After Typhoon Yolanda

After Typhoon Yolanda

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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — After four years and approximately $2.1 billion of financial support from national and local coffers, and about $865 million of international humanitarian financial aid, only two percent of houses have been completely built and occupied in Typhoon Yolanda-ravaged areas in the Philippines.

As of November 2016, over 205,000 families were still living in makeshift shelters without power and water, according to Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo, who chairs the Housing & Urban Development Coordinating Council (Rappler, Nov. 7, 2016).

If this kind of controversy doesn’t make you lose hope about the way we do things as a people or a nation, I don’t know what will.

But then, when I was about to give up and resign to our sorry state, my critical planning mind kicked in.

In thinking about the reconstruction of areas literally wiped out by the typhoon, the first question that comes to my mind: Was there a blueprint for a safer and well-protected new growth center, given the historical vulnerability of the old town? That is, is there a unified specific plan to guide the relocation efforts?

If the answer is no, then I have nothing more to say except, it’ll be déjí  vu for all of us — the bullseye of natural calamities.

But if the answer is yes, the blueprint anticipates and resolves the challenges posed by conflicting ideas and overlapping interests in the reconstruction efforts. As they say, “too many cooks spoil the broth”.

Those who are involved in the reconstruction efforts cannot do this on the fly. It is that crucial. I can understand it is easier to react to problems because of the dire situation. But no one can go on doing just that. That’s a reactive, fragmented, and short-term solution.

But if ever one is thinking of long-term and sustainable solutions, there has to be a unitary blueprint to guide the reconstruction effort.

Let’s take for example the case of shelter strategy for those who were displaced by Typhoon Yolanda in Tacloban. Can we create a relocated shelter strategy laid out with communication, water, electricity, solid and wastewater utilities with that kind of money? Can we create a relocated shelter strategy laid out with public transport system, connected to a livelihood facility such as a fish port and parking wharf with that kind of money?

Of course, we can! And more.

Since Tacloban was practically wiped out, can you imagine what would have happened if, let’s say, President Duterte bulldozed the entire area, and recreated and relocated the City with all the necessary utilities and efficient public transport, livelihood, and market opportunities? Maybe he can do it effectively in tandem with Ayala Land or Filinvest. We could have created a spatially well-planned mini-Makati in Tacloban. Seriously.

After all, a blueprint is all about the spatial design that takes into consideration locational efficiency, empowering people to do business and take care of themselves and their families.

And so the questions remain. Where did the money go? How was the money spent? Was there a unified blueprint to guide the various reconstruction expenditures? Or are the reconstruction players (well-meaning or ill-meaning) ritually contented to dipping their hands in the cookie jar?

I hope something can be done to stop this obscene debacle. Maybe it’s too late in the game. I am not sure. But then, Marawi‘s reconstruction is just looming on the horizon.

Dr. Efren N. Padilla
California State University East Bay

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