Vital installations down from Glenda, threatened by coming typhoons

It has been forewarned on July 13, 2014 that power utility installations will be among the physical facilities that will sustain the most damage from the tropical storm / typhoon #Rammasun or #Glenda. This kind of phenomenon will keep repeating itself over and over with the advent of more intense weather and climate disturbances in this new millennium.

Shown below is the portrait of damaged power utility facilities inside BF Homes Parañaque and Las Piñas alone:

July 17, 2014

In areas around the rest of the country and in South China (lowermost photo), the impact of Glenda on installations was staggering. (Photo credits: ANC - Yahoo; AvaxNews - Adrian Ayalin; Philippine Daily Inquirer; Straits Times; Xinhua News

July 15-18, 2014

July 19, 2014

Notes on the coming of Glenda

A Moment of Quiet Please: Power at Risk

A simple time of silence and attentiveness is needed. For just a little while, stop the desperate fibbing about DAP, PDAF, Destroy Jinggoy-Estrada-Enrile-Binay, et al.

Let's for a brief moment focus on a potential flashpoint. The power situation in Luzon and nearby areas is facing a possible threat from incoming tropical storm Rammasun. With the entry of the storm months, any small or major damage might engender greater numbers of power shortages in Luzon. Earlier, during the previous month, it was reported by Manila Times that the worsening power problems will cause severe crisis over the next two years. (Read the news item here.)

As early as 1990, it was already admonished by the Department of National Defense that the Philippines get into the act of laying the infrastructure for surplus power supply for the next twenty five years (from 1990 up to 2015). This suggestion was not heeded. While the intention of succeeding regime after that of Mrs. Corazon Aquino was possibly noble, the deregulation of the power sector did nothing to cure the problem of extreme shortfall in the national requirement for power.


Photo credit: extremetech.com

Photo credit: imageshack

We cannot overstate the potential impact of incoming Tropical Storm Rammasun (local code name Bagyo Glenda). However, with its path going through areas where above ground power transmission lines can possibly be hit by its now strengthening winds, there is no doubt that a number of circuit suspension towers will topple at the height of the storm.

If Rammasun itself does not completely break down major portions of Central and Southern Luzon's suspension towers and sever a large number of electric transmission lines, forthcoming typhoons and even more minor tropical storms can do the job.

A large number of preventive activities need to be put in place. During the storm it will be absolutely hazardous to keep live power lines intact just to avoid transmission from tripping. The time to undertake pro-active measures is now, before the strong winds come. And following the exit of Rammasun or Glenda, more pro-active measures can then be taken - considering lessons learned from the passage of the storm.

These however must necessitate that serious attention be given to such kind of effort, beyond the present panicked and frenetic, super desperate moves to throw mud at each other between the group of Philippine president Mr. Aquino and his critics, as well as the Philippine Supreme Court that recently outlawed a fund use scheme called Development Acceleration Program.

In most developed, as well as in many developing countries, storm or typhoon buffers are installed to protect and safeguard farms and other agriculture livelihood centers.

Such storm buffers do not prevent total destruction of crops but these greatly minimize the losses from the havoc wreaked by the calamity.

For keeping as many power transmission lines and suspension towers safe, such buffers can be installed even for short-term purposes. In this case, prior to the landfall of Rammasun (Glenda), some safety measures can be installed. At the very least, lesser damage can be expected from the storm in case Rammasun (Glenda) will develop fast into a super typhoon.

As of this time, while there are a large number of power plant operations in Luzon are bogged down, if a substantial portion of the grid will suffer damage, the potential for burgeoning power outages will be great.

Rammasun is expected to hit the Philippine area of responsibility in the next 48 hours. For the love of God, stop bickering just for a short while and do something about this problem. If the Philippine government fails to listen to suggestions that could increase chances of preventing critical power outages in Luzon, then it must be the most inutile regime this country ever had in the entire history of this nation.

Photo credit: US NOAA



Photo credits: weather.com

Photo credit: Accuweather

Update 1 Video Credit: westernpacificweather.com

Update 2 Photo - Video Credit: westernpacificweather.com

Related articles:

GMA- Storm signals in various areas of RP as Glenda nears

Need for a Master Plan for Metro Manila

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. Read More from here

How can you help your shopping centers and stores in your community?

