Philippine Paper 2011 International Fire and Rescue Executives Conference, Canada

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International Conference for Fire and Rescue Executives:

Monday 30 April 2011 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Philippines Country Presentation

Fire Chief Superintendent Santiago E. LagunaRegional Director, National Capital RegionBureau of Fire Protection

The Sustainable Political Myth

Philippine Presentation

Topic : “Political Astuteness: The Missing Factor”

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND

The significance to executive posts of a political environment cannot be understated. True enough, fire safety officers, as soon as they begin to rise to higher posts, are completely transformed into political animals.

Pardon the allusion to Darwinism, ladies and gentlemen. Henceforth, from this period of our transformation, we embrace a convoluted world where selected issues otherwise not germane to our profession, suddenly become important. On the other hand, I have often wondered, I hope correctly, that when we qualify and enter into commissionership, or executive or star ranks, we become part of a particularly very exclusive club.

The fact that it takes moving mountains and dividing seas to join the club, demonstrates how exclusive this club is. This is looking from inside the club. From the outside, there is intense public scrutiny, and we are talking here of many publics. A grim reminder that Alvin Toffler’s divided world or micro mass markets has truly come into full fruition, a view shared by a number of Western colleges of Mass Communications, among so many others more.

Recently, one of the City Chief Fire Marshalls under yours truly, was severely chastised in media over a fire incident that took three days to be declared fire out. The poor officer was taunted to be the cause of failure in putting out the blaze because when the incident transpired on a Friday, on March 16, this year 2012, he was allegedly incapable, being inebriated with spirits – according to his detractors from his own Fire Station.

That poor officer is now under investigation by our government. So you have media prodding the government to investigate you and there are political interest groups, among others who all demand something from you.

For us, all executives, the situation is no different and there can be no going around the fact. At a glance, our host organizers perceive that somehow there is something amiss in this dire situation. Political astuteness. The savvy of the smooth political operator. Perhaps it is a correct summation of a vital problem we all face. And so I propose with candor, the hypothesis that it could possibly be resolved by a strong belief system for executives.

A Sustainable Political Myth

It is my own belief that any organization will fall apart without (1) members, (2) leaders, (3) an agency or enclave to govern, and finally, (4) a political myth.

Any executive will stand to lose if he or she is swayed to and fro by the turbulence and disturbance brought about by the winds and of political pressure and influence. Even when political winds remain still and unmoving, there is no guarantee that the reasons behind the moment of quiet are not sinister or scheming.

Thus, as Dr. Eric Fromme likes to remind us all, the survivors of the Holocaust and many prisoners of war in the Gulag, amongst many other similarly placed victims of persecution, kept their sanity by having a philosophy or a spiritual lifeline to cling on to.

Of course, we are not here to relish in the knowledge that when we entered into our role of leaders, we also instantly become parallels of Dr. Eric Fromme’s subjects mentioned earlier. I would rather not debate that point.

Safety, Invention and Innovation: Core of Political Myth

And so, I venture to say that in the face of the seeming lack of political savvy in our present day fire safety community, we have to build upon a strong political myth. The best and most sustainable belief should be based on the key operative concept of safety. It is a universal and an all-embracing concept.

However, in the Macluhan Hierarchy of Needs, safety is in the lower places of the pyramid. So therefore, we invoke something similar to the more aesthetic and the ethereal and we might settle on innovation and modernization; creative adaptation. That puts our political belief in better standing with the higher human needs in Macluhan’s hierarchy.

So now I posit the question to our friends from our host country: The forecast is, there will be mega-earthquakes, particularly hitting the plate Cascadia in California, in 2012 and 2013. It will greatly impact upon the United States eastern seaboard and Canada.

If our political myth is strong, can we be able to successfully circumvent the political pressures and other factors to come up with a good home defense and disaster readiness posture long before the disasters actually arrive?

