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FEU Public Intellectual Lecture Series | Dr. Mahar Lagmay | Part 1 | Far Eastern University | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: FEU Public Intellectual Lecture Series | Dr. Mahar Lagmay | Part 1
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Core Theme
The Philippines, situated in a geologically active and weather-prone region, faces numerous natural hazards, necessitating the application of science and technology for effective disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
i'll be talking about
philippine hazards focusing here in our country
country
and how science and technology is used for
for
cca drr
drr stands for disaster
risk reduction okay and
cca climate change
adaptation we have an area of about 300
000 square kilometers land area uh
and its location is the prime target for hazards
hazards
we are in the pacific ring of fire
and we are in the typhoon belt
climatological effects of
el nino and la nina in the southwest
monsoon synthetic
when there's a typhoon in the eastern
part of the philippines
it gives vitamins to the rain clouds in
the south china sea or the west
philippine sea
so parang tapos
western part and it has caused flooding
events in metro manila here i show you
since 1948 or 1949
there have been a lot of typhoons that have
have
entered in the philippine area of responsibility
responsibility
so each line that that you are seeing
represents the track of a typhoon since 1948.
1948.
so we're just in 1972 counting that counting
counting
to uh year two thousand you can see that
of all the tracks now if you combine all
of these tracks
mintana mindanao is not that well covered
covered
but visayas in busan are very well covered
covered
no and because there are not many typhoons
typhoons
in mindanao there's less damage to
agricultural crops there's less damage
to crops
and that's probably one of the reasons
why mindanao is the
the fruit basket of the philippines
and you can see that of all of these typhoons
typhoons
associated hazards now that the typhoon
is not the phenomena
it's not the hazard it's the phenomenon what
what
kills people are the strong winds that can
can
rip off the the roof of houses
make trees fall down and when you get
hit you die
uh it's the floods when pangala no
you die that's the hazard so the typhoon
is not really
or the cyclone is not the the hazard
it's the landslide that is triggered by
the excessive rainfall
okay that's the hazard tapos storm
surges you've heard the storm surge
it happened in in in the central
philippines region aside from uh
being typhoon belt and pacific we're also
also
in the pacific ring of fire now so all
of these yellow
and green ones and red areas okay
are actually earthquake epicenters that
have been plotted on the map
not all earthquakes happen
just anywhere no they they happen in
specific zones
and in the area of the pacific
surrounding the pacific
you have a lot of earthquakes happening
it's based on the historical record of earthquakes
earthquakes
no and because it surrounds the pacific
and also because these places where
earthquakes occur
around the pacific are associated with
many volcanoes
no and volcanoes are associated with fire
fire
buying lava it's very very hot that's
the reason why
it's called the pacific ring of fire
it's surrounding the pacific ocean
so the countries surrounding the pacific ocean
ocean
experience a lot of earthquakes and
there are volcanoes
and again the the eruption itself
is the phenomenon the earthquake itself
is the phenomenon so the hazards
associated with the
earthquake are you collapse of a building
building
the ground shaking or the earthquake
itself if you're not in an open field
you will not die no it's the hazard it's
a partner shaking it will make the
the building uh unstable if it collapses
you die no so these are the hazards
other hazards associated with
earthquakes are
tsunamis so if the tsunami happens you get
get
buried or you get flooded in your area
and you can't swim
and there's a wave that brings you and
gets your head
to to hit a wall then you die
so volcanoes in volcanic eruption
you don't get killed especially if
you're far away
but if you're near lava
okay if you're near the volcanic
eruption and you come
in contact with lava and it surrounds
your house
you'll die from the excessive heat those
are the hazards now
we have to deal with the hazards we know
that this phenomena
that brings forth the hazards will
always be here
but we need to be aware of
what these hazards really are but in
order to understand the hazards
we also must understand the phenomena now
now
so this is where science comes in
the philippines is the third most
vulnerable country in the world
to natural hazards name it we have it
except for hazards associated with snow
malam italian hazards and at the same time
time
there are a lot of people that are
exposed to that hazard
and these people don't have enough capacity
capacity
to be able to address the hazard you
know i say but one of the reasons
probably is
there there are persons with
disabilities or they are poor and they
don't understand they're not
aware and that increases what we call
as risk no so you have the hazard
people are exposed and these people are
are vulnerable but their capacity to
address the hazard is not that good
and therefore if you combine all of them
it leads to our understanding of
disaster risk
one manifestation of that
of that high risk is
probably your poor awareness or your poor
poor
understanding of the hazards in our country
country
do you agree do you know of the hazards
in our country
there are about more than 20 can you can
you name all of them
probably not no so you are college
students no
and if you don't know all know
so what more the people who don't study
so you can just imagine that we really
need to
build awareness no so as to reduce the
risk the risk
and one manifestation also of that
high vulnerability and high risk
is that we have been experiencing disasters
disasters
so these are the hazards no we have
pyroclastic flow associated with
volcanic hazards pyroclastic flow debris
avalanche lahar lava tsunami noxious gas
fire landslides ground subsidence
