Hopefully by now you have read all the news and video footages of the recent flooding in metropolitan Manila and norther Luzon provinces. For comparison, the rainfall amount in 12 hours was a lot more (measured in mm and not in inches) than what we experienced with Katrina. I have not kept up with the death toll, and scores of people missing. The financial costs of this calamity is still to be determined. We do have to count our blessings in light of the recent earthquake, more lives lost in the recent massive earthquake in Sumatra (that just occurred this week, and flooding in American Samoa).The easy part is finger pointing and doing the blame game. The following questions do need to be answered:
- What happened to the study done by Urban Planner Palafox regarding the risks of flooding (I will get the reference page on this study, this was done years ago)?
- How much of the damaged settlements, e.g., parts of Marikina Valley, or population actually built and settled in 20, 50, or 100-year floodplains?
- Where was the Disaster Relief and Emergency Response System? Why is there no FEMA-like agency?
- Why haven't local government units organized even volunteer or non government associations to organize Disaster Preparedness and Local Emergency Response Teams?
- How much of the flooding caused, or indirectly caused by garbage-choke rivers and estuaries?
- Are any of the private developments, or buildings insured when these are built on flood plains? Where did they purchase insurance, or were these properties insured, who insured them?
- Risk management,
- Proper project planning,
- Risk mitigation,
- Project implementation,
- Budgeting,
- Disaster preparedness, and
- Disaster response and recovery.
