 Welcome to the Stop COVID Dets webinar series brought to you by the University of the Philippines. The Stop COVID Dets shorts make it easier for you to go to the presentations that you are interested in. I'm Dr. Raymond Sarmiento, Director of the National Telehealth Center. And I'm Dr. Susy Pineda Mercado, Adjunct Faculty of the National Telehealth Center. Together, let's stop COVID Dets. Stop COVID na, lefto pa. May malaki ang problema natin. Actually hindi lang yan ang problema natin. We have a lot of problems in the country. As we saw over the past several one and a half years, we've been battling against the spread of SARS-CoV-2. And it's really quite difficult. There have been many deaths already. And because we also have other hazards, bakama compound. And this is not unique to the Philippines. It is a problem worldwide, especially those places na maraming natural hazards just like the Philippines. What am I talking about? Bukod sa Lepospirosis, which I think is the topic for today in this webinar. There will be a lot of speakers and doctors talking about this. We also have problems about dengue. And other infectious diseases. I've attended other webinars, infectious disease experts. We've been talking about other infectious diseases that pose a problem. It's a continuous threat that we need to look at. We cannot ignore all of these things. Now, after having said that, I'd like to emphasize that there are other natural hazards that we also have to consider in planning. Planning should be anticipatory. We should not ignore these things. Like, for example, before the COVID outbreak in the Philippines, we had this very big eruption. It was an eruption that generated base surges. We just published this in Scientific Reports of Nature.com. And these base surges actually is the most feared hazard I think of Taal volcano. It did happen. You're seeing there a picture of base surges formed in the 1965 and subsequent years na may eruption from Taal generating base surges. In fact, the term base surge was coined by a geologist, a USGS geologist after studying this phenomenon occurring at Taal. Eventually, it got mainstream into the volcanological literature. Many volcanology agencies still use that term. You're seeing there in that very beautiful picture of base surges that formed dunes para siyang desert. And it's really very occupying. It was deposited in a big swath of land southeast of Taal volcano island. And you're seeing here the photo of a school, depth-end school that got overwhelmed by the base surges. They traveled at very high speeds. They're more than 100 degrees centigrade. And definitely, if students were there baka na matay sila? It's a good thing that there was our sleep time to evacuate the people. So this is one type of hazard associated with volcanism. We also have other hazards like for example, more recently we experienced bug. It's called volcanic smug. And it's because of aerosols and sulfur dioxide that gets to pollute the air. And that needs to be considered because there are some medical issues when we inhale polluted air like that. Kinatawag na bug. And the bug was actually related to the increase in SO2 emissions at Taal volcano in the run up to the small eruptions that happened, I think, early part of July. Apart from volcanism, we also have problems about earthquake activity. When faults move, there are many faults or earthquake faults in the Philippines. When they move, they generate earthquakes. There are many earthquakes. In fact, as I speak, probably one earthquake is happening somewhere in the world. But less frequent, yung mga malalaki earthquakes. But when they happen, we called it as the big one. And when it happens in a highly populated area, there may be many deaths. And if that happens in Metro Manila, we have many faults that can move. They are active faults. And when they move, it affects Metro Manila that will compound our response to COVID-19. You can just imagine that all of these people will be staying outside. They cannot stay in their house for fear that there will be continuous ground shaking and make the infrastructure or their houses collapse. So they will stay outside. Just like what happened in Mindanao, for several months, yung mga tao were staying on the streets. I don't know. So pag kanangyari sa Manila yung Mindanao yung less populated. In Metro Manila, we are highly populated here. Several, more than 10 million, probably 20 million people. So pag nangyari yung people will be staying outside. And we might have a problem with controlling the spread of COVID-19. Apart from that, meron pa tayong mga ibang example. Yung earthquake, the most recent example na nangyari was the Batangas Magnitude 6.6 earthquake. Also recently in December, maybe November or December, basa nung Ulysses when that happened, it affected several provinces in Busan and it hit even Metro Manila when the impacts were heavy doon sa Kagayan Valley. Partly related to the dam release and mostly related to the heavy rains that triggered massive floods along Kagayan River. These are the things that we need to prepare for and we also know that because of that flooding event, nagkaroon ng increase in COVID-19 infections in that area sa Kagayan. Apart from the natural hazards, we also have problems about yung mga man-made. For example, this one in 2017, we had, sorry, in 2018, we had the rapid decrease of the La Mesa water level. You can see that orange line in the graph. As compared to the 2017 