EDITORIAL: Hidden Danger

THE devastating debris flow along the Nepal-Tibet border should not be viewed by the Philippines merely as another tragic disaster happening in a distant country. It should be treated as a warning.

A wall of mud, rocks, gravel and water can move with the force and consistency of wet concrete, sweeping away everything in its path. In Nepal, the disaster has already claimed hundreds of lives and left many more missing. But what should concern Filipinos most is the revelation that the same phenomenon can happen here—and has happened before.

The Philippines has no shortage of mountains, steep slopes and communities situated along rivers and drainage networks. During powerful storms, landslides can generate enormous amounts of loose earth and rocks that can later be carried downhill by floodwaters, transforming an ordinary-looking river into a deadly torrent of debris.

We have learned this the hard way.

The 2012 disaster in Compostela Valley, now Davao de Oro, killed more than 500 people following Super Typhoon Pablo. Parts of Baco, Oriental Mindoro, were likewise buried by large rocks from a debris flow in 2015. These were not warnings from a theoretical disaster model. They were real tragedies that demonstrated the deadly combination of heavy rainfall, unstable slopes and vulnerable communities.

Yet the most disturbing part of the latest warning is that there are reportedly more than 1,000 areas in the country where communities are at risk of debris flows.

That number should demand more than acknowledgment. It should demand action.

The government cannot afford to wait until another typhoon triggers thousands of landslides before it begins asking where the danger lies. Hazard maps must not remain technical documents sitting in government offices. They must be translated into actual decisions on where people should live, where roads and other infrastructure should be built, and which areas should be declared unsafe for settlement.

The P1-billion allocation for the UP Resilience Institute's hazard-mapping work is therefore an opportunity that must be taken seriously. The value of this investment should not be measured simply by the number of maps produced or equipment purchased. Its success should ultimately be measured in lives protected and communities moved away from danger.

This also means strengthening the capacity of local governments. National agencies may produce sophisticated hazard maps, but it is local governments that know the communities, roads, waterways and settlements on the ground. They must have the resources and political will to enforce land-use plans, keep people out of danger zones and prepare residents for evacuation when necessary.

Relocation, however, must be approached with both urgency and humanity. Telling families to leave a hazardous area is not enough when they have nowhere else to go or when their livelihood depends on the place they are being asked to abandon. Safe relocation must come with adequate housing, access to basic services and opportunities to earn a living.

Technology can help, too. LiDAR surveys, drones, artificial intelligence and better monitoring systems can give authorities a clearer picture of terrain and changing hazards. But technology is only as useful as the decisions made from the information it provides.

Perhaps the greatest lesson from Nepal is that disasters do not always begin when the flood arrives. The danger may already be accumulating high in the mountains—in the form of unstable slopes, loose rocks and soil waiting to be mobilized by torrential rain.

By the time the debris flow reaches a community, it may already be too late.

The Philippines has the science, technology and expertise to identify many of these dangers. What is needed is the political will to act on the warnings.

We should not wait for another Pablo, another Baco—or our own Nepal-like catastrophe—to remind us that preparedness is not an option.

The best time to move people away from the path of a debris flow is before the mountain moves.

And the best measure of disaster preparedness is not how quickly we respond after tragedy, but how many lives we save by preventing tragedy in the first place.