MANILA, March 1, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Faulty warning systems, poverty and
deforestation of mountains in the southern Philippines turned recent
unseasonably heavy rains into deadly disasters, scientists said in a report
Friday.

More than 100 people were killed in landslides and floods in January and
February on the country's second-largest island of Mindanao as the northeast
monsoon and a low pressure trough brought downpours.

A study by the World Weather Attribution group found the unsually heavy rain
in eastern Mindanao was not "particularly extreme".

But with people living in landslide-prone areas and shortcomings in weather
alerts, 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 deadly
disasters."

In the deadliest incident, more than 90 people were killed when the side of a
mountain 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, the
report said scientists were not able to quantify its impact due to the lack
of available data.

"However, we did detect a strong trend in the historical data -- compared to
the pre-industrial climate, the heaviest five-day periods of rainfall now
drop around 50 percent more rainfall on Mindanao island in the December to
February period," said Mariam Zachariah of the Grantham Institute at Imperial
College London.

The scientists found that a higher-than-average rate of poverty in the
mountainous region had left people vulnerable to the impacts of heavier
rainfall, while "intensified deforestation" had increased the risk of
landslides.

"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 "have
largely stalled over the past decades" and were concentrated on post-disaster
response.

For example, automated sensors for rainfall and stream level in the region
"have not been recording data since at least 2022", after funding for
maintenance 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 and
when to evacuate".

"Evacuations from high-risk locations were carried out when the island was
hit by the rainfall in late January. However, many people were still in
harm'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 conditions
across the country.

The tropical archipelago nation -- which is ranked among the most vulnerable
countries to the impacts of climate change -- is usually affected by around
20 major storms a year.