Tag: typhoon

November Blessings & Lessons

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in agroforestry, Container Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Green Roofs

By Michelle Domocol

Back to Inflourish: Cebu

The severe storms in early November hit Healing Present buildings and forests with little damage.  Thanks to the dense forests and gardens that surround the buildings, we had light property damage and staff remained safe. All the buildings and water systems were well-protected. Our fencing was partially damaged because bordering neighbors remove their trees or they don’t plant trees. When neighbors remove thick vegetation and mature 100+ year-old trees, they lose effective protection from lethal typhoon winds. They also lose massive roots and healthy soil that easily absorb floodwaters. 

In Healing Present, we take additional measures for disaster prevention and disaster recovery. Here are some major safety moves we make in Healing Present:

1. Fortified forests. We take care of hectares of dense, continuous forest with giant bamboos and mature trees. These  surround each building and naturally protect us from storms.  We cultivate and  plant young trees in bare areas around the gardens and forest fragments. We only have a minimal amount of cement paths and steps that cover the soil. We also strengthen our soil with groundcovers, shrubs, and amendments to improve its structure. The soil dependably absorbs heavy rains so floods are not common.  Our dense, diverse forest slows down storm winds. A tropical storm can possess wind as fast as 80+ kilometers per hour. A typhoon destroys with winds up to 180+ kilometers per hour.  With that colossal force, we want our multi-hectare forest of massive branches and trunks to block and break up that wind. 

The night of November 4, I watched silhouettes of trees shake, resist, and slow the rapid gusts of typhoon winds blow through Healing Present.  Our oldest trees like mga Dakit, Nangka, Talisay, Siar, Narra, and Tipo were our best defenders. Yes, the next morning, we found hundreds of thin tips of branches broken on the ground. But the trees–leaves, trunks, and main branches–remained whole.  After seeing the damaged property fences, we hope to fortify our fencing and make it resistant to damage.  But that can be quite difficult when our neighbors do not plant any wind breakers like trees.  Still, we plan mature fast growing bamboos  near the fences. If you are interested in preserving typhoon-fighting species or growing them in your community, here are some heavy hitters:

  • Acacia (Acacia mangium)
  • Agoho (Casuarina equisetifolia)
  • Baguilumbang (Reutealis trisperma)
  • Bani (Pongamia pinnata)
  •  Bagtikan (Parashorea malaanonan) 
  • Bignay (Antidesma bunius) 
  • Bitaog (Calophyllum inophyllum)
  • Dagang (Anisoptera thurifera),
  • Kamagong (Diospyros blancoi)
  • Katmon (Dillenia philippinensis)
  • Lauan (Shorea malibato)
  • Narra (Pterocarpus indicus)
  • Pili (Canarium ovatum)

Our neighbors were not as lucky.  They haven’t maintained any forests or tree orchards around their houses. They regularly cut down their trees for charcoal and building material.  As a result, annually, their homes are directly hit by heavy rains and rapid winds. Their roofs fly off –all because they live in open fields and valleys with less vegetation.

2. Water and Food storage.  At Healing Present, we also add protocols and structures when electricity, water, and food supplies temporarily stop during a severe storm or natural disaster.  We installed rainwater tanks for an extra supply of water.  Every building has an emergency kit with extra food, drinking water, and first aid medical supplies.  We installed fire hoses and fire extinguishers incase a fire occurs during a severe lighting storm or electrical accident. Each building also a set of solar radios, emergency solar flashlights, and solar phone chargers, and walkie-talkies.  The equipment allows us with maintain our safety, health, cellphone communication, and ability to address emergency repairs during a disaster. We plan to also add solar cookers and solar panels so if our main electricity lines fail, we still have power for communication, food, and drinking water.

In alarming contrast, the open streets and damaged river systems of Cebu City are highly defenseless from typhoons or storms. Urban residents are told to call emergency agencies but those have no centralized phone numbers. They haphazardly have five or more cellphone numbers that are often not working. Dangerously inadequate and inaccessible. Storm winds can become destructively faster as they blow through the open cement roads and hit weak buildings. During storms, heavy rains continue to fill roads with no substantial drainage piping or absorption.  In effect, the roads become disgusting cement slides or pools filled with sewage water, floating cars, and pollution.  If you want to play a sad game while you’re driving in Cebu, try to count the amount of clean drainage vents, holes, or sewers  on the roads.  You’ll quickly see the new road widening projects don’t include upgraded drainage.  You’ll see skinny rectangular drainage openings blocked with garbage.  Every year we have a rainy season with increasing storms and yet every year we don’t see improved storm drainage or street cleaning. 

Here are other techniques that can help stop the yearly destruction of urban housing, electricity, water infrastructure, and lives:

Gardens and Vegetated parks.  A continuous network Cebu City street gardens and roofs with gardens of grass, groundcovers, vines and containerized plants could capture rainwater and absorb heavy rains. More large parks with trees and groundcovers in Cebu City would increase rain absorption and decrease flooding. Other types of natural parks could restore or construct wetlands and mangroves that act as defensive buffers against heavy storms and typhoons. As many Cebuanos know, we pay a very polluted and destabilizing price for the highways, malls, houses, and casinos built over Cebu’s original wetlands and mangroves.

Vegetated Parks
Roof Gardens

Places like IT park have a strong network of drainage channels and densely planted gardens properly control storm winds and rains. They divert and slow down the flow of stormwater in the their streets. In Cebu City, Healing Present has an office in Lahug.  In the back of the office is an old pool  converted into a sunken garden full of containerized plants.  These plants have the power to absorb heavy rains.  For more than ten years, this simple sunken garden has prevented any flood damage in our office building.  Our neighbors with the standard cemented landscapes can’t say the same. 

