Last weekend the Philippines was hit by Tropical Storm Ketsana (locally called Ondoy). While the island nation is no stranger to these types of weather events, it was clear in talking with the people in the Philippines that this was not expected at all. It is the wet season there right now so tropical storms and heavy rains are par for the course. No one had any warning that this particular storm would dump as much rain as it did - over 16 inches within 6 hours. To give you some idea of the magnititude, the Philippines typically gets 13 inches of rain for the entire month of September.
Our team was obviously very concerned about the welfare of the people there as well as the future of our upcoming mission. There was much discussion on how we could help - whether we should stick with the original plans or redeploy the team to the impacted region. In the end, we decided to stay the course and look for other ways to help while we are there. IBM will also be considering deploying the next CSC team to the Philippines to help with the recovery efforts. The woman who is our in-country coordinator had her own home flooded and family displaced yet she is still committed to being there to support us when our team arrives next week. Her resiliency is remarkable to say the least.
So much of our pre-deployment training has been focused on the role of international aid in developing countries - it is interesting to see how this plays out. The United States has pledges $100,000 to relief funds thus far while the EU has pledged 2M Euros. In both cases it is unclear how these funds will arrive and how they will be used. For our part, IBM Philippines is coordinating efforts currently to collect and distribute food and supplies for the Gawad Kalinga sites. We are also working to stand up and run the Sahana Disaster Management System which is the open-source application developed after the 2004 Tsunami.
I signed up for an adventure and it certainly seems like I'm in store for one now.
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