Reconstruction and Recovery

The World Bank  says that timely reconstruction will help lessen the impact of super typhoon Yolanda. Before we digest these words, it is also significant to look back into the past.

There was a time in fairly recent past when NBC news anchor Brian Williams sounded like a broken record repeating the words over and over again that: Aviation in the United States of America is dying.

This is now true with Philippine air line companies and selected several other businesses in the Philippines right at this very moment. 

During the post-Yolanda period, only at least one air line company that very enterprisingly lowered its passenger rates (presumably including for cargo) per seat-mile, notwithstanding that the Philippine government ordered that a number of fees and charges being levied in the aviation sector will be waived, among other behests in order to lessen the burden for victims of the calamity and those that had to fly to ground zero to participate in disaster relief and recovery operations. It is not difficult to hear a wisecrack such as: this suddenly successful air line company must have entered into a conspiracy with Yolanda just to boost its sales.

Dire is a weak description for the situation that a select number of businesses in the Philippines are in right now. It is singularly most significant that the government's economic cluster shall seriously take into the consideration what this means for jobs, purchases and many other economic activities in the country.

It must be borne in mind that aviation is not the only hardest hit sector or industry. A courageous and conscientious response would be to call a summit post-haste to assess the current situation in the private sector without necessarily setting aside the need for honesty and integrity in reporting authentic figures of loss on the part of affected businesses.

A post-disaster bond can be floated by the Philippine government for reconstruction and rehabilitation and a serious marketing effort must be made to sell these bonds to all sympathetic friendly states and their respective private sector investment groups - even individuals.

Before any pronouncements about lessening the impact of super typhoon Yolanda - an extraordinary catastrophe even by United Nations standards - it must be conveniently remembered that very few sectors in the Philippines will have survived the wrath of Yolanda unscathed.

Considering that no one is to blame singly for the woes that the Philippines is seeing now, it should also be understood that the tragic accident called Yolanda was a disaster waiting to happen. Even if all the warnings were there, severe flaws in the forecasting, disaster response system helped bring about the aforesaid huge losses among the members of the business community.

It was asked why and how this had happened. The question reveals a crucial highlight of a scenario where flimsy, artificial or non-fully functional co-operation between countries is dominant. As such, during real-time situations the need to share knowledge and information about potential life-and-death situations is absolutely necessary.

Sadly, this kind of sharing is done reluctantly or with a number of qualifiers such that during the important intervals between detecting, tracking and even clearly imaging the super typhoon up to the time of post-disaster response some countries like the Philippines may be getting inputs but at the end merely dishing out advisories, severe weather bulletins, climate reports with little or no confidence at all. 

Hence the scenario on November 8, 2013 in the Philippines where government clearly did receive or could have opted to imbibe and internalize too large a number of forecasts on deadly storm surge reaching up to 21 feet, 30 feet or higher and the seriousness of the situation but never really did get to embracing the task.

The basic failure of forcefully announcing forecasts and guiding the people properly in affected areas to move towards safer ground, led to the death or injury of too many innocent victims - including a large number of children, most especially in Tacloban City. The body count in ground zero of super typhoon Yolanda is not the only important issue therefore that needs to be addressed as soon as humanly possible. Something has to be done with those other sectors that were also affected, and addressing this problem is integral to sustaining the coherence of our institutions.

If severe financial and economic shortfalls are further suffered by the Philippine business community, more victims of the multiple social and economic ills spawned by Yolanda will be suffering in the coming days.

Fast solutions and fast delivery of these solutions must be put into the ground as soon as humanly possible.