Philippines maps disaster hazards

Zones prone to landslides and floods marked
Alastair McIndoe, Straits Times 10 Mar 10;

MANILA: Four years ago, a massive landslide buried the village of Guinsaugon in the eastern Philippines, leaving more than 1,800 people dead.

Pounding rain had loosened the soil and boulders on a nearby mountainside and a section collapsed, entombing parts of Guinsaugon in mud 10m deep.

The tragedy galvanised the government into mapping the entire archipelago for natural hazards such as landslides and areas prone to flooding. The project began in the early 1990s, but progressed at a slow crawl because of lack of funding.

'The mapping is now almost completed,' said Mr Antonio Apostol, who heads the geological survey division of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB).

'After Guinsaugon, the President (Gloria Arroyo) gave the order to finish the project by the time she leaves office in June and we got the funding to do this.'

The only parts of the Philippines that have yet to be mapped are several municipalities in conflict areas affected by Muslim and communist insurgencies.

The maps - to a scale of 1:50,000 - cover more than 1,600 municipalities; high-risk areas are shaded in red and moderate-risk ones in yellow.

Funding for the project rose to 60 million pesos (S$1.8 million) a year after the Guinsaugon landslide, from an annual budget of just 5 million pesos.

A similar project to identify communities living in quake-prone areas has also been completed by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

The maps will be made freely available on the MGB's website as a tool for urban planners, builders and home buyers.

'We've even had problems with developers complaining the mapping will depress land prices,' said Mr Apostol.

According to a World Bank report, 866 people on average were killed every year in the Philippines between 1970 and 2000 by landslides, flooding, cyclones and other hazards. It called the country 'one of the most disaster prone' in the world.

The archipelago covers an area of intense volcanic activity and geological faults called the Ring of Fire, and is in the path of typhoons from the Pacific Ocean.

'Mapping the hazards was the mechanical part; the challenge now is to raise public awareness to the dangers,' said MGB assistant director Edwin Domingo.

As an accountability measure, local officials have to initial maps of their municipalities so that they cannot claim ignorance if a disaster strikes.

Past bids to relocate communities from danger zones had been strongly resisted by residents, for livelihood reasons, and by local politicians.

'Safe spaces are not necessarily scarce but are inaccessible and expensive for the local people living in disaster- prone areas with limited income,' said a report by Earthsavers Movement Philippines.

An early warning system is already in place at the community level to alert the authorities to telltale indicators of an area becoming prone to landslides. These include cracks appearing in the land surface and trees on slopes growing at skewed angles, a sign of soil erosion.

Even so, there is understandable frustration in Mr Apostol's department when warnings go unheeded - as they were when Typhoon Parma last October triggered deadly landslides in several communities in the mountainous municipality of La Trinidad in the northern Philippines.

'A few months before, we warned people that they were in danger from landslides and they should move out of the area,' said Mr Apostol. 'They refused and so we put up signs telling them to evacuate their homes if there was heavy rainfall.'

More than 160 people died in the multiple landslides. MGB geologists visiting the area after the disaster found that one of their warning signs had been placed directly in the path of a landslide.