graph, we did not have any problems. But later on in 2019 and 2020, we did not have problems anymore because the problem was fixed. So mga man-made doon because the rains, when we looked at them, as well as the feeding dam, which is ang gat, wala naman problema. Nagkaroon lang ang problema sa La Mesa Dam. But a discussion of this is very important. We need to look at not only just at the natural hazards but also things like this. Because if we have lack of supply of water in Metro Manila, for example, because there's no water at La Mesa Dam, wala lang ang problema doon sa ula. Mga kanon tayo lang malaking problema because more, I think 90% of the water supply of Metro Manila comes from this place. So baka, baka kanon tayo ng problema. So it's not just the earthquake that can trip or break all of the water lines. Patirin yung source na dahil hindi maganda siguro yung management or whatever it is, we need to look at that and secure our water supply. Kasi pag gawala tayong water supply, especially during the time of pandemic, magkakaroon tayo ng napakanlaking problema. So we keep on monitoring this as well sa UP NOAA Center and the UP Resilience Institute. As was discussed by Doc Susi, earlier, sabi niya natural hazards do not stop because of COVID-19. And that is true kasi the Philippines is in the Pacific Ring of Fire and we're also in the Taipun Belt. You can see here all of the Taipun Trax, we have about 20 that enter into the Philippine area of responsibility. There are more landfalls, probably less than 10 that hit the Luzon and and there are less that happen that make landfall go on sa Mindanao. And we're also in the Pacific Ring of Fire. We share the same problems as the countries of Indonesia, Japan, places like Alaska, Western United States, Western Canada, Western part of South America. It's called the Pacific Ring of Fire because all of these places which have a lot of and a lot of earthquakes surround the Pacific Ocean. So it looks like a ring so it's called as the Pacific Ring of Fire. Now when we talk about all of these problems about earthquakes and eruptive activity of volcanoes and taipuns or severe weather, they're actually the pinobina. We really need to prepare against the hazards brought about by these pinobina. For example, when there's volcanism, what we need to prepare for are the hazards. The hazards are the ones that kill. For example, for volcanism, the hazards are pyroclastic flows, pyroclastic fall, debris avalanches, ballistics, lava, noxious gases and tsunami. Each and every hazard have corresponding maps. And everybody must know those hazards if it is present in their neighborhood. So kailangan pinitignan natin lahat yung mga hazard maps na yun. See if they are present in your subdivision, in your neighborhood or in your schools or maybe your office place sa ang kayo nagtatrabaho before you go there, you have to check whether there are hazards in those places. For earthquakes naman, there are hazards. So the earthquake, per se, last not kill. It's the hazards that kill. And we need to look at the hazard maps again, know your neighborhood. These hazards for earthquakes are called ground rupture, ground shaking, subsidence, liquefaction, tsunami, sage, landslides, fire. I don't have enough time to discuss each and every one of these hazards, because limited yung time, but I just want you to take note that it's the hazards that we need to prepare for. For severe weather like typhoons, we also need to look at the hazards, just like for wilderness. Landslides, landslides, landscores, so I guess everybody is familiar with all of these hazards that we need to prepare for. I just don't know if everybody is aware whether these hazards are present to everyone's neighborhood. So, gano matang kakakaligang quarter? Hello? It's the music part of your presentation, Dr. Mahar. Ako naman, I naturally assume it's part of the presentation. It's part of the presentation. Kasi malakas yung music sa bosses nyo, Dr. Mahar. Ayan, pinatay ko na. Olet, olet, Mahar, olet, kasi hindi ka na rinig, yung music na nang-await namin. For severe weather like typhoons, it's the hazards that we need to prepare for. Strong winds, floods, landslides, storm surges. I guess everybody is aware of these hazards. We've seen them. The strong winds, the floods, the landslides probably storm surges. You've seen sa TV, what happened sa Takuloban and in the central Philippines region. I'm just not sure if everybody is aware of the extent of the hazards whether they are present in their homes, in their neighborhood or in their office area or in the schools where their children where your children go to. Lahat kasi ito they have corresponding maps and when you know that there are hazards like this one, this is UP. The place is quite well-planned. You see that lagoon wala nga set elements. So even if it floods there that's fine but it's not the same for other places. So what we need to do is to know all of these areas that are hazardous especially if it concerns the place where you live in your family and know where to go whenever there's a warning. Again, the point here is that we do not prepare for the phenomena we prepare for each and every hazard brought by all of these events like earthquakes volcanism and severe weather like typhoons and tropical storms. Now here is just a short compilation of the lessons that we've learned from past disasters because we've been looking at the disasters that have happened in the Philippines. We