Why government still faxing weather alerts to LGUs

“Unfortunately, one of the most used modes of transmission in government is the fax machine,” says deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

In this day and age when information can be transmitted through the Internet at rates of thousands of kilobytes per second, disaster management agencies in the Philippines still send and receive urgent weather-related warnings inch-by-inch via the largely obsolete fax machine.

According to deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) uses text messages and fax transmissions to alert local government units (LGUs) of the tracks of weather disturbances.

“Many ask why fax. Unfortunately, one of the most used modes of transmission in government is the fax machine,” said Valte.

Fax, short for facsimile, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer. It has been largely replaced by Internet-based alternatives.

Valte was fielding questions regarding the transmission of storm warnings after a telecommunications firm said that the government had failed to take advantage of text messaging to warn residents of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities of the potentially disastrous Tropical Storm “Sendong.”

Mixed accounts

Asked if the warnings were sent and received with adequate time for the residents to react, Valte said, “There are mixed accounts… that say there was a warning (but) residents didn’t evacuate because traditionally they don’t suffer from floods.”

“We have to sift through this to figure out what the warning systems were,” Valte said.

She said the matter would be investigated by the multi-agency task force that President Benigno Aquino III has formed to make sure nothing like it happens again.

Presidential Communications Operations Secretary Herminio Coloma on Wednesday said the text alert system wasn’t used in the case of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan because the typhoon signal when Tropical Storm Sendong hit did not reach the threshold level of Signal No. 3.

Based on an agreement with the telecommunications firms, the NDRRMC sends an emergency text warning to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), which in turn passes the urgent information to the telephone companies for dissemination.

“The emergency text alert system using the number 1456 was used to warn Bulacan residents of rising floodwaters caused by Typhoon “Pedring” last September,” Coloma said.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said it issued several warnings to the public and local officials that a storm was on its way to Mindanao, a region that typhoons rarely visit, as early as Tuesday, December 13.

“There were warnings, flood bulletins. As early as Tuesday, we sent notifications,” said Flaviana Hilario, Pagasa acting deputy administrator for research and development.

On December 13, Pagasa notified its media partners that a tropical cyclone had formed near Guam, which was still too far to affect the Philippines.

On the morning of December 14, Pagasa issued a weather advisory stating that the cyclone was classified as a tropical depression with maximum sustained winds of 55 kph near the eye.

Severe weather advisory

The weather system was spotted 1,480 km east of Southern Mindanao and was moving west at 19 kph. Pagasa forecast that the typhoon would enter the country by late Wednesday evening (December 14) or the next morning.

Forecaster Raymond Ordinario said Sendong, the 19th tropical cyclone to enter the Philippines in 2011, entered the country’s maritime boundary at around 8 a.m. of December 15.

In its 11 a.m. advisory that day, Pagasa issued a severe weather advisory that showed the path of the cyclone and the affected areas. But no public storm warning signal was sent yet.

On December 16, Sendong dumped one month’s worth of rain over a 24-hour period in an area of Northern Mindanao that is rarely buffeted by typhoons. The flash floods that followed struck in the early hours the next morning when people were sleeping. The death toll mainly in the two cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan stood at 1,257 as of Thursday.

In the Sendong aftermath, many factors were cited for the tragedy: the absence of a flood warning, high tide, a false sense of security and the complacency of the residents, the reluctance to leave homes unprotected from thieves, deforestation from illegal logging and mining, rapid urbanization and heavy siltation of rivers and other waterways.