Kenneth Mesa, the municipal officer who does geo-mapping, shared the US Navy forecast - that the storm would hit us on Sunday December 7, 2014 with 3-5 meters storm surge (or dambuhalang alon); damaging high speed winds 195-210 km/h; and heavy rainfall up to 30-50 mm of rain.
A lot of these weather forecast jargon were new for me, but the contrast of past storms helped me understand the situation. Typhoon Glenda which hit Alabat on the dates of July 15 and 16, 2014 with 20 million pesos worth of damages including 94 completely damaged houses and 1,990 partially damaged houses. Typhoon Glenda had winds of 185 km/h, 11 mm of rain.
Typhoon Ruby is more powerful than the Typhoon Gloria.
“We have to prepare for the worst.” said Mayor Fernando Mesa, my boss and a former general in the Philippine Army. “Let us assume and prepare for the forecast of the US Navy.”
The greatest danger is a combination of three things: (1) dambuhalang alon (2) flooding from rainfall and (3) high tide at 12 noon.
Two days before the predicted landfall of Typhoon Ruby we secured our base of operations. We secured our radio communications, our transport vehicles, and our evacuation centers.
Each barangay and evacuation center had a radio, and we made sure that the batteries were charged. Mayor Mesa gave the firm instruction to use the radios responsibly and to preserve battery life.
Our transport vehicles are a combination of public government vehicles and private vehicles. There was an issue of the hospital ambulance driver refusing to volunteer his services to help with evacuations because that’s not part of his job, but we resolved that by contacting the DOH provincial head and getting his thumbs up. “We are in a state of emergency,” My boss said. “If anyone has the capacity to help he should help.”
Evacuation is one thing, forced evacuation is another thing, and rescue is another thing. It is much harder to rescue during a storm so the Mayor made sure that the police, army personnel, and barangay captains enforce an early evacuation (preferably voluntary but if forced if necessary).
As of 9:30 on December 6, Lyn, the DSWD officer/coordinator, recorded 320 families evacuated from the 19 barangays.
I had my clothes packed and planned to sleep at the municipal hall. A few of us are sleeping at the base of operations to monitor the storm movements and radio communications.
If Typhoon Ruby were to hit Alabat then the damages to agriculture and aquaculture will be worse than Typhoon Glenda which destroyed 13 million pesos worth of crops, totally destroyed 94 houses, partially damaged 1,990 houses, destroyed 1 million pesos worth of fish cages, and damaged 2.5 million pesos worth of public infrastructure. But the most important thing is that there will be no deaths and no injuries when Typhoon Ruby hits.
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