After ‘Yolanda,’ Phl better prepared

"Echoing silence."

That was how Ben Hemingway, US Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Director for East Asia, described what he got as he tried to reach colleagues from humanitarian aid agencies who were in Leyte when Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) made landfall in Tacloban City.

In extreme contrast to that "silence" was the ferocious howling of the super typhoon as it whammed, first into Guian in Eastern Samar, then Tacloban, with winds up to 315 kilometers (195 miles) per hour and waves strong enough to sweep massive ships inland and on top of buildings.

It took Hemingway's USAID team nearly two days to get to Tacloban. When they did, the first international responders to do so, the scene that greeted them was unimaginably horrific.

"Houses, buildings, infrastructure all gone; it was hard to trace where roads would have been; everything destroyed, dead people and animals strewn on the ground and everywhere, people were either wailing or walking around aimlessly like zombies, shocked by what had just hit them," he recalled.

Super typhoon Yolanda, a decade after, remains one of the deadliest natural disasters in Philippine history, with at least 6,300 people dead and over four million displaced. In Eastern Visayas alone, nearly 6,000 perished, and over 90 percent of those killed by Yolanda were from Leyte.

Much of the death toll came from the deadly unprecedented storm surge that swept through tiny Leyte Gulf into the funnel-shaped San Pablo Bay.

As the winds died down, the storm surge with rampaging waters as high as 18 feet swept through Tacloban. Most of those who died had drowned within minutes of being caught in the inundation, which stretched up to two kilometers inland. As many as 50,000 buildings collapsed, were crushed or damaged.

The super typhoon's Category 5 status held as it made repeated landfalls, destroying property, killing and displacing people in Ormoc, Bogo in Cebu, Cadiz in Negros Occidental, and Busuanga in Palawan, some 550 kilometers west of Tacloban.

The official count of confirmed dead came to 6,352; over 1.14 million structures were damaged totally or partially; 600 municipalities were ravaged, affecting as many as 16 million people; at least four million were displaced, and economic losses were estimated at P90 billion in totality.

There are no guarantees that another monstrous typhoon like Yolanda will not slam into the Philippines again, but when it does, the country today is much better prepared for it.

For instance, PAGASA has substantially enhanced the government's early warning capability with an upgraded Doppler radar system.

With a P1.2-billion Japanese grant, PAGASA has installed Doppler radar systems in key Philippine cities, with five more targeted this year. 

This new radar system allows more accurate monitoring of typhoon conditions like rainfall levels and wind velocity. They have increased PAGASA's detection range to 400 kilometers, a substantial boost from the previous 160-kilometer range.

PAGASA also has, since 2018, been operating an automated flood forecasting system in 21 major river basins. This network of hydrological stations, likewise funded by Japan, provides real-time data for modeling and forecasting floods. Automated warning alerts are now issued to disaster agencies two days ahead of a potential flood, thus allowing for the early evacuation of people.

Also, last year, PAGASA bought its first locally developed microsatellite, Diwata 3, for weather monitoring and disaster response purposes.

The weather bureau plans to launch more such satellites to augment satellite imagery and data forecasting and acquire land-based radar systems to further improve monitoring of typhoons and monsoon rains, among other severe weather conditions.

Interviewed by CNN Philippines in 2018, UP Resilience Institute executive director, Dr. Alfredo Mahar Lagmay, said Yolanda profoundly transformed the Philippines' disaster preparedness and response capacity. "Our disaster response mechanisms have significantly improved, and public awareness of hazards and risks has also increased."

Lagmay stressed that further upgrades are needed to bring the country's hydrometer early warning system to world-class standards.

While Super Typhoon Yolanda exposed technological and systemic gaps, it strengthened international partnerships and cooperation on early warning mechanisms.

But there is still an urgent need to continue modernizing the country's entire weather forecasting system and further boost the overall government's early warning capacity to help better mitigate the loss of life and damage to property when the next super howler comes barreling in.