liquefaction ground rupture collapse of
structures earthquake generated tsunami
floods storm surge strong winds rain
induced landslides
so there are so many hazards are you
prepared for each of these hazards
in the philippines uh of all the types
of hazards
the number one are are
those that are associated with cyclones
and extreme weather
no like floods and storms these are the
blue and the red ones no
so you can see that from 1970s up to the
decade from 2000 to 2009 it's really the
floods and storms that
cause a lot of damage now because they
they come in several times a year
so in a year about 20 cyclones enter the
philippine area of responsibility
and in luzon and visayas there are about
six to seven that make landfall
in the in mindanao they're about less than
than
one on average per year distribution of
natural disasters you can see that
floods and storms are the most
reported just to give you an idea of
what kind of disasters
have happened in the philippines this is one
one
that happened in 2009 a massive landslide
landslide
the technical term is called a debris
avalanche now this ridge okay that ridge
which is about 700 meters high
okay 700 meters high rocks there collapse
collapse
and flowed down no end mass
and developed a landslide footprint
which was
four kilometers long and 1.5 kilometers wide
wide
and the town of ginsa ugon was buried
and the town had the population of 1857.
so this is the 700 meter ridge it went
down that is about
4 kilometers 1.5 kilometers wide in the town
town
of ginsa ugon was buried under 30 meters
of rubble
many people died fatalities 1226 missing
980 bodies recovered 139
a treated for injuries those who died in
the hospital
too and they were trying uh
to find that elementary school
which was buried supposedly buried under
30 meters of rubble
it was a 2 000 man strong
search and rescue team composed of the
u.s navy
u.s marines philippine army miners
volunteers or 2000 strong with people
from taiwan
with search and rescue dogs spain
singapore japan they all tried to
contribute even
people from the academy tried to locate
that school because there were text messages
messages
on the second up to the second day that
for 250
or nearly about that number were still
inside the
elementary school so they were trying to search
search
frantically for that with back hosts
and you can see that they were trying to
dig up all sorts of places
because they did not know where
that school was located anymore there
was no landmark to locate the the
school so they would just get they just
kept on digging
guessing where the school was no and
just to give you an idea how big that
landslide was
uh that backhoe is this one
the backhoe in the yellow buckle is that one
so how can you search for a buried
school with
200 plus children if the landslide is
that big
maybe we need a little bit of science
there what we did
was uh we tried to go up
on board the helicopters take pictures
and then try to stitch the photographs
and try to figure out
using a geographic information system
where the
the recovered person
personal effects uh and then uh
we tried to to put in place and find out
where the original
location of the of the school was or the town
town
and there was also a gps point that was
available because they were trying to
you know
figure out they were trying to measure
the default because it was near the
philippine fault
they were trying to measure the fault
and that gps you you know what the gps
is right what had a millimeter scale accuracy
accuracy
so that gps point
was only provided on the seventh day
why because uh when we asked for it from government
government
agencies they said that we are not part
of government
so they only gave it on the seventh day
so that is where
uh some things need to be in place no so that
that
we it can be ensured that these
scientific data are available
so that during times of emergencies
they can be used enough with bureaucracy
in the same year in 2006 there were
there was this lahar you know
debris that was flowing no at the
rates of about 10 to 50 60 kilometers
per hour
which cascaded down the slopes of my own volcano
volcano
and killed nearly 2 000 people buried a
lot of houses and one characteristic of
that is that
there are big boulders on top no strong
uh in the debris field we call that kind
of phenomenon as
al-ahar a lot of people died in ginobatan
ginobatan
because of the lahars kamali the raga
bonga padang and basud no
and the reason why they died is because
they were caught by surprise
they thought that they were not
sufficiently far from the river so they
were here
they thought that they were sufficiently
far but what happened was that
the river okay
that's the original course of the river
uh there were dikes that breach
upstream so this dike here that bike
here breached and
they were caught by surprise and they
were overwhelmed by the lahars
okay and also in that part now this is a
picture of uh
the impacts of tropical fruck
now that hit iloilo and this picture
reminds us that flood plains which are
the areas beside the river
which we claim as ours is not really
ours no it's part of the river so when there
there
are big floods the river
reclaims this land called as flood
plains the
the flat part beside the rivers
and you can see that the river instead of
of
get following that course just
went down straight and those are flood
plains that was
or that were reclaimed by the river
because it's
it's theirs so there was also another
big flood event
in 2011 kandaba you can see this
pampanga river which is about 50 meters
wide or maybe up to 100
but when the floods came in
the river swelled from 50 to 100 meters
it became
as wide as as what
10 kilometers no looking 10 kilometers
from here
to there so you can see the the force of
nature now
sometimes it can be really overwhelming if
if
the phenomenon or if the hazard is extreme
extreme
and no amount of intervention
or structural intervention can stop it
we'll just waste money trying to stop it
because the force of
nature is well beyond what we can do
or what we can design
you see the pampanga river which is this one
one
but the floods really go all the way
as thick as as wide as 10 kilometers
and then there was the sendong disaster
in 2011.
