Callao Cave in Cagayan Province.

Calamity follies

The impact of the tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia, Bangladesh et al, Hurricane Katrina in the US, Typhoons Ondoy, Pepeng, Frank and Lupit in the Philippines reveals a pattern of serious defects in the political, economic, cultural, psycho-social institutions that direly need to be addressed in the present time without delay.

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It is great absurdity if we think we can ever persuade some congressmen to feel the pulse of the times and put off their plans to fly to Las Vegas to watch the Pacquiao – Cotto title bout.

But, certainly, it is the height of insensitivity, if and when these congressmen still fly and stay in Vegas over the weekend to watch the fight.

The issue here is not whether there is work behind for the honorable congressmen to attend to.

Nor is it a question of whether they are spending their own money or not.

Not even that we are restricting their freedom of movement.

Only fools think that congressmen are penniless.

Who are we to question where they are going?

What power do we have to probe the legality of their movement? After all they are the lawmakers, aren’t they?

In truth, what the vast majority of people simply want from the congressmen is understanding, consideration, and sympathy.

The events of the most recent past that brought havoc to millions of people in Luzon when rains and flood killed people, demolished properties and destroyed personal belongings are still fresh in the minds of the public that showing off wealth by congressmen, as if Vegas is just around the corner, is an affront to the feelings and sensitivities of people.

Victims of the calamity are still trying to mend their lives that flaunting affluence by congressmen, is like rubbing salt to a wound that hasn’t healed yet.

That is all there is to it really.

Did we ever grumble about what pleases or catches the congressmen’s fancy even when times where so-so in the past? Never.

But, this time we ask some of the congressmen to be more compassionate to our compatriots in Luzon.

Feel the pulse of the people.

During a small group (round table) meeting in Quezon City at the residence of poet and writer Rolly Carbonell, Author, poet,on forthcoming hazards from climate change and the solar super storm in 2012-2013, everyone shared their their ideas on various psycho-social issues that need to be considered about this event in the near future.

Initially, the group discussed the impact of the tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia, Bangladesh et al, Hurricane Katrina in the US, Typhoon Ondoy in the Philippines.

The Convenor of the conference, Sen. Edgar U. Ilarde, said that there will even be bigger catastrophes come 2012 and 2013, when the phenomenon of the solar climax or solar maximum takes place.  This will be in the form of a magnetic storm or a solar super storm that has devastating effects on both humans and more potently upon satellites, electronics, communications and many other devices powered by electricity.

On the other hand, Author, poet, philosopher George Sison, said:

The way we approach disaster, those in the past and especially those that are forthcoming, it almost looks like we brought these things upon ourselves.

George was saying that as if by mute agreement, we all collectively invoke disaster and will calamities to wreak damage upon ourselves and loved ones. Our conventional conscious acts and thinking either make or help make storms and earthquakes to happen. This is a dangerous thing to do. Psychically inviting peril and death.

George was also saying that we, as a people that are called Filipinos, are the only ethnic group that apparently suffer from negative karmic vibrations that in selected places of the world, once identified as Filipinos, we are discriminated against.  In George’s experience, he says he was extremely humiliated in an airport when someone asked who were from the Philippines and segregated all those that raised their hands from  the rest and told to occupy a corner so as to be processed longer than the rest of the travelers.

Such negative karma in a collective, George says, if powerful enough can also be contributory to events that happen in the environment. Together with the negative psychic energy of many others in the rest of the planet, we could even trigger bigger, much more tremendously powerful calamities all around the world.

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Weather System Classification by PAGASA

Typhoon Lupit aka Ramil spared Philippines which is already reeling under the fury lashed out by a spate of typhoons and weather systems over the past few weeks. While the people are still trying to recover from the horror of the last few cyclones, a new development has raised alarm again.

Tropical Depression 23 or Santi (to be named if the weather system enters Philippines) is scheduled to hit Philippines by Thursday or Friday later this week. This would be the fourth cyclone to hit Philippines in October this year.

Prisco Nilo, head of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said the areas of Visayas, southern Luzon, Bicol Region, Central Luzon, and Metro Manila shoule be ready to face the disturbance from the current weather system.

Nilo informed that the depression was spotted at the Marianas Islands, located at 2,800 kilometers east of Visayas packing maximum sustained winds of 55 kilometers per hour. It is forecast to move west northwest at 19 kph. He added that while the depression is still not a full blown cyclone under the PAGASA guidelines, the system has already started behaving like one.

Update 1:

October 27, 2009

Mirinae’s eye was located 547 kilometers east of the city of Casiguran on eastern Luzon at 4 a.m. local time today, the Philippines weather office said.

The storm has maximum sustained winds of 150 kph, with gusts to 185 kph, and was moving west-southwest at 22 kph, the office said.

Mirinae, referred to as Santi in the Philippines, is forecast to make landfall east of Manila after 2 a.m. tomorrow and sweep across the capital before heading over the South China Sea, according to the agency’s forecast.

Source: bloomberg.com

NowPublic

Third Typhoon in a Month Threatens To Cause More Flooding
and Landslides in the Philippines

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - As residents in the flood-weary Philippines continue to recover from two recent typhoons, another storm heads for the northern Luzon region. Typhoon Lupit is expected to make landfall as a category 1 or 2 storm on Thursday with wind speeds in excess of 110 mph.

