Survey says: Every compassionate human fully sympathizes with the people of Bohol, Cebu, Leyte, Samar, among many others that were affected by the recent Killer Earthquake. So do we. We are one with the disaster risk reduction exponents, the Disaster, Hazards Mapping Program Group (Hazmapping) to improve our disaster prevention and preparedness. The December 2011 Cagayan de Oro City-Iligan City killer floods flash floods, the 2012 Negros Oriental Earthquake, several other cruel catastrophes that hit many different parts of Luzon on separate occasions.
Start of bigger devastation
All these disasters signal just the simple beginning, the start of bigger calamities to come. As the advocacy group Centre humanes says:
"This is also in future sympathy with the people of Metro Manila who will be severely affected by a major 7 to 8 magnitude earthquake that was predicted by PHIVOLCs and other experts and disseminated by media very recently. . . We are posting the article below to prompt the Philippine Government key persons to stop wrangling about how much they themselves had stolen from the National Treasury. That is enough for now. There are more significant issues to attend to.
"We are also calling upon the United Nations and its disaster risk reduction arm, the UNISDR to sympathize with us in this campaign to prod the Philippine national government to finally authorize the release of the funds for the modernization of PHIVOLCS. It is true that both the government and the UN have more sensible and important things to do, but it will not take much time to make the final decision to approve and bring over the funds for PHIVOLCs upgrade-modernization to that agency.
"These funds have been awaited for over a very long, long time. A lot of disasters have visited the Philippines. But the greatest disaster is in the form of a major 9-10 magnitude earthquake that will cause a massive tsunami that will drown millions of people and their properties all over the coastal areas of the Philippines. Considering that the country has 7,107 islands with 36,289 kilometers of coastline, and 33% of the country are face the ocean and seas, the extent of the loss of life and property will be horrendous.
"If the government decision makers are too stupid enough not to consider this as consequential, it is time for the country to rethink its directions and replace the majority of these people at the top as soon as humanly possible.
"There is no recourse but to help PHIVOLCS, along with other agencies like NAMRIA, the DOTC's Coast Guard, DND and DILG's uniformed services that all help in search, rescue and recovery. . ."
"You can't predict disaster..."
No one will say that the Boholindol and Cebulindol could have been predicted. As it is being said over and over again in the media, nobody can predict earthquake." The apologists declare that it is possible to "predict floods, tsunami but you can't predict earthquake." That is a total load of shit.
Survey says: Various institutions concerned with disaster risk reduction are convinced that "mitigation and adaptation measures by all sectors and levels of government have been inadequately implemented and weakly coordinated resulting in inefficient use of resources and lack of accountability." - January 2013 Report, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
Survey says: Various institutions concerned with disaster risk reduction are convinced that "mitigation and adaptation measures by all sectors and levels of government have been inadequately implemented and weakly coordinated resulting in inefficient use of resources and lack of accountability." - January 2013 Report, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
This is by itself a whole crock of shit. You cannot mitigate disaster and adapt to a high danger, maximum risk disaster zone. The premise in itself is already extremely erroneous, albeit dangerous.
It promotes a concept of disaster risk reduction that is predicated upon the presumption of low casualties in low intensity calamities within low risk disaster zones. How about inevitable high casualty in high intensity calamities within very high risk territories? What happened in Cagayan de Oro where the City Mayor made poor people live in his pride and accomplishment - a housing project in an islet the middle of CDO's largest river? The thousand that died in the water basin Marikina when huge volumes of water drowned entire subdivisions while the residents were fast asleep.
Perilous times
Furthermore, the present is no longer ordinary times. These are perilous times we live in. HMES has been campaigning for greater awareness of the portents of the solar maxima.
The consequences of a really powerful solar storm could cause the end of at least the existence of more than one-half of the population in the globe. Solar storm surges are more devastating than Ondoy, Sendong and Boholindol-Cebulindol, among other calamities combined. EMP, electromagnetic pulse, high intensity heat up hundreds even thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, are only part of the killer talons of the solar maxima - if it occurs.
However, among many quarters, it is a given that this incident will occur, as much as it is predicted by scientists that a major 7, 8 or even 9, 10 magnitude earthquake will hit Metro Manila in this lifetime.
