Faulty warnings, deforestation turned Philippine rains 'deadly': study

More than 100 people were killed in landslides and floods in January andFebruary on the country's second-largest island of Mindanao as the northeastmonsoon and a low pressure trough brought downpours.
A study by the World Weather Attribution group found the unsually heavy rainin eastern Mindanao was not "particularly extreme".
But with people living in landslide-prone areas and shortcomings in weatheralerts, the rains became "devastating".
"We can't just blame the rain for the severe impacts," said Richard Ybanez,chief science research specialist at the University of the Philippines'Resilience Institute.
"A range of human factors is what turned these downpours into deadlydisasters."
In the deadliest incident, more than 90 people were killed when the side of amountain collapsed and smashed into a gold mining village on February 6,burying buses and houses.
While climate change was likely one of the drivers of the heavy rain, thereport said scientists were not able to quantify its impact due to the lackof available data.
"However, we did detect a strong trend in the historical data -- compared tothe pre-industrial climate, the heaviest five-day periods of rainfall nowdrop around 50 percent more rainfall on Mindanao island in the December toFebruary period," said Mariam Zachariah of the Grantham Institute at ImperialCollege London.
The scientists found that a higher-than-average rate of poverty in themountainous region had left people vulnerable to the impacts of heavierrainfall, while "intensified deforestation" had increased the risk oflandslides.
"Across the region of study, construction in areas declared 'no-build zones'raises these dangers considerably," the report said.
The report said policies, laws and funding of disaster risk management "havelargely stalled over the past decades" and were concentrated on post-disasterresponse.
For example, automated sensors for rainfall and stream level in the region"have not been recording data since at least 2022", after funding formaintenance and data transmission was cut.
The report also faulted the country's weather forecasts and warnings, which"have limited granularity on local risk and lack instructions on where andwhen to evacuate".
"Evacuations from high-risk locations were carried out when the island washit by the rainfall in late January. However, many people were still inharm's way," said Ybanez.
"It is critical that both early warning systems and assessment of landslide-prone areas are improved to avoid similar disasters in the future," he said.
The report also warned that the recent rains would have been "more extreme"were it not for the El Nino weather phenomenon causing drier conditionsacross the country.
The tropical archipelago nation -- which is ranked among the most vulnerablecountries to the impacts of climate change -- is usually affected by around20 major storms a year, reports BSS.