Or by the time the disasters are here, will it be time for dilly-dallying, haphazard planning and strategizing, cooking up tactics and operational plans to confront the onslaught of problems piling up on over the other?

Surely, there will be enormous demands upon the Fire and Rescue service organizations. But how will our fire safety and rescue personnel respond if they are not fully prepared?

Let us look at the Sendai-Fukushima Experience. Japan was fully prepared to meet earthquakes and corresponding tsunamis. But Japan’s benchmark set for the entire country was earth movement at a Magnitude of 7.5 or a high of 7.9. The killer March 11, 2011 Japan quake was in the level of Magnitude 10. Now we can see what a slight difference in very small numbers are able to do.

My original guesstimate as the announcements kept coming in about the missing and the dead in the heavily struck Japanese prefectures and cities was between 25,000 to 80,000 dead and missing. The actual figure government and media gave is slightly over 13,000 dead and more than 3,000 missing. But then again, I could be terribly wrong.

When the Prime Minister on duty at the time, The Honorable Naoto Kan, instructed the government machinery to ease the pressure in the nuclear reactors, the stumbling block became the private enterprise that owned the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. TEPCO. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. complained that they could not ease the pressure on the three nuclear reactors because the valves just would not open, prompting the reactors to go on meltdown.

By way of political will and pressure, every act designed to increase a nation or a region’s readiness and capacity to meet a disaster, could potentially be blocked. How then do we executives go around this pressure?

By relying merely on wit? And clever scheming? That may be true, but it would be better to build upon our political myth and to fortify our castle of beliefs to avoid situations like that which forced a Prime Minister of a powerful country such as Japan to resign, after the political pressures placed him in a serious bind.

Before the flooding in Thailand gave such a lingering headache to Prime Minister Wingluck Shinawatra, it was predicted that the water basin region of that part of the world should be receiving tremendous amounts of surface run-off water and cause enormous damage to infrastructure built in it. As it is, stronger political will to construct factories along the flow of immense floodwaters prevailed. And so the inconceivable happened.

When disaster in the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina was forecast many years before in Louisiana, nobody in the correct place of influence and power believed in early counter measures. Only the people concerned with safety and the welfare of lives and property fought for preparation for the calamity. Then Katrina struck and it was too late to be pointing fingers. The President of the United States was even blamed for the disaster.

Enfleshing the Political Myth: Philippine Perspective

From the Philippine perspective, we can sufficiently say that we have all the gumption and chutzpah to enflesh a political belief that could possibly be sustained over a long period in our part of the world. How that could be achieved will depend on our strength, and savvy in clinging steadfast to the goals and targets we have set forth. How we get the help and support from friends to sustain our political faith.

Problem Areas and Corresponding Response

We identified key problem areas where political pressure is strongest:

1. New Proposals or Changing, Unifying Policy

2. Disaster Preparedness/Readiness

3. Reducing Risk to Firefighting and Rescue Units

4. Safety of Habitats and the Public

5. Availability of Fingertip Data on Fire, Disaster for Fire Units

6. Availability of Information for the Public

7. Testing and Problem Solving

8. Ease of Fire Break-out Incidence

9. Green Issues

New Proposals or Changing, Unifying Policy

This is absolutely a given. The resistance to change is part of the human system and human nature. For this reason, pressure and influence come to play to stop change or to prevent the dissolution of duplicate policies and or dismantling of existing agencies with no clear functions.

Disaster Preparedness/Readiness

In the case of the recent killer floods in Cagayan de Oro City (left photo) and Iligan City (right photo), located in Northern Mindanao in Southern Philippines, the severe flash floods were forecast beforehand. Long before the incident that caused loss of lives to thousands of residents in these places. Foreign nationals, including a British citizen, were also killed during the flooding.

Clearly, the case becomes an isolated case in the country’s policy of Zero Casualties in Disaster and providing fairly advanced warning to potential victims of calamities. The BFP is one of the lead participating units under the country’s disaster-emergency agency, the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC).

