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How the Normally Hard-Hit Philippines Just Averted Major Typhoon Damage

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI, TAIWAN - A typhoon that swept over the Philippines Tuesday
   killed at least 10 people in a path of destruction that reached the
   capital Manila. But the country averted a larger-scale disaster, the
   likes of which often bedevil the impoverished country, due to stronger
   preparations including mass mobile phone alerts.

   The typhoon known internationally as Kammuri and called Tisoy in the
   Philippines reached the Bicol Peninsula southeast of Manila late Monday
   with wind speeds of up to 208 kilometers per hour, according to the
   British forecasting service Tropical Storm Risk.

   Philippine officials had warned citizens via mobile phone messaging and
   traditional broadcast media about the storm's potential damage, people
   on the ground say. Local government offices urged evacuations and more
   than 200,000 complied, media reports from Manila said. Those offices
   also readied emergency meals for displaced families.

   Compared to past typhoons, "I think there is a greater emphasis on
   disaster risk mitigation," said Christian de Guzman, vice president and
   senior credit officer with Moody's Sovereign Risk Group. "I think it's
   across the board and especially at the top."

   Extensive damage -- most likely from flooding -- would hobble rural
   populations in already poor, inaccessible parts of the mountains and
   threaten $157 billion worth of new infrastructure nationwide being
   built through 2022.

   Learning from earlier disasters

   Typhoons and tropical storms regularly hit the Philippines from June
   through year's end, and Filipinos had grown used to mass deaths.

   One of the country's worst, Typhoon Haiyan, killed more than 6,000 in
   November 2013. The country's most powerful storm of 2018 left 81 dead
   in the rugged mountains of Luzon Island north of Manila. In December
   last year, a weaker storm known as a tropical depression killed at
   least 85 people and caused extensive damage.

   Disaster relief agencies learned from those storms this week by using
   phones, radio signals and television to urge evacuations, observers
   say. Aid delivery has grown more "efficient" in flat areas as well,
   though access is still tough in the less developed mountains, said
   Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at the University of the
   Philippines Diliman.

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