News is my breakfast, says Aquino
President Benigno Aquino III. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
President Aquino eats the news for breakfast.
“My usual practice on getting up in the morning is to read the papers. Since becoming president, most of the time I skip breakfast. The news becomes my breakfast,” the President said in a speech in Filipino at the Philippine Navy’s change of command rites on Monday.
But during one such “breakfast,” Aquino said he was “alarmed” by a headline from one of the major dailies that said a supertyphoon packing winds of 354 kilometers per hour would hit the Batanes islands in northern Luzon.
“Who wouldn’t be alarmed by this kind of news?” the President told his audience of Navy officers, enlisted personnel and other guests.
He said the paper was quoting a typhoon warning center in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Aquino did not name the publication but was apparently referring to the Inquirer which headlined on Aug. 5 that the 354-kph Supertyphoon “Hanna” would “hit” the Philippines.
But the story itself said that while the world’s strongest typhoon this year would enter the Philippine area of responsibility, or PAR, it would not make landfall.
According to the President, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) had been regularly sending him weather updates.
“That morning, the [Pagasa] report said the storm had maximum winds of 215 to 250 kph only and it was still outside the PAR. This was quite far from the 354 kph being reported. I asked myself, who should I believe then?” he asked.
(The Inquirer story clarified that Pagasa categorizes as supertyphoons storms that reach maximum sustained winds of at least 220kph. It said that Pagasa had placed the maximum sustained winds of Hanna at 220 kph, but that the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) in Honolulu said the storm was packing gusts of up to 354 kph.)
The President then began singing the praises of Pagasa and its “transformation” into an efficient and reliable weather-forecasting agency.–Jerry E. Esplanada
