Natural Disaster In The Philippines

According to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), a disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a society causing widespread human, material or environmental losses which exceed the ability of affected society to cope based on their resources and capacities. Strong earthquakes, cyclones, floods and drought are some of these disasters bringing corresponding risks.

Disaster risk is the potential disaster losses in lives, health status, livelihoods, assets and services, which could occur to a society over some specified future time (NDRRMP). Basically, risk is the expected losses of lives, persons injured, property damaged and economic activity disrupted due to a particular hazard for a given area

The country is composed of 7,107 islands having a long coastline which makes it vulnerable to sea-level rise. The archipelago is also geographically located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, making it vulnerable to earthquake, tsunamis and volcanic hazards by having 220 volcanoes, 22 of which are classified as active. It also lies along the Western Pacific Basin, a center of different extreme climatic conditions such as monsoons, thunderstorms, intertropical convergence zones, typhoons and El Nino with an average of 20 tropical cyclones. The Philippines recorded a total of 373 disaster events triggered by natural hazards from 1905 to 2006 or about 4 incidents per year (OFDA/CRED, 2006). Hence, the Philippines is exposed to both natural and human-induced hazards due to geological, meteorological, hydrological, oceanic, biological, and technological sources, sometimes acting in combination

The damage on 1978 with 15 disasters cost at the highest with PhP70 billion. The major disasters with high direct damage are the Luzon earthquake in 1990 (about PhP66 billion), the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991 (about PhP33 billion) and the droughts in 1984 and 1987. This resulted to the declines in gross domestic product (GDP) at estimated value of (a) 1.2 percent due to the 1990 Luzon earthquake; (b) 0.9 percent due to the Pinatubo eruption; and (c) 0.5 percent average due to typhoons every year. Based on the NDRRMP, between 1990 and 2006, the annual direct damages caused by disasters amount to PhP20 billion every year or roughly 0.5% of the GDP on the average, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). However, the losses caused by tropical storm Ondoy and typhoon Pepeng in 2009 is estimated to be about 2.7% of the GDP that year