Research Report on 2009 Floods and Landslides Disasters Caused by Typhoons 16(Ondoy), 17(Pepeng) and 18(Sante) in the Philippines
7.Social characteristics of and natural disasters in the Philippines
In this chapter we will briefly overview disaster prevention, disaster restoration, and the "power of community".
Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng passed through the highly urbanized cities of Manila and Baguio. In these cities, the rapid growth in population density has given rise to increased social stratification and segmented living spaces. In particular, the residents of districts such as gated communities have succeeded in ensuring their security and privacy from outsiders, but at the same time, high fences and gates have cut themselves from neighbory ties. Unless the owner organizations and committees take a pro-active stance, this can easily result in a loss of community to the point where residents never meet face to face and do not help or support one another. In such situations, people must instead rely on their immediate family, close relatives and friends. There is thus likely to be less opportunity for interaction when people are taking refuge from a disaster, and the walls and gates are likely to remain closed. It is therefore difficult to imagine that the residents of such districts will be able to check that their neighbors are safe and help them if necessary. On a slightly tangential issue, higher-class residences are more likely to have bars across all the windows to prevent people from entering illegally, but these bars also deprive people of a means of escape in the event of a fire or flood. For example, many lives were lost in a hotel fire a few years ago for this reason.）1)It would be worth conducting a survey to examine whether or not window bars were responsible for any problems in the Provident district, where many lives were lost in the recent typhoons.
Next, we will consider disaster recovery and "community power" from the viewpoint of resettlement. The government of the Philippines has been implementing measures to address the country's excessive post-war urbanization and slum formation. Since the 1960s, four relocation sites have been set up in the suburbs of Manila in order to resettle illegal occupants evicted from public/private land and from potentially hazardous places like river banks and garbage dumps. However, nearly one third of these relocatees returned to their former areas of residence and carried on with their lives in places where they are at high risk from disasters (Starke 1996).2)。This can be partly attributed to the incomplete infrastructure and lack of employment opportunities in the relocation sites, and to the government's tendency to allocate land for resettlement in a purely mechanical fashion without due regard to people's previous residential relationships. On the other hand, the slum inhabitants and squatters had fixed social groupings that could be described as communities. Similar observations can be made regarding the reconstruction of natural hazards such as volcano eruptions and flooding/landslides caused by typhoons. When residents are moved from one place to another, they will choose to return to their original locations unless they are given a community life that provides them with greater emotional attachment than their original home before any guarantees are made about their economic security in the new location (Gaillard 2008).3)。
References for this chapter
1)At Least 75 Dead in Hotel Fire: Lack of Fire Exits, Unmovable Security Bars Hindered Rescue Efforts Aug. 18, 2001. ABC News. (http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80614)
2)Starke, Kevin. 1996. Leaving the Slums: The Challenge of Relocating the Urban Poor. Pulso (Pagsusuri Ukol sa Lipunan at Simbahan) Monograph No. 16. Institute on Church and Social Issues. Manila: Philippines.
3)Gaillard, Jean-Christophe. 2008. "Alternative paradigms of volcanic risk perception: The case of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines", Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 172 (3-4): 315-328.
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