DOCUMENTS released by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) Monday included a second assessment that led them to recommend the immediate evacuation of residents a day or two before the landslides.
These were residents now probably among the 46 dead in the landslide that struck last week Sitio Sindulan, Barangay Tina-an, City of Naga, Cebu. Such recommendation could have saved lives, but City of Naga Mayor Kristine Vanessa Chiong has a different take on it.
If the recommendation was for immediate evacuation, then mining regulators should not have waited another day to relay this information to city officials. Had “immediate” meant doing what they can to relay the recommendation right away, many of those now deceased would have been spared.
But what is the law regarding forced evacuations? Experience from past disasters showed how people did not comply right away with such orders until the danger is imminent for fear of losing their belongings to thieves should they leave their homes or losing their livelihood if no one is left to tend to their livestock.
Emergency management goes beyond giving people the order to get away and seek safer ground. It is about planning and advising affected communities to leave homes. If the advice to evacuate is voluntary, many would refuse to do so. At what point do we weigh the obligations of government to preserve life and public safety with an individual’s freedom to choose to stay?
It is different when a super typhoon is coming and residents see the need to preserve themselves. In the case of the Naga landslides, the coming of Typhoon Ompong was not a factor strong enough for people to move out of their homes. The calamity they saw was about quarry operations that they said caused the cracks on the ground. This was why a woman in the evacuation center corrected President Rodrigo Duterte when he spoke to them Friday. The brave woman said this was not about typhoons but quarry operations that weaken the soil.
What the Naga landslides should teach government is on the effectiveness of orders for mandatory evacuation. There is no law that adequately covers such preventive action by government. A law is needed to cover the forcible removal of people from their homes, establishment of evacuation centers, and the fears of residents about losing property should they move out of an identified danger area.
What is pending in Congress is a bill creating the Department of Disaster Resilience to address procedures for evacuation. There is Republic Act 10121 or the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010 that allows for the forced evacuation of residents on decision of the provincial, city and municipal disaster risk reduction and management offices down to the barangay level. But the law needs to be reviewed to strengthen the provision on making evacuation mandatory.
The law has to be strengthened or we end up blaming the dead.