IN 1996, Iloilo City had its first taste of floods engulfing more than one-third of its land and dislocated 150,000 people. That was not its last. The clown Jerry Treñas, then councilor, seized the opportunity for a media blitz by forming the “anti-flood coalition” to rouse the government to action.

The coalition itself is suspect as some members should have been pilloried for being contributors to floods like subdivision (mis)developers, fishpond owners, mangrove deforesters, furniture shop owners, lumber dealers, etc.

June 21, 2008 a bigger and more destructive one brought by typhoon “Frank” swept the city submerging villages and homes that had not seen any flooding before. Iloilo Province sustained 126 dead, 925 injured and 82 missing presumably killed by the torrents.

The clown Treñas, now Iloilo City mayor, and his administration were overtaken by private volunteers in rescue and relief operations. Its sole dump truck was rickety, it couldn’t cruise through thigh-deep water. But he made up for that two days after by hanging posters and streamers screaming “Bangon Iloilo, Masarangan Ta Ini!” (“Rise Iloilo, We Can Make It!”), his mug photo on the side or below grinning from ear to ear as if we were in a party instead of calamity.

According to the other Jerry, surnamed Bionat, secretary of the Iloilo provincial disaster coordinating council, the Philippines only had the seventh storm in Frank. Fifteen more are visiting the country before year end.

The floods of 1996 came after than a week’s rains. The recent one was different. Floods rampaged from a single night’s downpour.

In 1996 there were two Air Force helicopters operating round-the-clock rescuing people or dropping relief goods. The recent one had none.

The PNP and the Army were caught off guard. The police in the city and towns had no heavy equipment for use in rescue. Its dilapidated cars were no match to the torrents which even swept or overturned big trucks. The Coast Guard and the Fire Bureau were among the national agencies that came to the rescue first.

Dumangas town, incidentally, stands out in preparedness. It was submerged in water but it had no casualty, dead or missing. Its own citizens were in grave peril themselves yet it still managed to send rescuers to other towns like Pavia and Pototan, saving lives in the process.

That feat was the outcome of the pioneering work of Rolando Distura, its mayor from 1988 to 2007. Dumangas had been at the receiving end of storms. When there were heavy rains in the mountains of northern and central Iloilo, floods would follow swallowing rice paddies and fish ponds of Iloilo’s biggest source of bangus and shrimps.

Distura, however, did not consider that an obstacle. He organized councils down to the barangay level and trained members in disaster preparedness, early warnings and communication, and rescue. It procured rubber boats and motorized bancas. For that, the town got two successive citations from the national government as “most outstanding in disaster preparedness.”

Other towns are not so prepared but at least they have already awakened.
Early this year, the provincial government and the Office of Civil Defense regional office held seminars and trainings for municipal executives, consisting of weather analysis, building communication lines, making damage reports, earthquake drills, water rescue, relief and rehabilitation.

Only 11 towns attended the trainings, the rest still deep in stupor only to awake the morning of June 21 when Frank struck. Some towns frantically called up the capitol making demands that under the circumstances were impossible. One asked for helicopters to rescue their constituents trapped on an islet of the river. Another asked for dump trucks, bulldozers and what-have-you to snatch people clinging on trees above the torrents. Another mayor, two days later, cursed the national disaster coordinating council (NDCC) in Manila for dragging its feet.

Had they sent representatives to the trainings sponsored by the province and Office of Civil Defense, or had they attended the seminars as Mayor Distura did, they would have learned that disaster preparedness begins nowhere else but from the local government unit itself, from the barangay level. The higher LGUs and the central government merely augment or supplement.

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