uh there was a a flood
the rivers well this is a flood plain
they have claimed it as theirs and when
the floods came in
they happen once every 100 years or once
every 200 years
but when they come they can devastate
the whole area within that flood plain
and that is what happened in mandulok
river in
iligan wherein thousands of people died
no there was this community an informal settlement
settlement
composed of about 500
shanties no and all i saw was
an area full of sun in that same place
orchids home subdivision just beside
that informal settlement was this
subdivision relatively upscale
and when the floods came in it was
reduced to a pile of
rubble so this is how the impacts of
hazards affect our communities
and they happen almost every year
and it creates so much loss and damage
now that it runs up to the
billions of pesos and if it happens
every day how can we develop
how can we progress and how can our economy
economy
sustain that rise if each and every year
we lose a lot from the impacts of hazards
hazards
that means that we need to do something
about it of course in tacloban
this is the most famous
probably of all the hazards because it's
touted to be
the one of the strongest or in fact the strongest
strongest
cyclone that has ever made landfall
that's that's what it is known to be and
it created storm surges
and these storm surges killed a lot of people
people
and of course in 2013 we also had that
just a month before yolanda struck
there was this earthquake creating a rupture
rupture
on the ground and that rupture was
several kilometers long
three meters high a wall similar to that
you can see the person for scale and
that didn't previously
exist no it was just flat ground this
was continues with this
but when it it ruptured it generated
that bohol earthquake in 2013 killing
hundreds of people
and that uh that wall
is quite rare by world standards because
not all earthquakes
generate such a feature
so what the governor did was he tried to convert
convert
that that disaster into
something that they could earn from as a tourism
tourism
since it was six to seven kilometers long
long
and it was high and it was a rare event no
no
he called it the great wall of bohol
now so that's that's ingenuity
no i'm trying to find something
uh make it a source of livelihood
from a disaster event so we can we can
do that now we have to
innovate we have to be uh thinking all
the time
to find ways to to solve the impacts
uh solve the the harsh impacts of disasters
disasters
and more recently in 2017 we have this map
map
showing that community as exposed to hazards
hazards
but you know this map was not used
that means that we need we need to go
out there
and bring the science to the communities
to the barangays
so are you willing to volunteer and go
to the barangays in
italy or in marawi or you know to teach them
them
of all of these hazard maps to show them
where the safe areas are and where the
dangerous areas are
we need people to share all of these information
information
and we try to use all kinds of media
platforms like twitter
like facebook like the internet to teach people
people
but it's not enough there needs to be
some kind of engagement
and if they see young people students
from feu
going down today they feel that they are loved
loved
and they engage they talk to you and
when they talk to you
they get more aware of the disasters so
that is what we need
so if we can organize people
to mainstream all of these scientific
information down
barangay level that should be best there
are many
many many laws that are related to
just to show you what noaa is about
please visit the site
that's a map of the philippines you can
see the satellite information the clouds
the red yellow and white clouds refer to rain
rain
so you can see the philippines in the vicinities
vicinities
where it rains it also shows
the pakasa trap
no need to read the advisories
every six hours there are rainfall sensors
sensors
deployed all over the country that
stream data every 15 minutes either you
can look at them one by one
or just look at the map
and see where it's raining so like for
example if it's raining here
you know that that watershed will
experience flooding
and when there's that kind of
information you must know where to go
the red places are areas of floods
these are crowdsourced information to validate
validate
the simulated floods and then we also have
have
landslide hazard maps for the entire country
country
shown at high resolution and for debris
flows so that people can avoid the
debris flows those ones that
i showed storm surges as well so
all over the philippines the fifth
longest coastline we have
storm surge inundation maps and it's available
available
for any part of the country
unfortunately the floods are not yet
complete but for last night
and storm surges they're complete so you
can plot exposed areas like schools
like where dengue happens
police stations etc hospitals
and see whether these infrastructure or
these institutions
are at risk from a particular type of hazard
hazard
like for example these areas
they must be aware these schools must be
aware that
there's a chance that they will get
flooded they must know
the risk if they don't want to get out
in that place you
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