When Super Typhoon Rai, locally known as ‘Odette,’ hit the country on 16 December 2021, it claimed 405 lives, left 82 people missing, and thousands injured, and caused 23.4 billion pesos (US$459 million) of damage to infrastructure and agriculture.
The hardest-hit areas were Bohol, Cebu, Dinagat, and Siargao. These places are also among the top tourists destinations in the country.
The typhoon flattened tourist accommodation and hospitality businesses and caused wide-scale damage to infrastructure and the local economy. Residents believe that it will take them many years to rebuild and recover.
Clean water supply is a huge concern because the storage capacity and water networks have been badly affected. Some deaths on Siargao Island were already attributed to acute gastroenteritis and leptospirosis, a bacterial infection coming from contaminated floodwaters.
Hard-hit areas suffered from the limited electricity supply, shortages of water, telecommunication services, fuel, and damage to infrastructure, which delays movement of goods and people, resulting in a temporary lack of essential supplies and services and a temporary spike in prices.
Impact on the economy
Michael Ricafort, a chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, said that every P20 billion damage due to typhoons is equivalent to about 0.1 percent of GDP. But increased repairs, replacements, and rehabilitation of damaged structures, assets, and equipment can spur economic activity.
Relief pledges and aid to the typhoon victims
Two weeks after the typhoon hit, the World Bank released US$80 million, a contingent credit line that the country can immediately tap to support disaster response and recovery and post-disaster recovery and reconstruction.
In partnership with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRM), the World Bank started the Rebuild (R2R) Program in March 2021 to help local governments in their recovery efforts.
The program has trained more than 500 disaster managers in 150 local governments to develop flexible science-based local recovery plans and responsive financing strategies for various disasters. The country can tap help in its relief and recovery efforts (World Bank Support, 2021).
A month into the Odette devastation, Philippine Senator Richard Gordon filed a resolution (Senate Resolution 977) that seeks for immediate recovery of affected areas targeting micro, small, and medium enterprises (SMEs), including tourism businesses, through government loans (Yang, 2022).
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has set aside an initial US$56 million to fund the affected region’s long-term recovery.
On 14 January 2022, Japan donated US$13 million (Php 663 million) to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) for emergency and disaster relief of the typhoon victims (Japan provides, 2022).
Under this initiative, US$4.2 million will fund shelter repair kits to distribute to at least 2,420 households, camp management assistance to thousands of displaced people in 20 evacuation centers, operation of health clinics, capacity building for 7,400 individuals, and procurement of emergency medical equipment for four health facilities (Japan provides, 2022).
The country’s Philippine News Agency reports that the country’s Department of Agriculture has also released a total of Php 3 billion worth of agricultural interventions to typhoon-affected farmers and fisherfolk (‘Odette’ hits farmers, 2022).
These interventions came from zero-interest loans, crop seeds, seedlings, fertilizers, animal stock, farm inputs, fisher boats, boat repairs, and even food and meat supplies to fishers and farmers (‘Odette’ hits farmers, 2022).
PDRF showcases (2022) reports:
The Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF) rallied their partners some large private companies and businesses in the country to send missions, share their manpower and resources to affected communities ranging from vaccination, medical services and supplies, restoration of electricity, livelihood kits and equipment, mobile water treatment plants, water filters, and basic supplies in these affected areas. From the relief efforts, the Foundation will also assist in the recovery efforts focusing on the revival of the livelihoods of the local people and repair of their water systems, schools, health clinics, and evacuation canters.
Lessons from Japan
The Philippines, because of its location, is vulnerable not only to typhoons but also to other natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, landslides, storm surges, tsunamis, etc.
As the country is implementing recovery efforts from super typhoon Rai/Odette, the second super typhoon equivalent to category five that hit the country, perhaps it could learn from Japan’s recovery success.
A feature story from the World Bank highlights how Japan has recovered from the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) and tsunami, a mega-disaster that brought the unprecedented scale of destruction in the country on 11 March 2011 (Learning from Mega, 2021).
The tsunami that followed after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake wiped the entire coastal town and villages of the Tohoku region, the northeast coast of Japan, leaving large-scale damages to infrastructure, industry, housing, and agriculture. The event also claimed 20,000 lives.
Additionally, the earthquake and tsunami have also caused damages to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, adding further complexity to the disaster.
Ten years into the mega-disaster, the region is beginning to return to normalcy, the article says. However, Japan’s legacy of structural disaster risk management investment in warning systems and infrastructure have likely reduced their losses. In many cases, preparedness training helped many Japanese act and evacuate quickly.
