Philippines: Learning the lessons of Typhoon Hagupit - Investing in emergency preparedness pays off

By Melanie Teff:

With 2014 being one of the worst years in recent history for humanitarian crises, it’s easy to overlook a good news story in the midst of the tragedies. But in the last month of the year, Typhoon Hagupit in the Philippines provided us with just such a story, and the international community should commend the Philippines government and the many Filipino national civil-society groups for their actions in the face of an impending natural disaster – and learn lessons from it.

In November 2013 the Philippines was hit by Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful typhoons ever to have made landfall. With a lack of attention to disaster preparedness, despite the Philippines’ vulnerability to natural disasters, over 6,000 people were killed, more than 4 million displaced, and enormous damage was done to infrastructure, housing and livelihoods.

But when Typhoon Hagupit hit one year later, the approach was very different. The Philippines government and the Filipino people had learned from the horrific experiences of the previous year. When the early warning came from the meteorologists, the government began pre-disaster risk assessments and they began pre-positioning relief supplies and staff for deployment. The government issued evacuation orders, and nearly a million people safely evacuated from the most risky areas, including coastal and low-lying areas and from near riverbanks.

But this was not just a governmental effort. It needed communities to organize themselves and national civil-society groups to work with those communities. It is always national and local organizations that are in the front line of responding to disasters. Inevitably they are the first responders, and they, of course, know their communities and the best ways to work within them in a way that international aid agencies never can.

However, international donor governments and aid agencies can have a vital role to play in responding to natural disasters, particularly when the scale of the disaster exceeds the capacity of the government and national civil-society groups. They can play an equally vital role in supporting governments and national civil-society groups to be prepared for a disaster.

After Typhoon Haiyan, my agency – the International Rescue Committee (IRC) – made the decision that we were not going to set up an office in the Philippines, but that, given the strength and vibrancy of Filipino civil society, we would instead work to support national Filipino civil-society groups. We would assist them with reconstruction work after Haiyan and provide financial support, and train them to be ready for the next natural disaster. Over the past 13 months we have been working with two Filipino organizations – Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc (RAFI) — that have been helping communities to recover from Haiyan, including by rehabilitating livelihoods, such as fishing, and reconstructing destroyed and damaged homes.

Critically, we made sure that this reconstruction was always carried out with an eye to the next natural disaster. We supported civil-society groups in rebuilding day-care centers for children, that would double-up as evacuation centers. And we embarked on a year-long program of trainings for these national organizations to be ready for the next disaster. In fact by coincidence, the last training of the program took place just a couple of days before Typhoon Hagupit. The trainees joked with us that we had set up a very elaborate simulation exercise for them, and had done a good job of providing them with a practical exam.

Over the course of the past 13 months, the IRC’s local Filipino partners have in turn been providing trainings for local government officials in disaster preparedness. This type of quiet, behind-the-scenes work really paid off. There was an impressive level of preparedness for this typhoon compared to Typhoon Haiyan. Many lives were saved as a result, and national agencies, like PBSP and RAFI, were ready to provide assistance to people immediately in the evacuation centers and to conduct rapid assessments of needs going forward to help the communities recover.

When we are facing demands for humanitarian funding to respond to crises like those playing out in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and the countries affected by Ebola, it can be easy to de-prioritize funding for emergency preparedness. But investing in preparedness pays off and is far less costly – both in human lives and in financial terms – than responding to crises. Let’s remember Typhoon Hagupit as a positive example of emergency preparedness and a demonstration of why we should be investing in support to national civil-society groups.

Melanie Teff is the advocacy and policy coordinator with the International Rescue Committee’s emergency response unit. You can follow her on Twitter at @MelanieTeff.