Massive managerial failure (2)

The handling of the Ondoy disaster was a massive managerial failure, I said last week in my column.

Typhoon Pepeng reinforced this assertion.

Ondoy killed more than 300 people and Pepeng over 600 people. The two typhoons together caused damage to property, infrastructure and agriculture amounting to over P40 billion. The casualties could have been far fewer and the damage much less had their been adequate disaster preparation, had relief or rescue come early to the victims, and had certain government officials been a little less callous, for instance, in releasing so much water in so short a period from overflowing San Roque dam.

The operators of San Roque dam, which captures water from Binga and Ambuklao dams and spills them into the great Agno River of northern Luzon, are being blamed for the unprecedented flooding of much of Pangasinan.

The San Roque dam operators did not release, early enough, rain water before the reservoir’s water reached the critical level of 290 meters above sea level. They waited until it was too late to release the water and they released at the ungodly hour of midnight of October 6. Probably, the San Roque dam people wanted to be sadistic. Since they were trying to be sadistic anyway, they did so with flair and total disregard of the plight of the people of Pangasinan and its economy. They released the excess water at midnight, instead of daytime, and thus caused more damage than necessary.

At midnight of October 6, Tuesday, the dam level was already at over 285 meters above sea level, less than 5 meters the critical 290-meter threshold. San Roque released water at 12:03 a.m. October 7—three minutes past midnight of October 6. The volume was 181.5 cubic meters per second (cms). It rose to 3,600cms at 11 p.m. the following day, October 8, and then to an unheard of 5,072cms at 3 a.m. of October 9. In just three hours, the height of the floodwater rose from one meter on October 7 to 17 meters on October 8, and then on October 9 (Friday) to an unheard of 27 meters—the height of a seven-story building. No wonder SM’s brand new mall in Rosales was inundated.

Gov. Amado Espino of Panga-sinan told Sen. Loren Legarda’s Climate Change Committee that San Roque released water so suddenly that the flood waters rose from one meter to 27 meters in just 24 hours.

The sudden release of dam water plus rainfall and landslides further north caused untold horror and devastation on a 1,000-sq-km area in at least five provinces in the north.

Pangasinan is the country’s richest voting province and the devastation will reflect on voters’ minds when they decide the president in 2010.

Meanwhile, President Arroyo has taken Albay Gov. Joey Sal-ceda’s advice to form a special commission of bureaucrats and private personalities, like PLDT Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan and Cebu Archbishop Cardinal Ricardo Vidal, to investigate what really happened in the wake of Ondoy and Pepeng, recommend reconstruction projects, and coordinate international assistance estimated to reach $1 billion.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer correctly points out that Cardinal Vidal’s participation “represents a dangerous blurring of the separation of Church and State,” while that of Pangilinan “brings up the question of potential conflicts of interest, since among the damaged infrastructure are tollways operated by [his] Metro Pacific conglomerate.”

Both Cardinal Vidal and Pangilinan “would have been more useful in an investigative commission with a recom-mendatory mandate.”

biznewsasia@gmail.com –Tony Lopez, Manila Times