Saturday, September 26, 2009

Baguio's Disaster-The Killer Earthquake


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Around a little past 3:00 pm July 16, 1990, the ground started to slightly rumble in Baguio but the tremors would just as soon fade. After one hour, the series of small quakes started to become more powerful vibrations and in less than 30 minutes, parts of Baguio were cracking, a popular hotel, The Hyatt Terraces Plaza among many other structures, fell down trapping a number of people alive underneath.

As far as Pangasinan, the ground swallowed or spit out houses, buildings, broke apart chunks of cemented streets and in many parts people witnessed liquefaction, when suddenly the soil turns into water. A function of deep underground water climbing into the surface and large volumes of soil on the other hand get sucked under. To the naked eye it appears like hearth suddenly transforms into water.

Downwards to central Luzon and to Bulacan, the ground heaved greatly that saline water intruded into the source of potable water acquifers. During an NGO survey of eleven coastal towns in Bulacan in 1992, it was categorically discovered that seven out of ten people found little specks of blood in their urine.

This indicates the severe saline intrusion into the drinking water of Bulakenyos. This fact was made public through the media. Suddenly, Congress discovered that there was a dormant 1.5 billion fund Marcos time project for Bulacan’s water system.

This was not to be the end of the story. The NGO organized fisher folk and ordinary citizens to pressure the government to cure the problem. The provincial government worked for the NGO to be kicked out of Bulacan and called its executive director a war lord. The extent of the problem is that, Bulacan and Pampanga riverine system, among others is the source of Metro Manila’s drinking water. And this riverine system is salinated. At this time the salination as well as pollutant contamination is at high levels. A ceramic water filter turns very dirty brown after a few days of filtering regular water from a Quezon City faucet. It turns dark brown when one is in the City of Manila and other localities where the water pipes are older.

The dimmer view of this situation is this: how can you cure a gap in the underground acquifer except with spending billions of dollars on mere stop gap measures? Remember that the Philippines lies in the world’s earthquake fault zone.

But then a couple billions of dollars could stem the possibility of millions of Filipinos (foreign expatriates included) developing internal disorders, which could cost hundreds of billions of dollars for medication and surgery in return. And the impossible scenario of the gaps widening to create chasms of unguarded openings underneath the ground that could cause greater damage in the future.

Aside from Central Luzon, the coastal areas of Southern Luzon also suffered some of these after effects of Pinatubo, although to a lesser extent.

