BALER, AURORA—Are Filipinos ready to get out of harm’s way if and when storm surges, flash floods, landslides, ground ruptures, liquefaction or tsunamis occur?

Rather than give sweeping answers, government experts have been providing explicit information instead to help communities come up with a more localized way of dealing with nature’s violent side and ensuring the safety of lives and property.

Under Project “Ready,” also called the Hazard Mapping and Assessment for Effective Community-Based Disaster Risk Management, detailed maps are produced for every hazard that is likely to hit a province based on its natural features, active fault lines, past events and other factors.

The maps also show the extent of the area that may be hit. An accompanying brochure helps the users locate their lands or houses and find out their vulnerability to the hazards.

“Our aim is to have a disaster management program that is people-centered. That is what we are pushing in this project,” Dr. Prisco Nilo, director of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), said here on Tuesday.

When information is shared through workshops and planning in the communities, residents are assisted in establishing early warning systems. Drills are held to test if evacuation plans are mastered or if these are effective.

Empower local gov’ts

The Office of Civil Defense (OCD), which runs the daily operations of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, is the lead agency of Ready, which is funded with a $1.9-million grant from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

Also involved are the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), another agency of the Department of Science and Technology, and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau and the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (Namria), both under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

This is the first time that the five agencies are working on a project with such thrust. The teams “provide the scientific tools to analyze the hazards, monitor these and issue warnings,” Nilo said.

“Actually, we are empowering local governments to protect their communities,” he told reporters a day before the team, consisting of 30 experts, shared on Wednesday the results of the hazard maps in a workshop for government and private sector leaders in Aurora province.

Disaster mapping

PAGASA made the maps on floods and storm surges; Phivolcs on earthquakes, ground shaking and ruptures, liquefaction and tsunamis; and MGB on landslides. Namria handles the final production, copying and distribution of the maps, said Alma Arquero, chief of the agency’s geographical information system division.

The OCD takes care of the organizing component, assisting barangay chairs in drawing up disaster management plans and testing these through drills, said civil defense officer Romina Marasigan.

The information does not only go to the communities at risk. Local governments are helped in integrating risk reduction in their development planning to protect public and private sector investments, Dr. Renato Solidum Jr., Phivolcs director, said. His agency has designed a software for rapid earthquake damage assessment system.

First 27

PAGASA, on the other hand, has set up a network of community-based rainfall monitoring system in Aurora. It installed rain gauges maintained by volunteers in villages, who send rainfall data by phone, mobile phone or radio to the PAGASA stations in Baler and Casiguran towns and its weather and flood forecasting center in Quezon City.

Started in 2006, Ready has been implemented in Surigao del Norte and Surigao del Sur, Leyte, Southern Leyte and Bohol where deadly disasters had occurred.

In Aurora, a workshop was held for the northern towns of Dinalungan, Casiguran and Dilasag on May 5. The second workshop was held here on Wednesday for the towns of Baler, San Luis, Maria Aurora and Dipaculao.

Another meeting is set for May 10 in Dingalan where landslides in late 2004 killed more than 300 people and left almost 1,000 families homeless.

Project Ready will be taken to Cavite, Pampanga, Zamboanga del Sur, Eastern Samar and Northern Samar until the end of 2008.

17 provinces for 2nd phase

Set for 2009 are Zambales, Laguna, Antipolo, Ilocos Sur, Catanduanes, Abra and Quirino and for 2010, Agusan del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, Cagayan, Isabela, Zamboanga Sibugay, Bicol and Iloilo. It will be in Ilocos Norte and Benguet in 2011.

At least 17 more provinces are lined up for the second phase, which will be funded by the government, Solidum said.

Activities related to this initiative began after the 2004 landslides that hit Quezon and Aurora provinces, he said. At that time, the UNDP asked Phivolcs to help by preparing the hazard maps of Real, Infanta and General Nakar in Quezon for use in the rehabilitation programs of those areas.

“The UNDP asked us to scale up the project in other areas,” Solidum said.

The 27 provinces in Ready’s first phase were chosen on the bases of the frequent occurrences of calamities there and the availability of base maps on those areas. Most of these sites are in the country’s eastern seaboard, meaning they face the Pacific Ocean.

Advocacy

“Aurora is particularly at risk to tsunami because it experienced one, called the Tromba Marina, in 1735,” Solidum said. The country’s eastern seaboard can experience tsunami that may either be generated by local earthquakes or by those that can occur in nearby countries.

The effort to bring specific information down to the communities is an advocacy by the UN worldwide, Solidum said. More focus is given on improving the capacity of disaster coordinating councils to respond to disaster events as these occur with increasing regularity.

“National agencies cannot monitor everything that is happening on the ground,” Solidum said.

Aurora Gov. Bellaflor Angara-Castillo said going local was the good way to do it. “People know exactly what is happening in their communities. Without the community’s support, you cannot have a successful disaster management plan. The only effective way of battling any problem is to go local,” she told reporters.

Aurora (pop: 200,000) remains in the “Club 20”—an informal grouping of the 20 poorest provinces in the Philippines.

Poor people have fewer resources to cope with disasters and should be helped before they can actually become victims, Castillo said.