Most Seoulites might not have realized its ferocity, but Typhoon Bolaven left deep and wide scars on the peninsula’s southern provinces. Little wonder: the maximum instantaneous wind speed of this storm, named after a Laotian plateau, was the fifth highest Korea has ever seen.
Hot on its heels was Typhoon Tembin (the Japanese word for the zodiac sign Libra), which had a radius half the size of the preceding storm but brought twice as fierce downpours. Media reports say the southwestern city of Mokpo could be like New Orleans in 2005 in a worst-case scenario, a reference to the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged U.S. city.
The back-to-back typhoons can hardly be said as being unique to this year. But meteorologists note on the increasing frequency and growing intensity of various natural phenomena experienced here, such as summer heat, droughts, typhoons and floods, as this peninsula, which once boasted a temperate climate and four distinct seasons, is rapidly resembling some Southeast Asian nations.
Few deny all this results from climate change caused by global warming. In other words, unusual weather will no longer be the exception but the norm. And different natural environments require different countermeasures.
In the short run, the government should of course hurry to help the victims, mostly farmers and fishermen, recover from the 13th and 14th tropical storms of this year, while preparing to prevent damages from the potential 15th or more. Especially important in this regard is not to repeat past mistakes caused by the administrative expediency of officials. Some owners of orchards and aquatic farms, for instance, had to keep fallen fruit and dead fish for nearly a month before officials confirmed the damage.
This is ridiculous. The central government should allow local officials to take pictures of the damaged crops for use as evidence. It also ought to relax the currently rigid aid eligibility rules to jack up the compensation ratio to at least 70 to 80 percent of losses, from the present 10 to 20 percent. Also necessary are the provision of soft-term loans for the storm-hit growers and the enforcement of eased regulations for crop damage insurance by underwriters. All these measures will also help urban consumers, the victims of rocketing fruit and vegetable prices.
More important, if not more urgent, are longer-term measures to cope with chronic natural calamities.
The relevant ministries should first toughen safety standards for various infrastructure facilities, including roads, walls, towers, embankments and even signboards, to prevent them from turning into lethal weapons amid more frequent and increasingly fierce storms and rain. Also necessary is the prevention of power blackouts, which can trigger secondary disasters. Last but not least, the authorities should come up with custom-made disaster prevention steps for most regions, considering not only their physical and structural conditions but also their geographical and climactic characteristics.
Not everything related to natural disasters may be bad. Typhoons, for instance, remind people how enormous the power of Mother Nature is and how small humans are as well as why they should reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Wouldn’t it be also nice if these storms took the ugliest among them ― rape-murderers, corrupt bureaucrats and lying politicians?