doppler radar by winnie monsod
PAGASA has equipment that will allow it to detect, among others, the wind velocity of tropical cyclones and their possible path.
What PAGASA still does not have — which is available — is the equipment, called Doppler radar, which, I am informed, allows the rain content of such storms to be determined as well — and therefore the intensity of flooding that might occur.
The irony of it is that this Doppler radar costs — and I got this from Google — a mere $300,000 to $1 million, or roughly P15 million to P50 million pesos.
Why “mere”? Because it is much less than the P70 million that is reportedly the yearly pork barrel allocation of a single congressman, and peanuts compared to a Senator’s annual P200 million share of that same pork.
Or how about comparing it to the cost of a Presidential foreign trip?
The cost per day of her trips two years ago (2007) came out to $255,000 from $46,000 thousand a day in 2002.
It is safe to say that by $2009, these trips average about $300,000 a day.
Therefore the Doppler radar would cost be roughly equal to anywhere from one day’s to a little over three days’ foreign travel of the President.
In any case, it would pay for itself almost immediately, in terms of the number of the number of lives saved, and property damage reduced.
Yes, PAGASA did issue flood and landslide warnings as early as September 24 – but saying that there may be flood and landslides is a different kettle of fish then saying something to the effect that “400 centimeters of rain is expected in the next ten hours — more than the average rainfall in a whole month.”
That will surely catch everyone’s attention, including the authorities.
In early August of this year, the state of Kentucky experienced its version of Ondoy, with more rain falling in one day than was normal for the month (actually Kentucky had worse experience — there was also lightning caused fires as well as hailstones).
But the authorities and the people were properly forewarned, so that while property damage was extensive, there were no deaths (except for nine animals in an animal shelter which was flooded).
Then you have the NDCC, which not only seemed to have ignored PAGASA’s warnings, but also seemed clueless as to what areas to prioritize as for rescue operations, depending — again seemingly — only on the texts that were coming in. This has to be inexcusable.
Architect Jun Palafox, who has an MA in environmental planning, informs us that as early as 1977 — or 32 years ago — the Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning Project, funded by the World Bank, already identified the areas in Metro Manila that were vulnerable to massive flooding, probably because they were natural basins.
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