UP has to make its campuses climate-resilient

(Second of two parts)

Although many students of the University of the Philippines (UP)  Tacloban have moved to other campuses, Prospero de Vera, UP vice president for public affairs, said they were also looking at how to rehabilitate the school so the semester could continue.

De Vera, overall in charge of the UP systems relief operations, said many students wanted to remain in Tacloban so the campus administration wanted to reopen in January.

Rebuilding, however, would depend on a number of factors, he said.

“Tacloban can still be repaired, [although] I don’t know how much [work] needs to be done for classes [to resume] … The bigger problem is: Is it wise to rebuild [on the same spot]? UP is sending a team of structural engineers to do an assessment and recommend if the campus should be relocated,” De Vera said.

Money would not be a problem, he said, as the Senate was allocating P10 billion for the reconstruction of affected campuses.

But it would be difficult to start rebuilding the school if the city did not keep pace, De Vera pointed out. “The campus is linked to the city, its services, infrastructure and facilities.”

UP, he said, was working with the local government to synchronize rebuilding efforts. It also offered its expertise for any reconstruction work.

Experts were already trying to see what made Tacloban so vulnerable, he said. They would also look into the viability of keeping the campus at its current location.

Land swap

De Vera said UP Tacloban was too close to the sea. Perhaps it could negotiate a land swap so it could be moved inland, away from Leyte’s coastline.

Although closing the campus was an option, as the courses it offered were available at the other branches, De Vera noted that UP Tacloban had a geographical niche. It had been serving the Samar and Leyte provinces.

Transferring its people would also mean additional cost for host campuses, which would have to build new infrastructure and provide additional facilities.

As for the Palo campus, De Vera said: “Infrastructure-wise, the School of Health Sciences is not usable anymore. Effectively, the semester is over in Palo.”

Academically, he said it was easy for the students to recover from the disruption because of Palo’s pioneering ladderized curriculum.

Palo primarily trains grass roots community health workers. Under its curriculum, every year of study gives students more advanced skills that qualify them for more complex public health tasks— ranging from midwifery to doctor of medicine.

De Vera said similar schools in Aurora and South Cotabato provinces were willing to take in displaced students. But Palo students were usually supported by local governments. Their transfer would have to be approved by the sponsoring governments, he said.

Until the issue is resolved, the students are on an indefinite break.

Providing expertise

De Vera said there had actually been proposals to close Palo and move the program to Tacloban.

Even as UP does “housekeeping,” it has not forgotten its role as the national university that is often the only one with the expertise and people needed for rebuilding and rehabilitation.

De Vera said UP had been organizing experts to help disaster areas in long-term rehabilitation, starting with Typhoon “Sendong” in Mindanao a few years back. It was providing experts in  forensics (for identification of fatalities), geosciences and other fields.

But he lamented that people easily forget. He said for instance that forensics pathologist and UP professor Raquel Fortun had already put together a training program after Sendong on how local authorities could aid in the  identification of victims.

Even up to the 11th day after Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” local medical personnel did not know what to do. He said Fortun had to conduct workshops because some of the things being done were wrong.

Covering a dead body with lime to mask the stench of decaying flesh burned the soft tissue that would have been easier and cheaper to analyze for DNA. De Vera said soft tissue DNA analysis cost around P5,000 while bone DNA cost P50,000.

He said that if the locals had been trained, they could have immediately started the identification process by recording details that could be useful later—clothes, distinguishing marks, where the body was found.

Other experts are involved in replanning, rezoning and land use plans. People from the School for Urban Planning, National Institute of Geological Sciences and College of Engineering could work closely with local governments in drawing up a rehabilitation program.

“UP’s intervention should be strategic. It provides expertise where there is none,” he said.

Revealing

But Yolanda also revealed UP’s own shortcomings. Some campuses, De Vera noted, did not have disaster plans. He said UP now realized it had to make its own campuses  climate- resilient. Rebuilding should thus be an opportunity for the university system to showcase climate-resilient construction that could serve as an example, he said.

Under a memorandum of agreement with the Commission on Climate Change, the university was supposed to do just that—

develop climate-resilient campuses, he said.

As part of the agreement, UP would also train, starting next year, state colleges and universities on climate change so they could assist their own local governments in raising disaster awareness and drawing up sustainable plans.

He said there should be different response programs  for different disasters for different parts of the country, not just a single template for all kinds of disasters. Multiple options should be drawn up.

Even information and communication materials should be changed to make the danger more real and graphic. Many people did not know what “storm surge” meant. People should be able to visualize the possible extent of destruction.

Understandable terms

The Department of Science and Technology had all the information but it was unable to explain it in easily understandable terms. Telling people the storm surge would be 7 meters high might not sound as alarming as telling them it would be about 20 feet or as tall as a two-story house.

“People know feet better than meters and seven is a low figure,” De Vera said.

What was worrisome, he said, was that while previous disasters made it clear changes were needed, the change in perspective was not rapid enough.

The same issue raised now was also raised after Sendong—inadequate and unsuitable information, education and communication (IEC) materials  did not  explain clearly and graphically the risks. But people still got the same IEC materials and the dissemination of information had not improved, he said.

But UP was not dwelling on the what-ifs. “While the government is still overwhelmed by the extent of the disaster, UP is already looking beyond,” he said.

UP would have to design a  system for mobilizing people during disasters and capacity building of local governments. It would have to draw up necessary protocols, as it seemed it was the only one with the expertise for these tasks.

Many recommendations of UP experts after Sendong were not implemented reportedly because funding was not available, De Vera said.  Residents along river banks, for instance, had returned to the vulnerable areas because there was no money for their relocation, he said.

“Hopefully Tacloban can really be rebuilt differently,” De Vera said.

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TAGS: Learning, Tacloban City