EDITORIAL - Disaster consciousness

It’s been 18 years since July was declared National Disaster Consciousness Month by virtue of an executive order issued by Joseph Estrada when he was president. Since then some positive reforms have been made in the nation’s disaster preparedness. Overall, however, the nation’s responses to disasters since the EO was signed in 1999 show a cavernous room for improvement.

The sorry state of evacuation centers for the thousands of residents displaced by the continuing firefight in Marawi is just one of the indications of the level of preparedness for calamitous events whether natural or manmade.

It’s not the first time that an entire city has suffered from a disastrous event in this country. Super Typhoon Yolanda left a much wider area in the Visayas in ruins, decimating cities and coconut plantations. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1990 erased from the map wide swaths of Pampanga and neighboring areas. Freak floods have ravaged villages and cities in recent years, leaving thousands dead. So the nation is no stranger to the necessity of having evacuation centers that can accommodate a large number of displaced people for weeks or months.

Apart from the lack of decent evacuation centers, studies have shown that the nation remains ill-equipped in many aspects to deal with super typhoons, storm surges, killer floods and powerful earthquakes. While weather forecasting capability has been boosted in the past years, disaster responses still leave much to be desired.

Disaster consciousness month is a good time to remind the public about the vulnerability of Metro Manila and nearby areas to killer earthquakes. Seismologists have given sufficient warning that the East and West Valley Faults, which run through Metro Manila from Bulacan to Laguna, is ripe for the Big One. The affected areas have responded with regular earthquake and fire drills in both government and private offices. Compared with disaster preparedness in certain other countries along the Pacific Ring of Fire, however, Philippine disaster preparedness is woefully inadequate.

National Disaster Consciousness Month should raise awareness about these weaknesses. The special month puts appropriate emphasis on the importance of preparedness in public safety during calamities. Last Thursday’s 6.5-magnitude earthquake in Leyte lends urgency to this issue. While nations can never be completely ready for disasters, preparedness can mitigate the impact and speed up recovery.