GMA’s Handling of Typhoon Ondoy is the Real Disaster

New York, NY—In response to the devastation of Typhoon Ondoy, members of the national Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines (AJLPP) and the Filipino youth-based Daluyong Coordinating Committee are organizing Sagip-Tulong Sa Pilipinas (STP) Emergency Relief Fund Campaign.

This campaign will raise material and monetary support for the typhoon victims and aims to raise $5,000 by Monday, October 5, and another $5,000 by Friday, October 16.

As overseas Filipinos rush to assure the safety of their loved ones back home and come to the aid of the hardest-hit victims, a disturbing narrative of government incompetence and neglect, in the wake of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s lavish foreign trips, reveals the true character of the present regime the same way George W. Bush was exposed for his handling of Hurricane Katrina.

With maximum winds of 85 kilometers per hour, the storm was not as powerful as many of the typhoons that have hit the country.  But by Sunday evening, the National Disaster Coordinating Council reported that at least 330,000 residents had been displaced, 73 people had died and 23 more went missing.  In the days following the storm, the death toll has risen, including a four-year-old girl who was killed when a wall, weakened by floodwaters, collapsed on their shanty along NAIA Road in Barangay Piñahan in Quezon City.

The response of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s government, both prior to the flood and after the disaster, is one aspect of the tragedy of the typhoon.  The chief of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) blamed the public for not heeding storm warnings.  And yet no evacuation order was made prior to the flood.  Local government units were paralyzed at the onset of the flood and were not able to issue official advisories on what the vulnerable population should do.  As floodwaters receded, hundreds were still stranded.  Residents saw overwhelmed rescue choppers leaving many people behind.  In Barangay Payatas, Quezon City, the parish priest, Fr. Orlando Noriella, claims that while a state of calamity had been declared to facilitate the release of funds, no food and medicines had reached the affected residents. The government admitted that they do not have enough rescue vehicles or facilities.

Consistent with the utter lack of preparedness, the stage had been set for disaster even before the typhoon hit. The massive land conversion of the Marikina watershed and the mountains of Rizal put people in imminent danger, especially those living near riverbanks and mountain slopes.  Despite warnings by community groups of the danger of high-risk projects, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources did nothing to put in place protections for residents in these areas.  According to local community groups, powerful foreign corporations, granted permission by GMA, are engaged in housing projects and quarry operations and have been leveling the mountains of Rizal for years.  GMA’s administration continues to allow big time loggers, commercial miners and other developers to cause massive ecological devastation in the country, making the Philippines even more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.  And with climate change, as typhoons and hurricanes worsen and sea levels rise, communities are being forced to relocate to vulnerable and poverty-stricken areas.

The GMA regime, the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment program, and foreign countries such as the United States and Japan have this devastation on their hands.  Their criminal negligence and destruction of the environment such as continued quarrying, illegal logging and land conversions from farmlands to subdivisions contributed to the environmental disaster of Typhoon Ondoy. For over a century, the mineral resources of the Philippines have been extracted largely for export, for the benefit of foreign countries and mining corporations.  As a result, communities are displaced and forcefully evicted, and environmental devastation such as the Payatas landslide and Typhoon Ondoy’s floods flow uncontrolled down the plundered land, causing the death and destruction we are witnessing today.

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Full-page coverage of the New York / New Jersey STP Campaign work and partnership with recipient organization, Kalinga Obrero, Filipino Express, October 23-29, 2009, Vol. 23, No. 43, Page 42.  For more pictures, please visit the Ugnayan ng mga Anak ng Bayan Flickr.