Responding to Typhoon Glenda

Well that didn’t take long! Not one day passed after the approval of our Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan (MDRRMP) on Monday afternoon before it was put to the test in the most severe disaster to strike our area since Typhoon Dinang in 1993 (Rosario has largely evaded direct hits from typhoons).

It may seem as though we rushed to approve the plan in preparation of this disaster, but that is far from the truth. The fact of the matter is that Monday's meeting had been planned for a week, and even during this meeting, Typhoon Glenda only commanded passing remarks. The storm was forecasted to pass through our region, but at a sufficient distance to only entail heavy rains.

By 2AM Tuesday morning, these severe rains portended the looming barrage.

With winds beginning to squall around 6AM, my counterpart Bobi, the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Officer (MDRRMO), summoned all members of the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction & Management Council (MDRRMC) for an emergency meeting at 8AM. Even at this time, it was unclear whether we would actually see any significant effect from the storm. But in the name of contingency, we prepared for a full-scale response effort.

During our emergency MDRRMC meeting Tuesday morning, Bobi and I began by explaining the sections of our newly approved MDRRMP governing a disaster response intervention. The Responsible Official (the Municipal Mayor) then appointed Bobi as the Incident Commander, who is to lead all field operations. We then discussed the logistics of specific tasks therein assigned by our plan to key members of the MDRRMC.

What followed was a bit more haphazard than we would like to see in the future. The problem was that with only 16 hours having passed since approval of our MDRRMP, members of the MDRRMC had little time to implement any of these measures, let alone familiarize themselves with the plan in its 60-page entirety.

With that said, this disaster response effort was the first such full-scale, multifaceted effort in our municipality's history. Past disasters saw affected families sheltered in evacuation centers and the distribution of relief foods in the coming days, but never any formal evacuation or search and rescue operations or Emergency Evacuation Centers complete with evacuee registration and meal preperations.

As you will read below, there is much to improve upon. The preparations of the municipality prior to this disaster were inadequate. But assuming that the political will is there to implement our MDRRMP, that should change.

In my opinion, the part of the MDRRMP that assisted in rendering this response effort a success was establishing a formal chain-of-command and assigning particular agencies and employees to lead specific tasks. This brings about accountability and reduces confusion when quick decisions are required.

Typhoon Glenda invaded our area with her Signal 3 winds just after noon. This is how the situation subsequently unfolded:

The Chief of Police serves as the chair of the Operations Section of DRRM efforts. This section involves tactical operations such as Security, Search and Rescue, Fire Control, and Emergency Medical Services. In conjunction with other team members, the Chief decided to be proactive and begin to evacuate those people living in low-lying and at risk housing shortly after noon.

As evacuations were conducted, our primary Evacuation Center was established at the newly constructed Municipal Hall. The Municipal Social Work and Development Officer (MSWDO) is the chair of the Logistics Section, which manages resources and services intended to support the incident response and recovery effort. This section includes the management of all evacuation centers.

As the stream of evacuees began to trickle in, MSWDO staff conducted them into specific rooms based upon their barangay (community) and undertook the registration process.

By 2PM, the trickle of evacuees had become a torrent.

The Chief of Police managed police and army officers, municipal drivers, and volunteers in the evacuation effort, making use of all possible public vehicles in the municipality: two municipal dump trucks, an ambulance, a police truck, an army truck, and the mayor’s personal car.

The Signal 3 winds continued to rage, reaching maximum strength by 3PM.

Trees were felled and weaker roofs were torn apart. The most prevalent damage was to agriculture and to fish and mud crab ponds. Nearly every banana tree in the municipality was leveled, and nearly every pond overflowed, allowing their occupants to escape.

Around 5:30PM, a friend of mine told me that my home here, the Mayor’s house, was in bad shape. Taking a momentary break from my post, I returned home to find a scene of destruction at the gate. The electric pole had collapsed, bringing all wires crashing down with it. Large trees had fallen across the roads. The neighbor’s roof (the corrugated sheet of metal visible on the right) had been razed and the walls sustained significant damage. I found Regi, the Mayor’s wife, alone inside our house frantically sopping up water that was raining down from the ceiling.

Our team led efforts to clear the roads of fallen trees to ensure continued access to residents who could potentially require emergency assistance.

In addition to our efforts at the municipality, Father Roni, with assistance from my good friends the Baraks prepared food and cared for the 110 evacuees who fled to the church.

The local waterways swelled, putting many homes at risk of flooding. Luckily, the threat never materialized. Only minimal instances of flooded homes occurred, as the waters generally receded prior to reaching floor elevations.

Under the guidance of the MSWDO, volunteers assisted in preparing foods for the disaster victims at our Emergency Evacuation Center. Although the feeding effort came together in the end, it was fraught with difficulty due to a failure in preparations.

Within our MDRRMP, the municipality is directed to procure a stockpile of essential supplies in preparation for future disasters. These supplies shall be stored and maintained by the MDRRMO, ensuring that they are at all times ready for distribution. These supplies include nonperishable foodstuffs, water treatment measures, cook stoves and cookware, mattresses, blankets, and equipment to aid in search and rescue.

But given that the plan was only approved 16 hours before our emergency meeting,members of the MDRRMC had no time to purchase these items in advance of the typhoon.