As part of NDRRMC, the fire service has been at the forefront of training citizens in swift evacuations and relocation, long before a predicted disaster will befall their locality. This leads to minimized or zero casualties if the process is faithfully followed.

However, in the Cagayan de Oro incident, the citizens were living in an islet called Isla De Oro situated within Cagayan de Oro River at the very mouth of Sulu Sea. The island lay along the path of predicted deadly surface runoff and floodwaters from the highly mountainous Bukidnon (considered as Mindanao’s small version of the Swiss Alps).

Despite repeated warnings, political decisions allowed the residents to remain in Isla de Oro and suffer their ultimate fate.

The solution to increased disaster preparedness/readiness is to refer to the key policies and decisions as well as the manual of procedure of the NDRRMC. Very little political pressure will triumph over the actual procedures laid out by the NDRRMC on stone, unless the source of the pressure is willing to gamble with the lives of scores of human beings or lose enormous worth of property that otherwise could be saved by proper preparation and increased readiness to confront calamities.

Reducing Risk to firefighting and rescue units

The response to the need to reduce the risk to firefighting and rescue units can be summed up in a few key responses. However, these will be met with corresponding pressure:

1. Proper equipage and sound mind and physique

2. Constant training / retraining and refresher courses

3. Readily available fingertip knowledge / information

4. Reduced risks in buildings and other fire-vulnerable sites

In the photo above at left, law enforcers from the Philippine National Police search and recover survivors and casualties from the Cagayan de Oro River killer floods. Unluckily, no less than three rescuers from the police were also killed during the rescue effort itself.

Safety of Habitats and the Public

Enhancing fire safety inspection and the conduct of fire safety and prevention seminar workshops, attendance in programs organized by fire safety inspectors in different seminars and lectures related to fire safety and prevention is one of the solutions that the fire service has been drumming into the mind of the populace.

This necessitates however that not only the residents will be safe, but most of all their habitats – whether these be daytime or night time habitats – commercial or working buildings or residential buildings.

Herein comes to play, serious pressure not only from government but from a wide range of sectors or interest groups.

Let us walk through the fire service function:

BFP Functions

With its role of safeguarding the lives and properties, BFP is tasked to implement the enforcement of the Fire Code of the Philippines, process and review building plans, strictly implement fire safety inspection of buildings, establishments, structures and facilities covered by the governing law.

The fire service undertakes response to fire alarms and conduct rescue operations when civilians, others, are trapped inside edifices that are on fire or submerged by flooding, among others.

Immediate Fingertip Data– Database and G.I.S.

Fire Prevention as a course required to avoid or deter fire incidents and reduce their aggravating effects by understanding the basic fire safety procedures.

Availability of Information for the Public

Fire Safety Awareness Campaign

Conduct fire safety and prevention seminar workshops

As in many other countries the Philippines holds a nationwide awareness campaign. This is conducted on every March of each year, called the Fire Prevention Month.

Fire protection is a way of securing the community from the onslaught of fire through the implementation of effective fire prevention activities proposed by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP).

a. Intensify the BFP’s program on Ugnayan sa Barangay (community collaboration)

b. Organize auxiliary fire brigades in the barangays, including government and non-government organizations

c. Implement the Kiddie Junior Fire Marshall Project

Faster Testing and Problem Solving – Improved Science and Forensics facilities

Lower incidence of fire or nuclear blowout – better building designs, safe construction materials, safe products, non-toxicity characteristics of products if exposed to fire, etc.

Sources of Pressure

Agency resources. When the fire service was established as a national-scope Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) under the interior department in 1990, the BFP has been faced with many challenges like inadequate or non-availability of serviceable fire trucks neglecting its primary role as a government agency to prevent and suppress fires with damaging effects. Presently, there are 1,809 fire trucks, of which only 1,526 trucks or 84 percent are functional, while the other 293 units or 16 percent need either repair or replacement. In total, only 747 or half of the 1,491 municipalities nationwide are equipped with fire protection preparedness capacity.

