Fr Peter Walpole SJ believes his new hydrology book may be the only one ever written with a chapter on God.
The work, funded by Jesuit Mission, documents flood disasters in the Philippines, and talks about learning to read nature's patterns to save lives.
His research is breaking new ground in this Southeast Asian country, where strong typhoons cause floods and landslides that ‘shoot out of the mountains' and sweep away people, villages and towns in their path.
‘Nature has its way of operating ... and if we know the parameters which are the patterns of the mountains, rivers and estuaries, then we must not overstep in these areas of flood activity', Fr Walpole says.
But people have not being staying out of the way. Growing population numbers cause rising urban migration and lack of housing, so people live on riverbanks or in houses in the river, built on stilts. In rural areas, poor people tend to cultivate and live along rivers- land that they can access freely because these are high risk areas shunned by others.
‘People forget or do not know where the risks are ... and so in 2004, over 12,000 families were displaced and more than 700 people died in a flood on the east coast because they were living in a river bed.'
Studying rainfall patterns over a 50 to 100 year cycle can reveal the ‘dynamics' of a river, and the dynamics ‘can be very devastating'.
His study of hydrogeomorphology-‘I look at the form of the earth due to water'- seeks to demystify the cause of massive floods and formulate a response to the human displacement, the loss of life and the loss of livelihood that result.
‘A lot of the response in rural Philippines to these sorts of floods is "ah, this is God's will" and so people accept it', Fr Walpole says. He contends, however, that the consequences of floods that hit cities like Albay, General Nakar and Infanta on the country's east coast every few years can be handled better by ‘interpreting the landscape.'
‘In the last decade we've had a series of disasters to which there have been very incoherent responses, both scientifically and socially and there are many scapegoats ... We blame logging, we blame God, we blame people's morality, we blame local government officials, we blame the election results', he says. ‘But we're not actually facing the problem. When I got the grant, it allowed me to revisit all of these areas to talk to the people who survived and document the events.'
The Irishman, who has worked in the Philippines for about 25 years, said much can be done. ‘This is about people being aware of where to relocate, what to do when major floods occur, evacuation strategies and trying to explain why different events are caused'.
‘You can tell by looking at the landscape, what happened before and what's likely to happen the next time', he explains, ‘...why the bridge is vulnerable if you build it here, why these houses are vulnerable and other houses aren't, why you're going to get rocks coming down here while you only get water at another point.'
The country's mountainous east coast- and the villages at its base- are the worst-affected because the typhoons that hit the Philippines dump huge amounts of water on the slopes, saturating the earth and finally causing ‘debris floods' and mudslides that push rocks and trees down into the coastal villages.
‘It shoots out of the mountains and washes everything out of the way', he says. ‘It's certainly several times more dangerous than the floods in the broad plainlands.'
Working with geologists, information analysts, scientists, local government officials, affected communities and many others, Fr Walpole has compiled the resource book that many in government are now keen to use as a basic text to train its officers for managing disasters. One university wants to use it as a resource book for students of local government management.
It's also resulted in various spin-offs.
‘One of the biggest telecommunications companies in the Philippines has asked us to identify key information needed in disaster relief coordination in towns that are flooded, so that a database can be developed electronically and it can be stored and shared', Fr Walpole says.
Local governments want the book translated into Tagalog, a Filipino language. He is also responding to queries about infrastructure and other work that can be done.
‘What a Jesuit office started has become much bigger basis for action.'
‘Given that the book does bring God into the picture, explaining to all sorts of people whether they be the laity, parish priests or the bishops, hopefully there can be a more socially coherent pastoral approach', he says. ‘It is within our own theological understanding of the creation of the world that we do not see these things as simply God's judgement on people.'
He said that disasters must be viewed as part of a world still ‘actively creative', and it simply means wisely using God-given gifts and the capacity for scientific knowledge. ‘This is the human response needed in a world that is still recreating itself, and this is where we have to take action. There are ways we can act if we are prepared, and these ways save lives.'
By Pauline Jasudason