Store Security Plan and Procedure

· The first priority of the store and the authorities in the community should be the prevention of egress for any kind of robbery in band groups or individual criminal that will cause potential losses and damage to the store or its store owners. From the store proper, to any kind of parking area, all points of egress for the perpetrators must be stopped.

· The store can install a system of effective security road blocks to deter perpetrators from exiting the premises during escape after a criminal act.

· Alongside locking down the perpetrators of a robbery or similar group, is immediate neutralization anddemobilization, thereby preventing the same perpetrators from causing further harm and damage to life and property within the mall premises.

·  A similarly important security procedure is to place the entire the store or similar facility in NCRPO under heightened alert, considerably increase target hardening for an indefinite extended period once that facility receives a bomb threat. All measures may be taken to prevent, coopt and interdict any criminal act that will follow. After about more than one (1) month, the security may be eased however for practical purposes, random alert and heightened security may be called by the security manager.

·  The security guards that fled the scene of the robbery should be interviewed thoroughly by the SPD and be given authorized leave with pay by the store-PSAs employing them.

Read more here

Web photos of MARTILYO GANG robbery in Metro Manila

The Community-Based Safety, Peace and Security Secretariat entertains all manner of suggestions, recommendations, comments for keeping shopping areas and stores more safe from crime.If you have any topics to discuss please contact us or email at the communitysafetysummit@yahoo.com or call us at +6325058107 or mobile +6391747606451.

Our facebook site is www.facebook.com/communitysafety.peace. Our websites are Safety and Emergency Assistance Network and Community Peace, Security and Safety Summit.

Green

Reposted from http://archangel-jbrl.blogspot.com

The Fleurdelis Green Heights Project - Mindanao - FGH

FGH is going to the use the technology of green and blue roofing, among many other green engineering and design concepts. This is showcased in the world renown township design of an architectural firm for the City of Gwanggyo, South Korea shown in the images below:

Green construction technology is going to break barriers today and in the future. The rapid depletion of green resources around the world will encourage governments and the private sector to push ahead in that direction.

QualityChange.org supports the campaign for Anti-Slavery

Philippines: among the highest incidents of slavery around the world

Without the fact being publicized, the Philippines in reality ranks among the countries with the highest incidences of slavery.

A short walk down red light districts all over the country will reveal too many young and not so young women forcibly taken into unpleasant sex jobs and unable to escape their circumstances.  Some time ago, and perhaps even up to the present, provinces in Southern Luzon became popular for young boys and girls sold to both locals and foreigners in child prostitution - pedophile patrons paid large sums of money to engage in sexual acts painful to these children.

In many homes, farms, factories - not always within the country, very young people of both sexes are forced to work as domestic helpers, menial workers, odd jobbers - some are subjected to rape, brutality and other unconscionable forms of violence by their masters. Many of these young people are barely compensated since they are at the mercy of their very masters and if they have no will to fight, cannot escape their virtual imprisonment. Who is to say that not a single one of these severely oppressed domestic workers have not been kidnapped from their own homes and instead willingly went to work for jobs where they could hardly eat, sleep and earn decent pay?

Many point at India and African states and nearby countries as having the worst numbers of people trapped in slavery. The subtle nuances of slavery in the Philippines does not make the country less answerable to the charge that the government cannot do so much to solve the problem of blatant enslavement of humans and robbing them of their natural rights to exist in relative freedom and enjoy life like their fellow human beings.

In countries where government are more concerned with the fanfare of political vengeance or vendetta, killing prospects of political rivals for future elections, as well as engaging in extreme forms of money making to the exclusion of safeguarding the welfare of the citizens, slavery will thrive and truly prosper.

A true inventory of how many people are victims of slavery in the Philippines will reveal the hurting truth that this country is suffering too many of its children, women and even a huge chunk of the working sector in abject slavery. For this reason, it is categorically claimed that the Philippines is one country where the incidence of slavery in child prostitution, white slavery, forced enslavement in mean and low-paying menial jobs, among many other forms of slavery, is one of the highest in the whole world.

This has to change.

QualityChange.org fervently desires the coming together of more individuals, families, organizations and religious groups, sectoral aggrupations to end slavery in the country and help bring down the statistics of Filipinos being victimized by international slavery rings.