabinet members to take charge, from Secretary Art Tugade in his home province of Cagayan, Secretary Bebot Bello in his native Isabela, and Secretary Del Lorenzana, the NDRRMC chair monitoring the situation gave the public assurances and the LGU’s better direction. Political Adviser Francis Tolentino was an excellent choice to coordinate preventive as well as relief operations, having had experience both as city mayor of Tagaytay and as former MMDA chief during the Aquino administration.
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The people should not stop praying though. There are still more weeks and days in the dreadful “ber” months when weather disturbances are at their worst.
They should also brace for higher prices of basic commodities, from rice to vegetables, to fish, and later, pork and poultry, when the destroyed corn crops of Northern Luzon impacts on the cost of feeds.
Still and all, “pag-asa” which is the acronym of choice of our weather forecast agency, should be the guiding spirit that, as always, makes the Filipino people very resilient. It’s 99 days before Christmas, our traditional highlight of the season of grace, and joy, and hope.