are a natural laboratory for disaster research here in the country. And we can learn a lot from the actual disasters to learn the mistakes in order for us not to repeat them. So I list here some of the short term things that we need to do hazard specific area focus and time bound warnings. That's very important. Extensive use of sensors use of maps that show where the safest places are in the community. Share Bawa lang swapang sa disaster work. We need to share because the Sendai framework stipulates or the guiding principle is that we have to have a whole of society and science-based approach. So kailangan we need to share the data sets especially if they are publicly funded data sets. Long term we need to do anticipatory planning put it into the comprehensive land use plans. We need to put the hazard maps or depict scenarios of hazards that are bigger than what we have experience that is called as probabilistic risk assessment and that has to be mainstream into comprehensive land use plans. Education, open data that's very important and more scientific research. So far nakaruntayo during the COVID yes, when summer was hit by typhoon ambok very minimal yung damaging loss yung fatalities five dead and scattered pa yan and they managed well and I think the reason why they were able to manage the typhoon despite its impacts is because they were quite well planned. Remember that that place was hit by yulanda and because of that there was a lot of help those municipalities and cities in the central Philippines region especially summer were well prepared in terms of planning. They planned well and they were able to manage the COVID-19 situation quite well So meron din tayo sa yulises there was a rise in COVID-19 cases in Pugagaraw it was rat really the same type of disaster management as what happened sa summer but I guess that's a lesson for us how do we really do it and ito lang naman yung mga gusto tatin saan ang mag-intindihan ng maraming tao we cannot ignore all of these hazards because they are all connected with each other for example ito ng COVID-19 that is just one example we had COVID-19 and nagkaron tayo ng problema sa agriculture sa different sectors of society sa health sa forestry sa energy, sa education sa tourism and we all know that so planning the municipalities and cities need to be done across all sectors kasi hindi lang pwedein sa health lang tayo kung by COVID sa public health issue hindi lang pwedein dun tayo ng pa-plan we must plan against all of the hazards that I've just discussed we have to have maps and plan it according to the vision of the city or municipality of the community and just to give you an example this is a land use plan this is the storm search map the flood map the storm search map this is the zonal plans of the community now if we can put them all together with the plans of the community for example this settlement area that I'm showing one is full of yellow and orange hazards that is not a good settlement site without any hazards without any color actually gray lang that means there are no hazards that is a good plan to make development for settlements for the agriculture sector you can see their plans ay binabaha but not all places are flooded so maybe for climate change they can plan resilient crops and for those areas that are flooded then they can plant the normal crops and this one which is a tourist area you can see that ay maganda yung area kaya lang hazardous that's a good place where they can look at yung kalaw na bird it's very beautiful and that's a source of revenue from tourism na wala naman bagyo it doesn't be storms don't happen every day heavy rains don't happen every day so yan sila continuous yung tourism and then pag may bagyo there's a warning from pag asa they can pack up, go to the gray places yung gray colored places which are nearby and then when the storm is in the south China they can quickly go back and resume operations that is called business continuity you're planning for business continuity in the sector of tourism now for our problems like covid compounded by leptospirosis and dengue we must really look at the hazards pag bagyo yan nagbabaha yan din yung pinagpupugaran nung mga ang tawag dito yung mga taga napos pag magbuka baka yung ihi nung daga yan din sa tubig et cetera et cetera that will be discussed later on so we need to know these places we need to use science and technology to find out those places and make visualizations like this that clearly show to us where they are so that it can be communicated to the people because it's hard to communicate and we need good visual tools like internet what are the places where to avoid them the possible leptospirosis and really the most advanced technologies that we can make use of and the frontier science that we can also make use of we have to apply for risk reduction and mitigation efforts so upinowa center and the UUPRI will be coming up with a new website a revamped website that will show all of these hazards for hazard specific area focus and time-bound warnings and hopefully with this holistic approach in tackling the natural hazards the biological hazards we can make a better plan so that we can reduce the impacts of all of these problems that we face we hope that you learned as much as we did from that excellent presentation we also hope that you will join us every friday from 12 noon to 2pm manila time on zoom, facebook or youtube so stay safe stay connected and see you online