“Compare the way things are done now with the bungling politics-stained confusion that featured in the previous administration’s efforts to address emergencies.

The country received a refreshing positive review from relief organizations and the United Nations (UN) on the organized preparations that resulted in the minimal loss of lives from typhoon “Tisoy,” which was rated the most powerful for the year.

The Voice of America, citing UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports, contrasted this with what happened during past typhoons, particularly “Yolanda,” “one of the country’s worst,” and which “killed more than 6,000 in November 2013.”

“The country’s most powerful storm of 2018 left 81 dead in the rugged mountains of Luzon Island north of Manila. In December last year, a weaker storm known as a tropical depression killed at least 85 people and caused extensive damage,” it added.

The UN office cited in its online page Relief Web the government preparation and advance warning given to those in the path of the typhoon to evacuate or strengthen their homes.

“The country averted a larger-scale disaster, the likes of which often bedevil the impoverished country, due to stronger preparations including mass mobile phone alerts,” it noted.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology under Secretary Gringo Honasan had also vastly improved the government’s capacity for disaster response through the Government Emergency Communications System-Mobile Operations Vehicle for Emergency that deploys emergency communications system to areas severely hit by storms.

“Philippine officials had warned citizens via mobile phone messaging and traditional broadcast media about the storm’s potential damage, people on the ground say. Local government offices urged evacuations and more than 200,000 complied, media reports from Manila said. Those offices also readied emergency meals for displaced families,” OCHA said in the report.

“I think there is a greater emphasis on disaster risk mitigation,” according to Christian de Guzman, vice president and senior credit officer with Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group. “I think it’s across the board and especially at the top.”

Extensive damage — most likely from flooding — would hobble rural populations in already poor, inaccessible parts of the mountains and threaten $157 billion worth of new infrastructure nationwide being built through 2022.

Aid delivery has grown more “efficient” in flat areas as well, though access is still tough in the less developed mountains, said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

It was noted that in terms of the usual flooding, in urban areas and in flat lands, there seems to be a learning curve.

Among the swift and determined moves cited were:

•In Metro Manila, the presidential office called off all classes and non-essential government work at noon Tuesday when the storm was crossing. The country’s chief international airport had closed for part of the day;

•Advances in infrastructure such as roads and airports now make the country better positioned to sustain storms; and

•As a further commitment, the House of Representatives last year approved a law creating the Department of Disaster Resilience, an agency tasked with preparedness, prevention, mitigation, response, recovery and rehabilitation.

•The UN office also commended the fact that Filipinos received millions of mobile phone text messages from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council ahead of the storm’s landfall.

“The texts that make loud buzzing noises also told people in the hardest hit regions where to find nearby evacuation centers,” according to the report.

“The damages were, I guess, less than what everybody was expecting,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank. “Basically, the information that was sent to the phones, the TV stations, were providing very good updates.”

Compare the way things are done now with the bungling politics-stained confusion that featured in the previous administration’s efforts to address emergencies.

The successful preparations hailed under President Rody Duterte encompass the whole of government as reflected in the report.

The basic ingredient, however, is a leadership which knows what it is doing and where it is going.