10 years after
My daughter described her ordeal in her now defunct blog:
“I spent my Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday trapped [on] the second floor of our house with my dad, sister, helpers, and pets as the streets turned into rivers at the height of tropical storm Ondoy. To cope with it all, I tried to think of the whole ordeal as a cool survival game where I become more awesome the hungrier I get.…
“Looking at the photos makes me feel tremendously sad, which in turn makes me feel silly and bourgeois. I mean, we were perfectly safe; it’s not like we had to climb up to the roof and wait for help there. Besides, the only things we lost were furniture. But I still can’t shake off this weird sense of loss and survival’s guilt.”
I turned to Twitter, asking if rescue was on its way to our village, but there were other worse areas hit by the flood waters. People waited on the roof of their homes or got trapped inside their vehicles. My family turned off their cellphones to save on power. Fortunately, my sister’s home in Quezon City was not flooded and their power was restored shortly after the heavy rainfall. I could still contact her using Skype mobile to save on international roaming costs. Two days later, my brother-inlaw waded toward our house to pick up my two daughters and brought food for my husband and two helpers.
No one can blame Mother Nature for a storm like Ondoy. Some netizens blamed the Philippine government for the catastrophe that resulted in the deaths of over 200 people and an estimated P5 billion in damages. Urban planner Felino “Jun” Palafox Jr. says the deadly floods were not an act of God, but a sin of omission by the government and private real estate developers. According to him, the floods came because the government ignored available data on the dangers of flooding in certain low-lying areas.
Ten years later, I believe you and I have learned something from this major disaster. Lessons from Ondoy have resulted in better coordination between the national government, local government units (LGUs) and civil society. Some actions within our control is disaster preparedness. We can continue to use social media for good and not for disinformation. Social media can provide us with emergency updates before a natural disaster hits our country and when power interruption cuts us off from monitoring. I have discussed this before in a previous column, but I want to reiterate it.
Follow Pagasa’s official Facebook account (www.facebook. com/ PAGASA. DOST. GOV. PH) and Twitter account (@ dost_pagasa).
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council can issue emergency alerts and warnings to the public with the help of the National Telecommunication Commission.
In the initial hours of a disaster, we should not expect disaster agencies, rescue teams and law enforcers to be our first responders. Disasters will affect many people, including rescue workers. A family needs to have a disaster preparedness plan during emergencies and a survival kit, which can just be a huge backpack or a large plastic pail with the basics, like food, water and medicines, plus a transistor radio, power bank, flashlights, extra batteries, some clothes and blankets. Nobody can claim we are ready when another disaster strikes, because we will never know its magnitude. We will never know if another devastating storm like Ondoy will hit us again. Preparedness begins at home and we must plan to help ourselves minimize a storm’s impact on our household.