The Need for a Master Plan for Metro

Congressman Jose Atienza pushes for a Master Plan for the National Capital Region.

We would like to thank Rep. Atienza for pointing this out. On the other hand, there is also a need for a master plan for managing any kind of disaster that will hit Metro Manila. From our honest assessment, there is really none.

Early this year, my uncle Nick Fernandez and myself had an audience with Chairman Francis Tolentino of the Metro Manila Development Authority.

We were told by Chairman Tolentino that he and an Australian group now had a disaster map of Metro Manila that cost a few million pesos. It shows the many hazards and risks that Metro Manilans are exposed to. Chairman Tolentino stressed that he and his Australian counterparts are ready to post the disaster map over the internet. Most politely it was told to the Honorable Chairman that the need is really for a truly interactive map that will benefit the people of Metro Manila when it comes to the issue of forewarning during disaster. Such a map will certainly require a really big budget - as I have found out during the entire advocacy for safety and disaster prepared since 1990.

In the World Bank Study of 1996/7 up to 1999 alone, more than United States Dollars Two Millions (USD2,000,000) was spent on mapping only the earthquake fault emanating from the Marikina West and East Valley area.  How much would have been spent at today's costs (nearly twenty years later), if all the environmental hazards are figured into the final geohazard map for Metro Manila?

US Dollars Twenty Millions (USD20,000,000) will not nearly be enough.

For this reason, our group has been moving towards building a disaster and climate management mapping center and interest for this can be generated through a series of conferences, symposia, etc.  One of our pet promotional acts is conducting a geohazard conference in Manila this year, 2014, that was suddenly downplayed when United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon announces he was holding a similar summit in Japan in April 2015.

The general locale of the Metro Manila earthquake fault that passes through the genitals of the Fernando Poe Sr. oblation monument at the University of the Philippines at Diliman in the North and through and through to Batangas City in the South, is shown in the sketch upon the google hybrid map shown below:

In a more realistic presentation, at any point in the red line it will really look like the inverted tree branch-like figure below. Thus a fault line does not follow a straight path but jagged and full of branches and numerous twigs, if you may.

In 2010, Phivolcs released an extremely hazy digitization of the fault system map over the internet. From the original World Bank account, the left side of E. De Los Santos Avenue on the route from north to south, is the path of the Marikina Fault Systems. The fault line hits Cubao, Camp Aguinaldo, Corinthian, Robinsons Galeria, Asian Development Bank, SM Mega Mall, Shangrila complex, down to Dasma and Forbes Park villages, Magallanes, sliding through Laguna Lake and on through Taal Lake and then finally landing at Batangas City's coast line.

In 2013, an amended digital map of the fault system places the fault very far away from the left of EDSA and a lot of highly priced villages are not touched by the fault line in the new map.

Imagine the artificial peace of mind of the people living at the left side of EDSA that will be shattered once the big tremor comes. It is ominously possible that new owners of highly priced properties in these areas will really die from shock out of purchasing worthless real estate than from the disaster itself.

Now it will soon be out in the open that MMDA really does not have a realistic, practical Master Plan for averting massive casualties during a disaster. What will now be important for the public sector to do is to invest as much resources into getting such a Master Plan to be formulated.

While at the Kampo Uno Rescue training camp, when we were doing a survey of the disaster prospects in San Juan, here in Metro Manila for the purpose of formulating a proper training program for them, we asked the local government for their Master Plan for disaster response.

It took weeks of going back and forth our headquarters at the Quezon Circle to the San Juan municipal hall at the time. After a truly exasperating bout of the there-and-back act, the municipal disaster management council (MDCC) produced a long folder. The highest ranking officer of that MDCC unit proudly said that they had found their Master Plan that they had been painstakingly looking for all these time! Inside the folder was a long bond paper with a photocopy of the black and white map of San Juan, with colored highlighter pen markings - red for fire, green for flood, and so on. One piece of bond paper - the Master Plan for disaster management of San Juan. And Joseph Estrada was the chief executive at the time. So very much a far cry and so very out of league with poorer local governments in Metro Manila that had complete three big and well-written volumes of Master Plan for their own disaster response management.

We cannot help but wonder if Metro Manila can come up with a decent Master Plan for development and a Master Plan for disaster response management soon enough - even considering that there are already existing master plans made by the various cities constituting the entire national capital region.

It is high time that resources be poured into this effort - planning for the kind of response that the entire MMDA should take in case of a major disaster hitting NCR. For that day is coming very soon. Without that plan, it will be total catastrophe and I cannot imagine the outrage of a people who will be suffered by such massive tragedy. If the government failed in Tacloban, the people of this country might fail the government once a similar misfortune strikes the heart of the metropolis.