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Volume
14, Number 22 |
Starting on the next issue (even as this one isn't done) Special photo report: US Southern Command flies disaster relief missions Petaquilla gold mine gets environmental permit, neighbors flooded out  The Caldera River floods in Boquete. Photo by RF Boyd Elemental forces
If
you have ever
tried to swim against a rip tide or stand up to a large ocean wave crashing on a beach, you
will know how puny you are compared to an elemental force. Those who
adhere to a philosophy that advocates the conquest of nature and who put
this into practice by building in certain of Panama's flood plains may
have learned the lesson at great pecuniary expense in recent
days.
Let me not be too much of a snob, or too insensitive. I am not a builder, and I own no real estate. I did, however, serve for many years on a building code appeals board. Before that I held an elected post that made certain decisions about city zoning, planning and public works in which the issue of flood plains would come into play. I know a bit about the subject from those American Rust Belt perspectives, but then my exposures to other cultures and situations have taught me that there are other ways of looking at it. There are annual flood plains, 10-year flood plains, 50-year flood plains, 500-year flood plains and so on, which are vaguely estimated by geologists, meteorologists and hydrologists. A 10-year flood plain is a plain along a river that is inundated by that river overflowing its banks about once a decade, and in general those who build their houses in such places are fools. But if you are desperately poor and have to live in a little shack situated wherever you can get away with putting it up, a frequently flooded area may be your only option. Or you may, like the Embera and Wounaan, have a way of life that takes advantage of certain very real conveniences inherent in villages located close to the water and adapts to the obvious hazards by building houses on stilts. You might also be rich enough to afford an expendable home right on the river, and prefer to live with that risk. So not everyone who builds in a flood plain is ignorant or stupid. Private decisions about such matters are generally balanced by public policy concerns. Do we really want people living where we know that sooner or later the government is going to have to send out a rescue team, or open up an emergency evacuation shelter? Forget about global climate change for a moment. Do enough urban construction upstream in a watershed and the ground won't soak up as much water, so there will be more runoff and a higher risk of flooding. A 100-year flood plain, estimated as such by the records of the last few centuries, might now be a 25-year flood plain if there has been a lot of development upstream in the past decade. The places where flood waters often reach are fairly easy to identify, but the places to which the waters only occasionally rise are less identifiable with any precision about frequency. Consider those kinds of factors, and then add the wild card of climate change. I don't make these points in order to blame flood victims on the one hand, or to blame God on the other. Nature is a major player in most disasters, but human behavior is also a big factor. Once our current crisis has subsided, there needs to be a process of discussions and decisions about reducing the damage in the next one. Policies about zoning, the placement of public infrastructures, insurance and emergency preparedness ought to be on the agenda. Any decisions will necessarily be based on incomplete information. But that's then, and right now there's an urgent relief effort underway. Collections are being taken for those who have been displaced, reconnaisance and relief missions are ongoing and neighbors are helping neighbors. A US Navy frigate, the USS Samuel B. Roberts, happened to be at Rodman when the flooding hit, and the US Southern Command has graciously lent one of that ship's SeaHawk helicopters to fly over isolated rural communities and identify those areas most desperately in need. No doubt there will be further relief on the way from the US military, as there are many communities in Chiriqui and Bocas that have had their transportation links to the rest of Panama cut off and emergency supplies will have to come in by helicopter. Civic groups, foreign embassies and the Panamanian government are collecting critical relief supplies. Bottled water, baby formula, toilet paper, disposable diapers, mattresses, blankets, cleaning supplies and canned food are the highest priorities. The most dramatic flood damage has been in the Chiriqui highlands. However, the road to and roads within Bocas del Toro have been washed away in dozens of places and it will take repair crews weeks or months to make them passable again. The water treatment plant in Chitre has been shut down by flood damage. People have been flooded out of their homes in parts of Colon province. Across the country at least eight people have died, some in mudslides and some drowned in flood waters. More than 5,000 people have been driven from their homes, most of which have been damaged by polluted flood water and some of which have been completely destroyed. And the rains are still falling. I write these words from a place in Panama's so-called "Dry Arc," where it has been raining almost all day long and the clothes that I hung out on the clothesline some 36 hours ago have yet to dry. (No big deal --- just a few extra rinse cycles on the trusty solar-powered laundry system.) Oh, and we just had a visitor --- a field mouse driven indoors from his soggy habitat scurried across the computer room floor. It's far worse in the city, where heavy rains drive rats out of their flooded nests and into buildings to look for shelter in similar fashion. Yes, here in San Carlos we have also had snakes and land crabs coming into the house. So far they have been startling but harmless. (At The Panama News office, which is in the Girl Scouts headquarters building, scout leaders have never looked very favorably on my suggestion that giving a boa constrictor the run --- or rather, the slither --- of the premises would keep the rodent invasions in check.) I like rainy season and I'm not the only one, but those of you who have never been to Panama and are thinking of coming here to retire do need to consider the phenomenon of the tropical cloudburst. Just because you won't see one when you visit here in the dry season doesn't mean that they aren't a part of life on the isthmus. The elements are a given. They are survived by bending or flowing with them, channeling them in another direction, or seeking secure shelter with a good book to read. Although it may seem otherwise at times like these, nature is not our enemy. She's our mother. *
* *
This
issue takes us to the streets of Panama City, rural Burma and Mars. Our
Cool Internet sites are, as a whole, cooler than usual. We consider
domestic violence both as a global public health issue and something
that brought protesters onto the streets of Panama City, and meet a young
woman for whom beating on people is a way of life.
Are the biggest stories the economic ones? This time we take a deeper look than the other Panamanian media have at what first looked like a Ponzi scheme that rose above garden variety only by virtue of its size and the ostentation of its promoter, but now appears to be something far more sinister. Do you have socialistic attitudes that identify Petaquilla Minerals, its promoter Richard Fifer and its illegal Molejon gold mine as the ugly faces of the capitalist system? Well, it seems that all of them and those are at long last getting their comeuppance --- by way of capitalism's market forces. These are interesting times for politics junkies. In this issue Balbina works for the black vote, there was an unprecedented indigenous summit that said some harsh things about the current administration's policies, and the presidential candidates squared off in the first televised debate of the season. So what's your pleasure --- birding or boxing? We have both of those this time. And what do you do with a star apple, other than eat it as is? We have a suggestion for that, too. Enjoy. Eric
Jackson PS: People who are on The
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week before this front page was uploaded. Send me an email
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