On June 15, 1991, still smarting from the Philippines’ worst killer temblor, Mt. Pinatubo erupted and transformed its shape from a rounded mound at its head to a sharp cone. Where did all that matter from Pinatubo go?
No one bothered to ask the question. It took a scientist from Germany to declare that an urgent solution was needed to stem the overly destructive lahar flows and the great potential for horrific flash flooding in Pangasinan, Zambales and many other areas.
In 1992 up to 1993, this solution was communicated to MalacaƱang through several letters through the Philippine Information Agency and a non-government organization (NGO) called CDHS, Inc. Pres. Ramos was at the presidency. Pangasinan’s welfare was at stake.
Government did not listen. According to the findings, Mt. Pinatubo deposited several billions of tons of ash into the Caraballo and in slight volume to the Cordillera and Sierra Madre mountain ranges.
There was a need to make the ash filled Caraballo mountain range less susceptible to erosion by massive aerial weed seeding - spreading a great volume of weed seeds by aircraft.
No one inside Ramos’ government listened to the findings. No one took up on the solution to spread seeds of grass by air. That seemed to be fool’s game at the time.
Only a few months later, flash floods came to Eastern and Central Pangasinan. Several Barangays (villages) were wiped out from the map. Ramos should have listened. After all, he is also from Pangasinan.
Aside from illegal logging by unorganized and highly syndicated gangs of environmental criminals, there is also the poisoning of the earth and the causing of tremendous erosion of Cordillera. How does this affect Metro Manila? The giant Agno River defecates and spills most of its wastes as well as its eroded soil into Pangasinan. If one boards a helicopter and navigates over Lingayen Gulf, where the Agno River joins the sea, one notes that in the 1980s, there were a few meters of dark and dirty murk that was visible from the tip of the coastline farther into the sea.
In the 1990s, the discoloration of the sea bed from an aerial view lengthened from a few meters to a few hundred meters.
Today, more than ten years later, the murk in the sea bed could probably be longer. Yet no one is addressing this problem.
The situation is the same in Metro Manila, Cavite, Bicol, Tacloban City and several other places. This is the main reason behind the red tide problem. Pollution causes the algal bloom that poisons sea livestock that in turns poisons humans.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has had a wetlands management program for many years. It is locally supported and foreign funded. However, I heard no one saying that something was being done about Agno River erosion, and its corresponding occurrences in many other places in the country including Mindanao where illegal logging and unrestricted mining is rampant.
Erosion is not the only problem. Contamination is also a serious issue. Highly toxic chemicals are dumped into the riverine systems that flow from north to south or in the case of Laguna Lake, from the industries to the lake to the Pasig River to Manila Bay.
In 1983, the DND strictly enforced arrest of owners of factories who dump their toxic wastes into the Pasig. After getting arrested, the businessmen just pay the fines and will go scot-free. DND lost the political will to arrest these hard headed toxic waste dumpers when the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR) later to become the DENR stopped them from accosting upright, law-loving citizens, they said. In reality, the small fines were nothing. What the DANR officials were receiving from the toxic dumpers was something.
Agno River’s spill is not merely its own. Cavite’s pollutants, Bataan’s wastes, among others, happen in only one spot, the Manila Bay. The entire bay is inside a large, semi-circumferential area that indirectly interfaces with the north gulf waterway through the north-south riverine system and encompasses the coastline from Bataan to the coastal tip of Batangas and all the pollutants from the entire corridor will be found inside that space and no other.
Therefore, the pollution from the tip of the bay as far out in the north, down to Pangasinan, to Metro Manila will come out in Manila Bay.
In 1992, an excited Representative from Pangasinan, later Speaker Jose De Venecia, Jr. was negotiating with the private sector to build a breakwater and bridge that will span the entire Bataan-Batangas gap.
This was a monumental project with equally colossal commissions for the greedy stake holders.
A small NGO fought through media and by way of disseminating reports, manifestos and scientific literature about the early death of the beautiful Manila Bay if this project comes to fruition. The project was shot down by Pres. Ramos. One of Ramos’ good points is that he is severely scared of media statements and keeps writing marginal notes over newspaper clippings and broadcast transcripts: “Take action on this”, “Act on this” sometimes with an adjoining “NLT 01 Sep 93” (not later than September 1, 1993) or something like that.
Of course De Venecia, Jr. was very angry and adamant that his undertaking was the construction and builders’ dream project! What could he do, a little NGO had one up over him. And it was the fact that the life of an entire Manila Bay and the health and welfare of millions of people affected by it was at stake. Ramos clearly had no choice but to listen to the media scare.
Post-Typhoon Ondoy Response
In the end, the post-incident response to Typhoon Ondoy should at least, in part, be like this:

1. Stop talking about and blaming global warming
2. Create a specific super body to study and manage a Calamity Monitoring and Public Warning System that will be either an adjunct of, or co-equal with the NDCC
3. Increase the capability of NDCC to provide early response during disaster
4. Create local structures and response capability to confront calamities. (In China, communities near rivers set up a system of ropes and handles from bank to bank to prevent people from drowning and dying during heavy flooding and provide access from one side of the river to the other.)
5. Restore the Flood Control Project fund and create funding for additional flood control systems not only in Metro Manila but also in many other vulnerable areas
6. Resettle many of Metro Manila’s squatters in major or minor bridges, and completely relocate all of the human rat peoples inside Sewers everywhere in Metro Manila and open up the entire sewerage system to let surface run-off water seep into the sewers
7. Stop the Forest denudation by recreating a fully armed, heavily weaponized Forest Ranger Brigade from a composite of AFP, Coast Guard, PNP and other armed services. No DENR employee shall be allowed to enter any Forest Ranger facility except to cooperate with them
8. Conduct behind schedule damage control from the following -- Baguio killer earthquake and Mt. Pinatubo eruption damage by reconstructing the landscape destroyed by eroded ash from Caraballo and other ranges and greening of the these ranges to prevent further flash flooding, erosion, avalanches and landslides
9. Heavily sanction all the illegal logging and indiscriminate dumping of toxins from mining operations from north to south and stop the syndicates that are willing and fully determined to kill their enemies and detractors by putting them in jail for life
10. Stop the killing of Manila Bay by providing solutions to the erosion, toxic dumping from point Agno down to Pasig River.

If President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Secretary Gilbert Cojuangco Teodoro listens, it will change the course of future calamities in the magnitude and scale of Typhoon Ondoy or greater. Now they are at the center of the real storm. Ondoy is not the last typhoon of 2009, but it will prove to be the benchmark of forthcoming disasters. Will Arroyo and Teodoro measure up?

Perhaps, if they are not deaf, dumb and blind and simply greedy like the late Madame Cory and rest of the others, they just might not get swaddled by dirt once the shit hits the fan.

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