Budget constraints. In the past, BFP has been beset by unavailability of funds necessary to strengthen its manpower, facilities and equipment. The Comprehensive Fire Code of the Philippines of 2008 (RA 9514) states that 20 percent of the collections such as taxes, fees, and fines shall be set aside by the concerned city or municipal government to be appropriated with the same exclusively for the use of its operation and maintenance of the local fire station, including the construction and repair of a fire station. The remaining 80 percent shall be remitted to the National Treasury under a trust fund assigned for the modernization of the Bureau.

Public awareness. Working on the theme, “Fire Safety: A Challenge, Concern, and Priority for Everybody,” the Bureau cited some activities that will help to promote awareness within the community. These include of the use of posters / streamers, dissemination of information materials like comics and leaflets; conduct fire safety seminars and workshops; open house of all fire stations, especially for schoolchildren; and the celebration of the Fire Olympics.

Security statistics. In February 2009, the BFP has about 15,616 personnel in the country with 953 officers, 14 (182 non-officer ranks), and 481 non-uniformed personnel.

With the objective of meeting the standards, all BFP personnel should undergo a training series that include the Fire Basic Recruit Course for Fire Officer 1 (FO1); Fire Arson Investigation Course (FAIIC); Fire Protection Supervisory Course; the Officer’s Basic Course (OBC); Officer’s Advanced Course (OAC); and the Officer Senior Executive Course (OSEC).

• Fire Regulations should reflect the need for sustainability
• Political issues may be making structures, including homes less safe from fire
• At the present time, traditional causes of fire have been upstaged by new natural and man-made kinds of risks for firefighting units
• National Agency Regulations on the quality of construction should now be subject to serious study and policy
• A Codified Fire Safety, Rescue and Prevention set of Legislation should be proposed to Congress
• Concerns on: High flammability and Toxicity of new and/or pirated products in fire; other issues
• Multi-Sectoral bodies need to work together
• Private Sector and Community participation is vital to fire safety and fire prevention
• Need for ICFRE as a Standing Conference Group to Lead and co-ordinate response to major issues

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

POSITIVE RESPONSES

MODERNIZATION

FIRE INVESTIGATION FORENSIC LABORATORY

FIRE SCIENCE – LABORATORY CENTER

FIRE OFFICERS ACADEMY

Fire Basic Recruit Course for Fire Officer 1 (FO1); Fire Arson Investigation Course (FAIIC); Fire Protection Supervisory Course; the Officer’s Basic Course (OBC); Officer’s Advanced Course (OAC); and the Officer Senior Executive Course (OSEC)

BUREAU OF FIRE PROTECTION MODERNIZATION MASTER PLAN 2012-2022

BUREAU OF FIRE PROTECTION COMPUTERIZATION

FIRE SAFETY DATA

BASE PROJECT

FIRE SAFETY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND G.I.S. BUILDING

ADDRESSING POLITICAL ISSUES

MULTI-LATERAL PROBLEM SOLVING APPROACH

MULTI-LATERAL POLICY ADVOCACY, REFORMS

INTER AGENCY BUILDING CODE REFORM COMMITTEE

MULTI-SECTORAL COMMITTEE ON BUILDING CODE REFORMS

INTER AGENCY COMMITTEE ON PRODUCT SAFETY STANDARDS (TOXICITY CLUSTER)

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION – RESPONSE TO MAJOR ISSUES

PRIVATE SECTOR PARTICIPATION

THE NATIONAL FIRE BRIGADE VOLUNTEERS OLYMPICS

THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF FIRE PROTECTION OLYMPICS

THE FIRST NATIONAL MULTI-SECTORAL RESCUE OLYMPICS

MULTI SECTOR PARTICIPATION

Significant Terms used:

BFP – Bureau of Fire Protection

DILG – Department of Interior and Local Government