So all afternoon, staff frantically combed the streets to gather enough food and cookware to feed all 702 evacuees in the Municipal Hall. Stores were generally either out of food or refused to provide it on credit (as the municipality had no petty cash on-hand for the effort). Obtaining enough kitchenware for that many people was equally challenging when relying upon door-to-door donations from family homes. But thankfully, by 6PM our staff had found the means to sufficiently provide for all evacuees.

Staff was also unprepared for the sheer number of evacuees present. Rooms were cramped, and due to the issue just illuminated, we had no mattresses on-hand. The best we could do was to provide plastic chairs for everyone.

Food served included rice, Filipino sausage (always dyed with red food coloring), eggs with sardines, and a rice and chicken porridge donated by the Church.

At night, municipal staff set up a projector to entertain the children with a movie.

Within our Command Center, I worked with Irene (in the red polo and black pullover), the MSWDO, in collecting and compiling information reflecting the impact of the storm throughout our municipality. There are 11 barangays (villages/communities) within Rosario, only three of which are within the ‘Poblacion’ (downtown) area.

Only the poblacion barangays benefit from our response efforts at the municipality during the actual disaster. This is because all of the facilities and personnel are centrally located there. The other eight barangays are too far to be reached during the storm. Two of them are located on an island only accessible by boat.

Therefore, these eight barangays are largely responsible for their own disaster response efforts. The MSWDO was tasked with compiling updates from each barangay on the number of people displaced and details on damages. Obtaining accurate information is vital in order to begin providing assistance to the hardest hit areas as soon as possible.

We set up a whiteboard in order to maintain an accessible, ongoing record of this data as we received it. This is how the board looked at the end of the night, indicative of a lack of satisfactory communications with local barangay officials.

Some barangays were readily responsive, but many failed to provide sufficient updates on the numbers and status of their evacuees, and whether the severity of damages which could cause immediate peril. This lack of communications caused much anxiety, fearing that the situation may be disastrous in those areas.

We heard nothing from two barangays until the following day, and it was only after 11PM through painstaking efforts on our part, that we obtained a report from Buenavista; the most hazardous barangay. A coastal barangay on Gilbert Island, we feared that a storm surge may have wiped out half of their residences after hearing reports of a 2.5 meter storm surge in communities to the East. Luckily, this storm surge did not affect our municipality.

The communications between the municipality and the barangays will greatly improve once the VHFs (two-way radios) are procured in accordance with our plan and barangay officials are given a copy of the plan explaining their responsibilities.

The final tally of evacuees came in at over 2,000 people across the 11 barangays. Our Evacuation Center hosted 702 of them. Yet by the following morning, most people had already returned to their homes.

The Aftermath

Cleanup and rehabilitation began in earnest at daybreak. This picture shows the extent of damage to our neighbor’s house (my host family’s house is to the right).

Municipal employees used the two dump trucks to collect debris from the road.

On Thursday, Bobi, serving as the Incident Commander, assigned teams of municipal employees to the different barangays to verify the damage assessments we had been receiving from the barangays. I joined the Riba, Municipal Agricultural Officer (MAO), and Edwin, a volunteer with the church, in assessing the barangays of Aguada and Jamoog.

It became clear that the damage assessments were significantly 'bloated', as Bobi describes. Houses that were in-tact besides the slight lifting of roofing materials were documented as partially damaged. This is an issue that we have since modified our plan to address.

We found about six houses fully damaged, generally due to the high winds, including this one in Jamoog.

But most houses faired much better, with little or no damage. Most damage involved the loss of roofing materials.

This house in Aguada illustrates this type of damage, with roofing materials having been whisked away with the wind and slight structural damage.

Heavy winds, a weak foundation, and saturated soil caused this building to buckle and collapse.

Wind toppled this Aguada homestead.

It wasn’t just traditional nipa construction that failed during the storm, as evidenced by the damage to this brand new metal roof of the chapel in Aguada.

Our plan now tested, I requested that we hold a meeting with the MDRRMC and barangay captains to discuss how our intervention faired, such that we could identify what can be improved in the future. This meeting was held later on Thursday, during which time Bobi discussed how damage to houses and livelihoods should be assessed. Moreover, rehabilitation efforts were discussed for those families affected.

Bobi also addressed a seperate issue, common in all developing countries it would seem. Attendance. It is a requirement for all MDRRMC members to attend every meeting, yet we never had 100% attendance. One crucial member even missed all three meetings this week. He talked about issuing some sort of reprimand against such offenders. These are meetings which affect the lives of constituents these people were either elected or appointed to serve. As far as both of us are concerned, that is unacceptable.

Armed with the experience of an actual, full-scale disaster response operation, we are now better able to assess the adequacy of our MDRRMP. For the most part, our plan is sufficient. The struggles experienced during this intervention were largely owing to the fact that there was inadequate time to implement our plan prior to Typhoon Glenda.

Yet thanks to this tragedy, there were several holes that I felt were not properly addressed, and I have already prepared a revision to the plan to be issued next week, only a week after the original approval. The biggest changes involve addressing the responsibilities of the barangay officials and the need for each barangay to draft their own DRRMP. Among other small details, I also added guidelines on proper damage assessment and the necessity to obtain petty cash well in advance of any disaster to facilitate the expedient purchase of any additional supplies.