President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. virtually attended the meeting of the multi-sectoral National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) at the height of Typhoon ‘Paeng’ on Saturday.
This conveyed the message that he was genuinely concerned over the people’s welfare amid reports of death and destruction across the country from the extreme weather disturbance.
The Chief Executive wondered why the number of deaths from the latest typhoon kept rising, suggesting that more stringent forced evacuations by local authorities could have led to fewer fatalities.
This raises the question: Is the government doing enough in disaster response?
We already know that the Philippines is among the most vulnerable to natural disasters.
A recent study even concluded that, in fact, we are the most disaster-prone country in the entire world. That’s because our geographical location at the western end of the Pacific Ocean leaves us regularly visited by typhoons of varying scale and intensity every year.
Besides typhoons, of course, we lie in the so-called Pacific ring of fire consisting of active volcanoes that may lie dormant for many years but may suddenly erupt and cause displacement of people, loss of lives and extensive damage to property.
The country is not spared either by earthquakes big and small that may not occur on a regular basis but likewise lead to death and destruction.
We’re not even talking of man-made disasters, such as displacement of people from their homes due to armed conflict between the military and rebels.
The latest typhoon to hit the country may not have been as destructive as those in recent memory, such as ‘Ondoy’ and ‘Yolanda’ that left thousands displaced by massive flooding and landslides from torrential rains.
What was not expected was that Paeng’s fury as a “severe tropical storm” as declared by the weather monitoring agency would affect almost the entire country, from Luzon to Mindanao, and cause flooding and landslides, damage to crops and infrastructure, and massive displacement of people from their homes.
We have been warned time and again by experts that we can expect more severe typhoons in the years ahead due to climate change and global warming.
This should tell us that our economic programs should take into account possible setbacks from natural disasters. Typhoon Paeng came at a time when we have not even fully recovered from the economic slump due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government should therefore consider a holistic disaster response plan and organizational structure than what we have now.
Up for deliberation in the legislature is a bill proposing the creation of a separate Department of Disaster Resilience that would unify government efforts to cope with natural disasters.
But there’s also the view that a separate department is unnecessary as the NDRRMC is already sufficient to respond to disasters.
Given the new administration’s push to accelerate economic recovery, a more comprehensive approach to disaster response by a separate department may just be what the doctor ordered to keep disasters from inflicting more death and destruction as well as severe economic setbacks in the years ahead.
Meanwhile, President Marcos Jr. should seriously consider the NDRRMC proposal to declare a state of national emergency for a one-year period to allow full economic recovery and the delivery of much-needed services to those most in need because of poverty.