Like the determination of the people of Fukushima and Sendai, Japan to
transfer habitat centers from low-lying areas to higher ground, this should be the resolve of government in Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan City and other areas severely hit by flash flood: immediate and comprehensive
relocation. We don't care at all if the
United Nations is promoting
resilient communities. God bless all those hardworking people at the U.N. but to hell with that campaign of building resilient communities. We are amazed at what that very good
Korean Secretary General is actually doing at his office in the U.N.
If an advanced society such as Japan could not ward off the onrushing killer floods that took away thousands and thousands of lives, environmental hazards such as these in Mindanao should be avoided, not confronted.
Japan's determination towards relocation, despite their
lament of limited government funding available at the time immediately after the killer quake tsunami hit Sendai and Fukushima the worst, is very laudable. This includes the adept
show of concern by the private sector -- particularly the financial section.
Thus the planning for the building of new habitats in the high grounds of Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, even areas like Butuan City that is too flood prone and lies within a huge earthquake fault that not providentially, passes through the middle of Butuan's lake that huddles close to the coastline. To compound matters,
Philippine Institute of Volcanology admits that
it has only been recently finding new fault lines in the area surrounding Davao, Cagayan and Butuan and is pleading with the local government units to fund studies for ascertaining the exact coordinates of the large new earthquake fault in Bukidnon province - just a stone's throw away from Davao.
On page 6 and 7 of the
Fleurdelis Green Heights Village host community study, we quote the Phivolcs statement that:
Among these faults, the Philippine Fault is a neotectonic feature crosscutting the Agusan-Davao Basin which seals tectonic events not younger than Eocene. In addition, the Central Cordillera shows strong similarities with the Pacific Cordillera for both stratigraphy and tectonic evolution, and several indications favor a Eurasian margin affinity for the Daguma Range (Southern and Eastern Kudarat Plateau that may be part of the Sangihe arc, as inferred for the Zamboanga Peninsula and the Northern Arm of Sulawesi.
Thus the island of Mindanao can be divided into two composite terranes, the western one (northward extension of the Sangihe arc) being restricted to the Kudarat Plateau and the Zamboanga Peninsula. The apparent continuation of the Sangihe arc into the Central Cordillera of Mindanao is thus the result of post collision tectonics. The portion of the suture where the collision is completed curves westward north of the southern peninsula and extends beneath the sediments of the Cotabato Basin or the volcanic plateaus of the Lanao-Misamis-Bukidnon Highlands.
In the northern part, the contact is linear and suggests, together with the absence of compressional deformation, a docking of the eastern oceanic terrane (Philippine Mobile Belt-Halmahera arc) against the western continental terrane (Zamboanga-Daguma) in a strike-slip environment. Prior to Early Pliocene, the eastern and the western terranes were subject to different tectonic regimes with direction of extension perpendicular to the present one. From Late Pliocene to present, both terranes are affected by NNE and E-W compression. Click this link to see the Agusan fault line map.
Central Mindanao's Davao and Butuan's fate when it comes to earthquake related disaster are intertwined with that of the Eastern Mindanao (Cotabato, Kudarat, Maguindanao etc.) region and the Western Mindanao (Zamboanga, Sulu, Basilan, Tawi-Tawi).
The priority as of this time seems to be general vicinity encompassing Davao, Butuan and the Cagayan de Oro areas.
If studied carefully, the areas hit by the Davao flash floods appear to be a basin trapped in the middle of very high ground rising to over 1,000 feet above sea level. No wonder why too many residents helplessly died during the calamity. If Butuan forms part of this basin, as Phivolcs states above, more casualties will be expected in the near future where during the last eighty years there were almost nil. On the other hand, the tragedy that hit Cagayan de Oro that claimed close to 5000 lives, was caused by building a housing project in an island in the middle of a river, at the mouth of the sea.
Both private sector and government should start moving in the same direction, in the same model patterned after the post-disaster cooperation in Dagupan City and nearly the whole of Pangasinan Province in 1990 and 1991 and henceforth. That was truly the highest level of very close inter-action between social sectors intended to resolve a pitiful and dire situation. We saw it with our own eyes and participated in the process and the entire affair yielded astounding success. Good for the people of Pangasinan.
We hope this will be replicated in Mindanao. Beyond the planning, design, the construction, this level of cooperation is the greatest imperative for recently calamity-prone Mindanao.
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