In 2014, three years after the GEJE, the World Bank published ‘Learning from Mega disasters: Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake.’ The extensive research gathered experts that ranged from seismic engineers to urban planners who analyzed what happened and compiled lessons from the event.
They’ve pointed to the importance of structural and non-structural measures and identifying effective strategies for both pre-and post-disaster.
Learning from Megadisasters (2021) highlighted four central lessons from the GEJE disaster, response, and initial recovery, which are:
- A holistic, rather than a single-sector approach to DRM improves preparedness for complex disasters;
- Investing in prevention is important, but is not a substitute for preparedness;
- Each disaster is an opportunity to learn and adapt;
- Effective DRM requires bringing together diverse stakeholders, including various levels of government, community and non-profit actors, and the private sector.
Over the years, the Japan-World Bank Program on Mainstreaming DRM in Developing countries has furthered the work of the Learning from Mega disaster report.
The program has synthesized ten years of research to reflect how they could continue to be relevant in the next decade in a world facing many hazards, including climate change and pandemics. It has highlighted three key strategies in disaster response and recovery (Learning from Megadisasters, 2021):
- the importance of planning for disasters before they strike,
- DRM cannot be addressed by either the public or private sector alone but enabled only when it is shared among many stakeholders,
- institutionalize the culture of continuous enhancement of resilience.
The WB’s feature story also provides specific examples of how these key strategies could be achieved, for instance:
- Business continuity plans or BCPs can help both public and private organizations minimize damages and disruptions. Additionally, the creation of pre-arranged agreements among independent public and private organizations can help share essential responsibilities and information both before and after a disaster.
- Investment in resilient infrastructures to avoid cascading impacts on other critical services and delivery, including water infrastructure.
- Integrating redundancy and back-ups in the systems, including the telecommunications infrastructure.
- Strengthening structures like schools by integrating measures against different risks and vulnerabilities, as schools are commonly used as evacuation centers.
- Improving or updating building regulations framework to enhance structural resilience of the built environment, including strengthening structural integrity, improving the efficiency of the design review process.
The Philippines is vulnerable to many natural disasters. Filipinos have also displayed resilience in the face of many disasters. But each catastrophe also chips away at the economic progress that that country has made and disproportionately affects the most vulnerable and poorest in the community, making it harder for them to bounce back.
It will benefit the country to adopt a culture of preparedness, a continued desire to improve infrastructure resilience, robust implementation and compliance of building codes and standards, while refining and adapting systems and frameworks in disaster risk management and recovery to prevent massive losses and enable a faster, more efficient and sustainable long-term recovery.
I have published a video on Emergency Response Planning, which discusses why it is vital for businesses and organizations to continue their operations in natural disasters, threats, and hazards.
Through partnerships and knowledge-sharing with those who have exhibited successful and robust disaster risk management and recovery programs like Japan, the country can learn from their experiences and best practices to optimize its resources’ immediate and long-term use.
We can widely apply these Disaster Risk Management (DRM) observations and lessons from Japan and the Philippines in the risk management and resilience analysis completed as an ongoing component of infrastructure management planning.
Sources:
MSF launches response after Typhoon Rai leaves hundreds of casualties in its wake. (18 January 2022). MSF. Retrieved from https://www.msf.org/msf-launches-intervention-philippines-islands-affected-typhoon-rai
Agcaoili, L. (2021 December 21). Odette damage to delay Philippine recovery. Philstar. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/business/2021/12/21/2149160/odette-damage-delay-philippine-recovery
World Bank Support for the Impacts of Typhoon Rai in the Philippines (“Odette”). (2021 December 28). The World Bank. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/philippines/brief/world-bank-support-for-the-impacts-of-typhoon-rai-in-the-philippines-odette
Yang, A. (2022, January 18). Senator pushes for recovery efforts in Bohol, Cebu, other Odette-affected areas. Philstar. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2022/01/18/2154723/senator-pushes-recovery-efforts-bohol-cebu-other-odette-affected-areas
Japan provides USD 13 million for Typhoon Odette response. (2022, January 14). Reliefweb. Retrieved from https://reliefweb.int/report/philippines/japan-provides-usd-13-million-typhoon-odette-response
‘Odette’-hit farmers, fisherfolk get P3-B worth of interventions. (2022, January 20). Philippine News Agency. Retrieved from https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1166012
Learning from Mega disasters: A Decade of Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake. (2021, March 11). The World Bank. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2021/03/11/learning-from-megadisasters-a-decade-of-lessons-from-the-great-east-japan-earthquake-drmhubtokyo
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