Storm Surge

by

Ricardo F. Maulion

(10^th Installment on MY 500 Words Daily Challenge. June  )

            Punning, playing with words. What’s in a name or label?  Filipinos are fond of this explaining a term or issue ad infinitum until they explain the issue away.  It’s sad that we have close to ten thousands lives lost paying the inability of driving home what should have been clear language about storm Surge. Not necessarily associated to Tsunami, DOST officials would say.  This as number of meters of typhoon storm surge would jump from three (ten feet) to five, ten or fifteen meters high depending on who is speaking.

            Where did we go wrong? Clearly it was in the use of translating the language to Juan de la Cruz. From storm surge over three meters, an earlier pronouncement, this was later elevated to five meters by Lagmay of the Project Noah  maybe as he was lost in the translation too. Good  excuse also  as Pnoy advised the people to stay calm helping one another instead.

Initially, it was feared that more than 10,000 were lost learning that Monster Super Typhoon Yolanda was the deadliest disaster in Philippine History destroying 70-80% of houses and structures along typhoon path. The figure was coined by Gen. Soria was only an approximation given his knowledge of the area visited by Yolanda. This however didn’t do  him good as he was   axed  too  soon arbitrarily from the position by the  President to save the face from  his own earlier  pronouncement of ambitious “No-casualties” to the entire world. And what a twist of event as Soria would soon be  reinstated from the clamor of public as figures of casualties was gradually increasing matching the figure of his earlier pronouncement. This as  Media and internet would later rally for his reinstatement as figures really increased based on the number of corpses recovered. From this reporters raised the storm surge further from ten to fifteen meters high storm surge.

What’s your take on this? We have seen it anyway from ABS-CBN’s Ted Failon TV footage waves reaching as far as the second floor of a building  on its way to the third floor! Seeing  this graphic footage I think lend credence  that tentative rise of storm surge to greater heights could be valid.

Early on, death toll registered  2,357 dead bodies littering  the road of Tacloban and Leyte on November 14. The figures jumped close to 5,000 mark from UN’s count of 4,460 the following day and still progressing. It was even humored from the grape vine that numbers was fast  bloating but that the counting should be stopped once it reaches 6,000 mark or we would lose face before the eyes of international community helping us recovered from this deadly tragedy where debris and houses also littered all over. Undoubtedly, this was the implied order of the day floating around from Malacañang. This is not surprising as the numbers was fast reaching the 7,000 mark lives lost  when a typhoon overwhelmed the city on Oct. 12, 1897 as reported by Australian Broadsheet on November 12, 1897.

The incident drums up anew the post of concerned foreigner categorizing Philippines  as the most dangerous country to live, this as he received flak from concerned taxpayers over his irresponsible declaration that do more harm than good.  Philippines is number one in the world in terms of death caused by natural disasters. This as he observed 2,360 lives lost in 2012. China came in second with far 771 casualties. Why this is so? Philippines as already ventilated “ . . .  is situated at the center of typhoon alley resting on the unstable ring of fire where volcanoes blast forth magma for the earth’s core and rides earthquake prone tectonic  plates as they slip against another,” the writer clarified. Must have some nuggets of wisdom here, whether we like it as different tragedies when tied together validate that observation.

Ergo what should be done to avert similar catastrophe. Renato Solidum explained that fault line shakes from 400-600 years.  As stakeholders, the individual, family, to community should have quick response on this or we too would become another additional statistics of the  long list of casualties. Government should also revisit their outmoded Building Code making an effective public governance and policy, he said.

 What now for victims? They should be compensated and have relevant public officials  penalized for dereliction of duty specifically messing or screwing the translation of storm surge. Why all those ineptness that they didn’t come up with Plan B and C for example. From the news by ABS-CBN, I could see higher grounds like  mountains and hills overlooking the now devastated Cities. What in the world is the use of it all if not buffer zones during super typhoon the likes of Yolanda coming in. By then Malacañang could stand tall telling to the world that indeed there was “Zero Casualties!” And if ever there was, merely negligible number we could now associate with uniform interpretation of Storm Surge securing the lives of innocent people sacrificed by the ineptness of  earlier public officials.