Did typhoons lead to martial law?

APART from the Communist insurgency and the deterioration of peace and order, it was the natural phenomenon called typhoons that in the 1970s may have helped in the imposition of martial law in the Philippines. Because of our location on this planet facing the turbulent Pacific Ocean, nature often has impacted our politics.

Even before global warming that some scientists suspect may have increased the intensity and frequency of Pacific typhoons (called hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean), the Philippines already had endured numerous super -typhoons. We are visited by an average of 20 typhoons a year, bringing with them torrential rains and howling winds, and the creation of deadly floods.

In their wake would be thousands of lives lost, and many more people rendered homeless and helpless. The damage to properties, agricultural land and livestock, public works such as roads and bridges, and to the environment are huge and their adverse effects usually linger for years.

In the past five decades, two different years stand out as having the most destructive typhoons in Philippine history. One was the year 1970 and the other was 1972. Is it any wonder that these years brought in a worsening of the peace and order situation, and eventually the imposition of Martial Law and the 14-year Marcos dictatorship? Historians would do well to go deeper into the economic and political repercussions of super-typhoons during these crucial years.

The year 1970, for instance, saw the arrival of a quintuple of typhoons. First was the pair of tropical storm Oyang (international name Fran) and Pitang (Georgia), which hit the country within days of each other from September 4-11, 1970. They generated a tremendous amount of rainfall, such that Filipinos had begun likening their plight to the Biblical Noah who endured rains falling upon the earth for 40 days and nights.

The Philippines had barely recovered from these two storms whenit was walloped again with another set of even stronger typhoons, Sening (Joan) and Titang (Kate), from October 13-20, 1970. These four storms combined to wreak $87 million worth of damage, particularly in Manila, Bulacan, Pampanga, and Aurora in Eastern Luzon.

But it wasn’t over yet. Supertyphoon Yoling (Patsy), arrived a month later. Its 220-kilometer per hour sustained winds were so strong that they blew off roofs from houses, tore off windshields and hoods from parked cars, and actually made buildings sway. The killer storm was so severe that the people who lived then in Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Central Luzon, and Bicol regions still remember tp this day the trauma it brought.

A report from the US Agency for International Development gives a vivid account of Yoling’s arrival on November 19, 1970:

“Driving rains commenced about eight in the morning with increasingly heavy gusts of winds…Winds rapidly increased. About 10:45, power failed. Screaming winds carried heavy objects such as sheet roofing and flying timbers through the air. As one eyewitness put it, ‘galvanized rooftops sailed away like flying carpets’. Offices were ordered closed but roads were already blocked by floods, downed trees, wires, and stalled autos.”

Total damage from just these five typhoons in 1970 (there were other tropical storms that year but these were the most destructive) totalled $186 million. Thousands of hectares of crops were damaged including rice, coconuts, and bananas. About 2,474 people were killed and two million were rendered homeless.

For the year 1972, the storms that arrived had lower wind speeds compared with those in 1970. But what they lacked in strength they made up for in the amount of rains they poured into the country.

Typhoon Konsing (Ora) in June 23-26, 1972, recorded sustained winds of only 150 kilometers per hour but it dropped almost 10 inches of rainfall in a 24-hour period. It flooded various parts of the Calabarzon, Central Luzon, and the Bicol region, destroying crops and livestock.

The people were still picking themselves up when Typhoon Gloring (Rita) came to the Pacific in July, 1972. It didn’t hit the Philippines directly but was nonetheless the perfect storm as it benefitted from the tropical cyclogenesis during that month, warm sea conditions, and the lingering presence of other storms, including Edeng (Susan) that hit us earlier on July 5-8.

Gloring’s large size enhanced the monsoon flow all over Luzon. Continuous rains were recorded July 17 to 21, and with the torrent, the rivers, dams, and dikes overflowed. Floodwaters cut a swath through Central Luzon, destroying everything in their paths. Manila was flooded, and so was Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, and Pangasinan. Damage was estimated at almost half a billion US dollars, hundreds were killed, and millions more affected by the typhoon.

Two years of cataclysmic storms did tremendous damage to the Philippine economy. They brought people to untold levels of poverty. Did this help the Communists convert more people to their cause? Did the disasters weaken the Marcos government to the extent that the power-hungry oligarchs and the Reds saw an easy target? Did Marcos finally declare Martial Law after realizing that this was the best way to control things with all the threats the country was facing?

These are not easy questions to answer but we hope that today’s students, historians, and academicians will endeavor to do deeper research and attempt to answer these questions in a fair and balanced manner.