With the two-year anniversary of Typhoon Morakot just around the corner, President Ma Ying-jeou on the morning of July 30 attended the International Conference on Post-Morakot Homeland Reconstruction with Sustainable Development, which is being held to examine the government's management of the emergency. The president described the handling of the event as "insufficient preparation, difficulties in rescue, rapid relocation, and appropriately paced reconstruction." President Ma emphasized that the nation needs to learn from its experience in facing this adversity and prepare for all contingencies in the event of natural disasters.
The conference was held at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung City. Among those in attendance were Lin Join-sane (林中森; CEO of the Executive Yuan's Morakot Post-Disaster Reconstruction Council), Dr. Jenn-Chuan Chern (陳振川; Deputy CEO of the Morakot Post-Disaster Reconstruction Council), Obay Ataw Hayawan (夏錦龍; Deputy Minister of the Council of Indigenous Peoples), Lieutenant General Yan De-fa (嚴德發; Deputy Commander of the Army Command Headquarters), Lu Fang-chuan (呂芳川; Director of Tzu Chi Buddhist Compassion Relief Foundation's Charitable Affairs Development Office), Robert Hsieh (謝昭隆; Deputy Secretary General of the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China), Torbors Chyuan (全國成; CEO of World Vision Taiwan's Typhoon Morakot Reconstruction Program), as well as leaders from other government agencies, representatives from private groups, and a host of experts and scholars from both home and abroad.
In remarks to the conference, President Ma stated that Taiwan has a unique geography and climate, making it susceptible to typhoons, flooding, and earthquakes. In fact, Taiwan is one of the places in the world that experiences the greatest number of natural disasters, he said. Two years ago Typhoon Morakot dumped nearly 3,000 millimeters of rain on parts of the island, resulting in the deaths of nearly 700 people, the president noted. He added that a look back on the rescue operations reveals areas that still need to be examined and improved upon.
President Ma commented that the handling of disasters involves four stages: prevention, rescue, relocation, and reconstruction. In terms of prevention, evacuation of residents in dangerous areas was not carried out until Typhoon Morakot bore down on the island and the disaster was in progress, which was too late. It was impossible for some people to get out of dangerous areas, and this resulted in considerable loss of life and property damage. The president then compared this to the response to Typhoon Parma, which hit Taiwan less than two months later. The government evacuated 7,863 people while the typhoon was still heading for the island. Then in September 2010, some 16,584 people were evacuated ahead of Typhoon Fanapi. As a result, no major injuries or deaths were caused by those storms, he said. This shows us that Typhoon Morakot caused such enormous damage and loss of life only because evacuation efforts didn't start until after the storm had arrived.
President Ma expressed his belief that the effective disaster prevention measures adopted for Typhoon Parma, Typhoon Fanapi, and several other storms highlight the importance of "emphasizing disaster prevention and evacuation over rescue." This also shows that the enormous damage caused by Typhoon Morakot took place mainly because disaster prevention steps were taken too late, and not because the government's rescue and relief operations proceeded too slowly. For instance, the president said, the weather conditions on the day of the storm were bad enough to warrant the grounding of helicopters. Nonetheless, the government still made efforts to rescue those put in peril by the storm and over 5,000 helicopter sorties were carried out, helping to rescue over 13,000 people.
The president added that the lesson learned from the Typhoon Morakot disaster is that regardless of the rescue tools at our disposal or the advanced state of our rescue teams, the most prudent course of action is to evacuate residents from dangerous areas in a timely manner prior to disasters developing. Therefore, disaster prevention must receive more emphasis than rescue, adding that we must "hope for the best, but prepare for the worst," "prepare for disasters in advance and deploy troops with an eye to disaster preparedness, and ensure readiness for rescue operations." President Ma noted that evacuation preparations must be commenced from the time that typhoon watches are issued, and this is especially the case for persons residing in dangerous areas. At the same time, the public needs to accept the concept that life is the most precious thing, as steps can always be taken to deal with property losses. Once people embrace this concept, he said, it will become easier to evacuate people in advance of disasters.
With regard to relocation, President Ma mentioned that at the time of Typhoon Morakot, the government immediately used military bases, schools, and facilities offered by private groups to provide shelter for displaced persons from disaster areas. Subsequently, the government adopted a principle of enabling residents to "leave the disaster area but remain in their villages," and zeroed in on the construction of permanent housing as the main focus of reconstruction policy. The government provided the land, while the private sector built the housing. This created a place for victims of the disaster to live, and also helped these individuals and households rebuild their lives.
President Ma furthermore stated that the government not only has placed emphasis on rebuilding homes for those affected by the disaster, but also has promoted the reconstruction of each area's culture, thereby enabling residents of each community to rebuild a culture belonging to them, and to pass it along to a new generation. This "spiritual reconstruction" helped people to acclimate themselves to new environments and better deal with uncertainties about the future, he said. On another front, economic reconstruction is aimed at providing residents of each community with job opportunities and developing industries unique to each community, the president noted, adding that this is what will enable people to truly live and work in peace and contentment. President Ma stated that the cooperative model in building permanent housing for victims of the Typhoon Morakot disaster became known as the "Taiwan model" when Taiwan erected 1,200 permanent homes for victims of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. This experience was even shared with former US President Bill Clinton, he said.
President Ma also mentioned that in the wake of Typhoon Morakot some people called on him to issue an emergency decree, but in view of the fact that the substantive content of an emergency decree is already provided for in the Disaster Prevention and Response Act, it would be sufficient to respond in accordance with said Act without issuing an emergency decree. The Act, he said, already authorized the government to carry out rescue missions and rebuilding. Subsequently, the government on August 15 established the Morakot Post-Disaster Reconstruction Council and at the end of August passed the Special Act Governing Reconstruction after Typhoon Morakot, which provides a legal basis and a funding mechanism to carry out relief and reconstruction work. At present, most reconstruction work is expected to be completed before the end of this year, the president stated, adding that some of the more complex and large-scale engineering projects will hopefully be completed early next year.
Lastly, the president switched to English and reiterated to the foreign scholars and experts attending the conference that Typhoon Morakot served as an important lesson to Taiwan and that we will learn from this experience. The president said that in the future all types of disaster prevention, rescue, and reconstruction work will bring positive reflection and inspiration. After completing his address, the president, along with key individuals attending the event, lit a “light of hope” to symbolize how the victims of Typhoon Morakot are now marching toward a new life.