“Thousands of people are still living in evacuation centers, mostly schools, or living on the second floor of their homes as the first floor is still under water,” says Cristina Hammond, American Red Cross disaster specialist in the Philippines.

The Philippines Red Cross staff and volunteers who have been preparing for and responding to typhoons for four weeks are pre-positioning more relief supplies and putting specially trained search and rescue teams with rubber boats on standby prior to the typhoon’s landfall.

The Red Cross operations center in Manila is working hand-in-hand with weather forecasters and running around the clock to plan before the storm.

“Operations center staff are discussing how best to prepare and how to send reinforcements to help local staff and volunteers who are exhausted and that might also be affected by the storm,” adds Hammond.

Read the rest of this entry »

The last quarter of the year seemed to bring the most calamities and catastrophes in the Philippines and the world. A string of very strong earthquakes had been rocking Asia and the Pacific from Indonesia, to Samoa to Vanuatu even Jolo, Philippines. Very strong typhoons have been visiting the Philippines and nearby countries almost simultaneously. The disasters brought about by these natural disturbances are alarming.

Thousands of people died in Padang and the damage to properties are widespread. Same with Samoa and American Samoa wherein hundres of people die in the Earthquake plus Tsunami it generated. In the Philippines, the death in Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) is over 500 and as I read the news online, reports confirmed that there are 264 deaths in Typhoon Pepeng’s  (Parma) wrath and counting especially since rescuers have to dig through the massive landslide and floodings in Benguet and Pangasinan provinces and many other areas of Northern Luzon.

Many residents fear that the big dams in the area are damaged due to the big volume of rains. However, the government assured that the Dams specifically San Roque, remained strong and firm.

I saw a news article in ABS-CBN news website of SM Rosales Pangasinan being submerged in water up to the 2nd level. The news reported that over 1,000 people are either staying in the higher floors of the mall or on the roof when the flood waters rose very fast. This scenario is very much alike what happened in the Metro during the onslaught of Ondoy’s presence in the country.

Now it is imminent, the effects of Climate change is already affecting people’s daily lives. The compelling question is how the Government can at least assure the people that they are given assistance to rebuild their homes and livelihood. Of course as a citizen of the world, everyone has to have its fair share of responsibility. But the Government should impose stricter policies to help prevent continued denudation of the forests, initiate better garbage collection and disposal thru the local governments as well as have mass cleaning and re-forestration projects. The government should be busy on helping the nation instead of being more of a liability as what many Filipinos perceived them to be.

We don’t know what comes next after Pepeng. The least we can do is pray. As a nation, we have to move forward. We don’t know what’s gonna happen next and we should all be prepared. This actually applies not only to us Filipinos but anywhere in the world what with disasters frequently happening in many nations of the world today.

Today, East Airfield is just a field.  Every year, a crop of sugar cane is grown there.  When the time is right (like it is at some point every year), the sugar cane is harvested and turned into whatever sweet things it becomes.  And it’s then, when the sugar cane is removed, that the field presents the evidence of its prior occupation.  The outline of a runway.

This airfield, which only peeks out at harvest-time, sits at Mabalacat, with which some of you avid Today’s History Lesson readers are familiar, even if you don’t know it.  Mabalacat is a city in the northern region of the Pampanga Province, on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.  Right here.  If you move just a little to the south, you’ll discover Manila Bay.  Once you’ve hit water, if you move slightly west, you strike land again.  That’s the Bataan province, and now it’s starting to make sense to you.  Moving south down the Bataan Province, you’ll run into water again, and you’ll see a little island right there in the middle of Manila Bay’s mouth.  That’s Corregidor.  See, you kind of knew where it was.

Named for the large number of balacat trees (Ma-balacat in the native tongue means “full of balacats”), the area was, in 1944, also full of Japanese soldiers.  Having taken over the Philippines in the aftermath of their major offensive in late 1941, the Japanese military had been in control of the Philippines since very early 1942.  But things were about to change.  Luzon was about to be invaded again.

By American forces.  The U.S. Army was preparing to land on Luzon, and the Navy was gathering around Leyte Gulf to support the Army.

Which brings us back to East Airfield in Mabalacat.  The Japanese Navy’s 1st Air Fleet (based down in Manila) had been tasked with supporting the attacks on the U.S. Navy in Leyte Gulf.  The problem was that the 1st Air Fleet had just 40 aircraft left.  So on October 19, 1944, Vice Admiral Takajiro Onishi met with his officers at East Airfield and came up with the idea of suicide squadrons.  He believed that a single plane carrying a bomb could do tremendous damage to any ship, even a battleship, if the pilot would hit the ship with both bomb and plane.  In this manner, a few planes could become a formidable force.

And as General MacArthur stepped onto Philippine soil on October 20, 1944, the Kamikaze squadrons were born.  There had been individual suicide attacks before, but this was the first time the “kamikaze” concept was organized into purpose-built units.  Comprised of 23 pilots (all volunteers), the Shimpu Special Attack Corps (as it was called) was divided into four units and was led by the talented Lieutenant Yukio Seki.

It would take a few days to get things organized and prepared, but then these one-way attackers would take to the skies, and their first missions would end in dramatic fashion.  Stay tuned…we’ll discuss it shortly.