THE image of rescuers using what looked like wood planks to prop up a collapsed concrete building in earthquake-hit Leyte is reflective of how the response to disaster is not comprehensive.
Wood planks to keep concrete from falling is a tentative measure, fearfully not effective in the long run.
Disaster preparedness covers needed action before a disaster happens, during a disaster, and after or when reports on the loss of lives and property begin to reach government offices.
There were good and bad points in government’s and the public’s response to the 6.5-magnitude earthquake that hit Leyte at 4:03 p.m. last Thursday, July 6. The earthquake caused eight aftershocks in the three hours after the main one. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology or Phivolcs said the tremors were felt at Intensity 6 in Jaro and Kananga, Leyte; and Intensity 5 in Tacloban City; Palo, Leyte; Cebu City; Mandaue City; and Ormoc City. Other places in Sorsogon, Leyte, Iloilo, Cebu and Bohol felt the tremors less intensely.
Reports that reached government agencies said, in general, school children and office workers were able to move out of their buildings in an orderly manner showing how disaster drills and exercises succeeded in teaching them the proper way to react to disasters. There was no report of panic in most of the Visayas, except in affected areas of Leyte where the tremors forced people to run to escape injury.
The failure came in preparations before a disaster and the response once affected families and casualties were reported.
The body of the first fatality was pulled out of the collapsed commercial building in Kananga, Leyte. Local officials said the building was old. The second body was found in a landslide, as reported by Ormoc City Mayor Richard Gomez.
Disaster preparedness means taking action - like declaring as uninhabitable those structurally unsafe buildings and putting up measures to stop the soil from moving - before the earthquake strikes. From the results of the July 6 temblor, it appears efforts at mitigating or preventing disaster damage were lacking. Planning for a disaster includes proper zoning and land use design, sorely inadequate in most Philippine cities.
How people should react during a disaster – taking cover, not panicking and exiting in an orderly fashion schools and office buildings – is being addressed by the emergency drills. It helped that government has prioritized these exercises. That’s the good point.
After the disaster, a different kind of action is needed towards recovery of structures that were destroyed or damaged and of lives that were put on hold after the loss of a family member or entire families. Post-disaster situations can be messy, as social welfare officials learned in the Leyte earthquake. Complaints of delayed aid and wrong priorities in rehabilitation action were among those raised by affected families.
Were the government agencies prepared for this earthquake? The answer lies in what were done before, during and after the disaster.