Indifferent politicians, ill prepared government
Survey says: Neither our leaders or any government agency in the Philippines or in most parts of the world are serious about the solar maxima.
This is notwithstanding that despite the many world conventions and treaties, private industrial enterprise leaders and their counterparts in the public sector are all aghast and unrepentant over the campaign to reduce global warming or climate change due to unregulated carbon emissions contributed mostly by the business sector.
In the case of the Boholindol-Cebulindol incident, government from the national to the local level was ill prepared to handle the disaster. When had this administration been well prepared at all except in the chop chop of billions of funds for politicians and other very important persons in the bureaucracy? That is not even a suitable question.
The country's geologic survey agency - Philippine Institute for Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) itself up to this time has no firm data on where the earthquake fault in Bohol lies and it had to correct itself for saying that the epicenter of Boholindol and Cebulindol is Carmen, Bohol when it is not the case.
According to the Disaster and Environment Hazards Mapping group:
"From over 40 casualties, the death toll has risen to nearly 100 in the Carmen, Bohol Province-Cebu City earthquake. At that figure, the Carmen-Cebu tremor can qualify as a Killer Quake. Cebu and nearby areas has to be declared to be in a state of calamity. There are limited manuevers that aircraft can make at the Cebu airport due to the cracking and opening up of the airport's runways.
"The six million dollar question is: how many more incidents like those in Carmen, Bohol and Cebu City and the other ones in Leyte, Samar will we be expecting?" 15 October 2013
However, there is a qualifier to all these:
"Were the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) prepared adequately enough with equipment to monitor ground movement, tectonic plate disturbance, the nearly 100 deaths could have been avoided. 27 Billion Philippine Pesos is earmarked for pork barrel in the 2014 General Appropriations Act out of a total expenditure program of 2.26 Trillion Philippine Pesos. Would it be difficult to allocate even half of that pork barrel budget for emergency preparedness, disaster risk reduction, equipment upgrade?
Past Warnings of Big Disaster
"This site has been warning the public for more than four years since the time of the former President, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Due to the total torpedoing of the private sector (Corinthian Gardens, Forbes Park, Dasmarinas Village, the owners of high rise condominiums at the left side of EDSA southbound, among others), of the program for predicting highly lethal effects of a major tremor in Metro Manila and the replication of this effort in many urban areas in the country by the same sector in collusion with some corrupt officials in the government, a large disaster and environmental hazards summit was proposed to be supported by the Philippine Government and the United Nations, among other institutions from many other sectors - including the non-profit (minus the Napoles et al NGOs).
"When Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino 3rd became President, the organizing group wrote to Ms. Corazon Juliano Soliman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Gen. Voltaire Tuvera Gazmin. Ms. Soliman did not respond. It was noticed however that several days later, Gen. Gazmin, the Secretary of the Department of National Defense gave an interview to national media.
"In that interview, when Gazmin was asked about what the people should do when a disaster strikes, he replied: 'Run for your lives.'
Hazmapping.com says that, the head of the Philvolcs, Dr. Renato Solidum absolutely cannot be faulted and is blameless.
"For decades, had been ready to accept the support for equipment upgrade and modernization. Despite the billions of funds allocated to the departments of the government, the great oversight of perpetually forgetting to take care of the Philvolcs modernization programme has consistently been committed by this government.
"Despite the billions lost for the personal enrichment of selected persons in our public sector and their intimate partners in very enterprising undertakings in the private sector, no one has shown keen interest in allowing the Philvolcs to finally get hold of the adequate funding for acquisition of hardware and software that will highly increase its forecasting accuracy and its earthquake trending studies and research on major faults all over the country. Click here for more.
Hazmapping.com's offer to hold the summit on disaster and environmental hazards in Manila, is a vital step towards resolving the lack of disaster prevention, preparedness of the government. Noone can fault government for showing extreme emergency assistance fatigue. The recent crises in flooding in Zambales, the hostage taking in Zamboanga, are barely over and now Boholindol and Cebulindol will take away major cuts in the money the devious thieves are supposed to divert into their private bank accounts, who will not feel tired of that?
So away they tromp into the snowed plazas and grand palaces far away to play. Magaling!