Pool converted into sunken garden with absorbent plants

Hopefully we can fight for long-standing, private and public storm disaster prevention and recovery measures at all scales– for our homes, workplaces, urban centers and rural uplands.

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Resilience and Recovery after Typhoon Odette

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in agroforestry, Gardening and Landscape Design

By Michelle Domocol

Back to Inflourish: Cebu

At Healing Present, we continue to rebuild and recover from the destruction and aftermath of Typhoon Odette (Photo 1). Luckily with amazing supervision from the founder and the farm operations crew, we are making progress. We have deep gratitude for the Healing Present staff who continue to repair, rebuild, and replant the portions of the farm/forest that were damaged. Sylvia, Mario, Ariel, Jaime, Jerry, Marvin and Yeng Yeng all  rebuild and adapt Healing Present to this era of more severe storms and lethal wind velocities.

Photo 1. Building re-construction and repair after the typhoon. Photos from Sylvia Suson.

Typhoon Odette left us with detached roofing, broken windows, fallen vegetation and disrepair that results from 189-mph winds. The damage was extensive and heartbreaking. The damage also prompted us to refine our strategies to mitigate typhoons.

It would be misguided to rebuild and re-vegetate the farm without considering the new characteristics of this past typhoon.

Here are some of the overarching management questions that help guide our typhoon recovery:

  • How do we rebuild while considering the new severity of typhoons?
  • Is there anything we can improve our current mitigation systems?
  • How do we cultivate trees near our facilities will not fall and cause damage?
  • Are our trees still resistant to these new, stronger typhoons?
  • Is it possible to manage a forest patch that can withstand the next storm, flood?

In this article, I share an excerpt of our post-typhoon evaluation. This excerpt focuses on tree management and windbreak systems. Improving our tree care and windbreak is one of the many important land management strategies to strengthen our typhoon preparedness.

Photo 2. Periodic tree and windbreak evaluations at Healing Present
Tree care & Windbreak Evaluation

At Healing Present, we plant feature trees, forest patches and agroforestry windbreaks to protect crops and reduce wind damage to our facilities (Photo 2 and 3). As mentioned in a previous article, windbreaks are an agroforestry technique that:

  • create favorable microclimates,
  • decrease wind erosion,
  • increase biodiversity,
  • stabilize soil,
  • buffer noise, and
  • screen undesirable views.

Windbreaks are also a living combination of trees, shrubs and groundcover that may need refinement or improvement to suit our changing environmental challenges.

Here are 5 questions to help evaluate the effectiveness of our windbreaks and other trees:

1) Are the trees and shrubs in our windbreaks planted too densely? Sometimes when windbreak plants are too close together, they block incoming winds. This block can cause too much wind turbulence in the areas you’d like to protect. A protected area can include a building or vegetable beds. Effective windbreaks are more permeable and reduce windspeed; rather than stopping it entirely.

2) Are we giving the trees near our buildings enough rooting space? In general, large and small trees with enough room to grow a wide and deep fan of roots can be less vulnerable to high winds.

3) Are the trees near our buildings healthy and possess good structure? Perhaps Healing Present can decrease the amount of uprooted vegetation by paying more attention to the large trees that are planted close to structures. Ideally, these should have healthy trunks and central leaders. This can be managed with a consistent pruning program. This includes trees that survived the typhoon. Broken branches must be pruned so they don’t fall or cause further damage in a future storm.

4) Are there any isolated or potentially hazardous still standing near the existing buildings? If so, we need to monitor them. Isolated trees could be planted with more vegetation so they buffered from future wind events. Do any trees that survived the typhoon show signs of decay? Old trees showing signs of decay, disease or damaged roots may need to be monitored or removed if hazardous.

Photo 3. Evaluation and care for forest patches and featured trees near buildings.

5) Are we still planting the best wind-resistant species? Some of our trees had medium levels of wind-resistance because it suited storm pressure.  Perhaps we need to integrate some more high wind-resistance species to match the new, supertyphoon characteristics in our area.

When selecting windbreak species, a variety of species, ages, and layers of vegetation is preferred. Local observation is key to effective selection. We can check our property as well as neighbors’ properties to observe which species withstood the storm. Online lists of wind-resistant trees are great, but not always helpful. These recommendations don’t always match your specific climate and soil conditions. At Healing Present, if we notice a species that consistently withstood the typhoon, they may be a great candidate for windbreak re-plantings.

Photo 4. Forest fragments, denuded hillsides, and mixed agricultural areas of the Cebu uplands. Photo taken prior to Typhoon Odette.

Undoubtedly, systemic disaster preparedness is much more complex than evaluating windbreaks and planting wind-resistant vegetation. But it is a significant component to our recovery and repair. On a broader scale, disaster mitigation would be more effective with broader, structural forces like a cohesive national preparedness strategy.

Recovery would be exponentially easier if the Cebu uplands (Photo 4) and urban lowlands were strategically forested or designed to reduce the wind velocity of torrential rains and typhoons. If the upland forests contained continuous stretches of healthy, strongly rooted vegetation, residents could be more protected from typhoon winds. If we, as a global community were more adept at battling climate change, the severity of our storms would be less lethal. The “if only’s” are numerous and layered. And I lament the inactive collective.

Nevertheless, Healing Present is grateful for our operations team and the landscape management strategies that could help us recover from future typhoons.