I would like to ask the City if there are emergency procedures in place in case of emergencies. I mean if these procedures are established and well placed and made available to everyone. I am not an expert to this but as what i have experienced on most cities abroad, they seem to have more information in place even though they are not a typhoon or earthquake prone areas. Every information is important in all aspect because as what i have seen in Tacloban. The news from CNN is very clear enough that we have water surge rising up to 60 ft. And the wind is so strong that light materials will be just blown off. Even the President of the Philippines called on to evacuate the people but as you can see the casualty is very high and it seems that the people has been caught off guard. It is evident that the information is there but i dont know how and why those people did not evacuate to higher grounds. The casualty should have been prevented if and only we prepared for this. If the city have the procedure in place. Has it been updated to keep up with the last typhoon and earthquake that we just have? We have to make a risk and assessment with each and every categories of emergencies. If the risk is in place then we have the right decision to make with each emergencies and what we have to make. It is important that this procedure is updated and made available to everyone. In each every case we have the right leader and the right people who will implement the procedure. And the most important thing is we have the right decision each time. Communication is crucial also in such events. How we can let people be aware of the things that we implement like if we evacuate how can we make sure that everyone has received the information to evacuate. I am deeply saddened by the events that happened to our nation but we have to prepare than never. We have to have an objective that the casualty should be always zero each time these emergencies arrive to our city. Life is more important than the things we have and we could always rebuild. I am doing this because of my concern to our people. Again i am not an expert to this. But this system is proven in every institution or even private offfice. Preparation is crucial to every emergencies and it could mean our lives. We must act the same.
I don't know if you are posting from abroad, but it looks like it, if you are living here, in the Philippines, then you must know that in a disaster of the proportions we see in Leyte and Samar, any Organization will be helpless to coordinate help, just look at "Katrina" in the US and this must become obvious even in a 1st. World Country with wast resources. Don't count on any help here, just prepare yourself and your loved ones as good as possible or evacuate to a saver place...
@simpleminds. Yes. Philippines is helpless in confronting the storm such as big as Haiyan but the casualty among the dead should have been minimized. We know it is helpless and we cannot always depend on the government. But if system where in place. Then those people should have known what to act and where to go. We must have information or system in place that would provide us in case of emergency. We know most people dont have this. They dont even have fire extinguishers in their home. I run into one of the museums in Wisconsin. When we were inside the alarm of the building rang for emergency procedure that there was a tornado. We were accounted for and sent to the assembly room. The manager told us that it was only a drill. These things are small but knowing something during emergency could mean our lives and the lives of everyone. We have to move to a higher level and review more so that we can anticipate for the things to come. Those typhoons will always come and we have to be ready. A system in place in is better than nothing. Its like doing now for the safety of everyone or doing nothing at all.
Please give us an example of what should have been done here. 80% of the buildings were wiped out, the rest were damaged and/or flooded. How do you move these million or so people? Facilities for a million people? Where do you shuttle them to? Who pays to shuttle them? Where does the supplies to care for them come from? Do they all just get on a jeepney? And go where? I don't think the solution is as simple as you imply. Our search and rescue unit was once dispatched to help evacuate about 100 homesteaders in the mountains of Wyoming when a fire was threatening their homes and lives. Not as easy task at all, nobody wants to leave their homes and belongings. Move a MILLION people? Larry View attachment 9727
As what i asked before does dumaguete have a procedure in place for the Emergency cases. I am saying that before those typhoons will come, do we have information on what to do. I am not talking about carrying a million of those people to one place. No. Search and rescue is another thing that is done by professionals alone.
Kewl, you can have volumes and volumes with emergency procedures readily available but it's the populus that will determine whether they will pay attention to it or not at all. If they don't (and a lot of the inhabitants of Catloban didn't pay attention to the urgent message to seek shelter on higher ground) you have but one alternative: Brute force to drive them out of their homes - and I'm pretty sure you will not want to risk a full-blown revolt on top of the upcoming disaster. You have a population of 220,000+ in Catloban itself and infrastructure that is incapable of allowing all these people to move to safer ground given the short time you have before all hell breaks loose: Who is going to be the great selector? It's a tragedy of enormous proportions that no-one could have prepared for, no matter what good intentions local officials may have or had. Vicmico
One can see now that all the wood structures have been totally destroyed, obviously there have been people living in them before the storm, compare this with Dumaguete and you will see that here are much sturdier houses being build over the last 10 years, additionally Dumaguete is not located at he Pacific coast but a fair bit away from it and therefor less likely to suffer so badly from the winds. I don't think that the kind of storm that "Yolanda" was could happen here and we would have a longer warning time as we could see it coming over the other islands...
After this event, if any typhoon close to Yolanda's strength or size, comes heading toward your island, and you don't transfer to a sheltered location inland.... Then you will be a strong nominee for the Darwin Award.
