Updated Nov. 29, 2013 12:43 a.m. ET
Marianito "Marianing" Macasa was manning the weather station in Guiuan, the first town struck by Typhoon Haiyan, on Nov. 8. He nearly died there. He tells the WSJ's Kate O'Keeffe how he managed to escape.
GUIUAN, Philippines—The Philippines had access to some of the best technology available to predict the route of Typhoon Haiyan, including Doppler radar systems and satellite images provided by storm-monitoring agencies in the U.S. and Japan. It still got slammed.
Now, the country is planning the acquisition of yet more technology and trying to improve warning systems from the nation's forecasters and emergency-relief officials. Yet the experience of the nation's most front-line forecaster was a reminder of the force that Haiyan packed and the limits of technology in dealing with it.
Marianito "Marianing" Macasa stood near the weather monitoring station he manages in Guiuan, Philippines on Nov. 20 after he narrowly survived the Nov. 8 typhoon. Kate O'Keeffe/The Wall Street Journal
Marianito "Marianing" Macasa was monitoring the Philippine Atmospheric, Geographical and Astronomical Services Administration, or Pagasa, post here on this sandy spit of land sticking out into the Pacific Ocean when the storm was approaching. He first knew it was going to be a big one when he saw satellite images sent from the agency's headquarters on Nov. 6 and spent most of that day advising local officials, including the mayor, to forcibly evacuate residents from low-lying coastal areas.
The first time Mr. Macasa, 48 years old, saw the storm on his own monitor in the Guiuan weather station was at 8 p.m. on Nov. 7, the night before the storm hit. He has been tracking typhoons for 24 years, but the scale shocked him.
"It was the first time I saw that kind of tropical cyclone since I've been tracking them," he said.
It was almost his last.
At about 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 8, Mr. Macasa's colleague told him that water was leaking into his office because of the force of the storm, potentially damaging his books and records.
He went to pick up the items. Around 20 minutes later, with the ocean-facing windows of his office blown out by the storm, the wind began hurling debris and computer equipment around the room. The force was so powerful that he couldn't reopen the door to escape. The combined efforts of the four other people at the station couldn't budge it either.
This blue tower, a state-of-the-art weather monitoring station in Guiuan, Philippines, was damaged by the Nov. 8 typhoon. Kate O'Keeffe/The Wall Street Journal
"I couldn't breathe or open my eyes because of all the dust in the strong wind," Mr. Macasa recalled. "I thought, if I can't get out in four minutes I will die here."
Finally, one of Mr. Macasa's reports, a security guard and two Philippine military officials smashed a hole in the bottom of the wooden door with a fire extinguisher, creating a kind of dog flap. Mr. Macasa squeezed through to safety.
While the Philippines' Doppler radar stations gave the country's meteorologists a reasonably good idea of Haiyan's path and the storm surge that accompanied the typhoon, Filipino forecasters are now working on something better to save more lives.
The set-piece of a planned new network of warning-and-detection equipment is called Lidar, or Light Detection and Ranging. It works by targeting laser beams on approaching storms and interpreting the reflected light to measure speed and direction and then create three-dimensional, high-resolution maps. Alfredo Mahar Lagmay, executive director of the government agency installing the network of Lidar stations, Project NOAH—for Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards—says the system should be fully in place by the end of next year after an initial rollout in some areas two months ago.
The devastated village of Santa Rita on the typhoon-ravaged Samar Island, Philippines, on Nov. 20. European Pressphoto Agency
To make it work, Mr. Lagmay says the new network will need buy-in from local communities. "These warnings must be matched by community action," he said in a telephone interview.
"It isn't learned overnight but requires education. It's a long process," he added.
Essentially, this means going out into the field and convincing local-government officials of the merits of the new system—one by one, if necessary. Ideally, residents will be able to locate their house on digital hazard maps and assess for themselves what they need to do for protection.
"It should be guided by science: methodological and not based on wild guesses," Mr. Lagmay said.
Children paddled a makeshift boat Thursday in Samar province, which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Technology isn't everything, though, as Typhoon Haiyan illustrated so brutally: In all, at least 5,598 people were killed by the storm as of Friday morning and 3.8 million displaced. Ordinary people living in a storm's path need to better know what all the warnings mean.
Many of the victims in the two islands worst-hit, Leyte and Samar, said they didn't catch on to what forecasters meant when they warned that a "storm surge" of wind-driven waves up to seven meters high would slam into some parts of the storm-tossed region. It wasn't a term many people had heard before, even though the area is hit by several typhoons a year.
"Language had a big part to do with it. Nobody knew what 'storm surge' meant,'' said Corazon "Dinky" Soliman, a vice chair on the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
"Maybe we should have said a 'tidal wave' was coming, or something like that, just a teensy little white lie," Ms. Soliman said.
Officials at Pagasa say they will review the way they present their forecasts to make the most important information leap out. Before Haiyan, information about the extent of the storm surge was mentioned only briefly at the bottom of the releases the agency published on its website and distributed to local media.
"In the future, the agency will look into how to improve the present format, how to convey our warnings to the public in such a way that they can be easily understood," said Mario Palafox, a senior weather forecaster at Pagasa.
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