Is building a sanctuary needed?

In a team-building activity that I joined in 2015, a fellow participant described me as relentless. Another person thought that I was "kulit." I supposed that the latter was the Tagalog equivalent of the former. Well, a psychologist I know suggested to me, years ago,that my ailment was OC. No lo contendere. Mine is not a fatal disease but sometimes it gets to be unnerving to others.

My subject today exposes my relentless (kulit) nature because I write again on a topic that I have written about quite a few times in the past - the need for Cebu City to build a kind of sanctuary for its worst afflicted residents in the event of cataclysmic disasters. It is a forward thinking.

Let us cite the most recent calamity in the US, as a case in point. Hurricane Harvey, according to meteorologists, poured 15 inches of rain in one day. I hope I heard the weather specialist correctly. In his summation, it was more the accumulation of water in a number of days' raining than the absence of drainage system that caused the flooding in Houston, Texas. We saw on television that many residents whose houses were hit by the deluge, hitherto unseen by Americans, had to be plucked from rooftops and brought to the NGC Center. (Is this the correct name?)

We must understand that the said center was, in all probability, not built as a refuge of any kind. Far from it. Using it as a haven for hundreds, nay, thousands of those suffering from disasters was never considered. It was structured for a different use. Therefore, it did not have, in any of its rooms, the kind of materials urgently needed by victims of calamities. Yes, it provided ample shelter for evacuees, but nothing more. Relief goods mainly food stuffs had still to be transported from somewhere else.

So too, we saw the massive government mobilization. The State of Texas and the federal government joined hands to reach out to all marooned persons deploying vehicles of all kinds, from helicopters to amphibious equipment. Before the decision to use the NGC Center as sanctuary was, finalized however, we could perceive that rescuers faced the added problem of deciding where to bring the victims.

Here is my being admittedly kulit. If I sound like a broken record, it is because I saw how the disorganized relief and rescue operations following the October 15, 2013 earthquake and November 8, 2013 super typhoon Yolanda were made more pathetic by the absence of viable sanctuaries where affected persons could seek shelter in or where victims could be brought to.

Our sad experiences from the tremor that mainly hit Bohol and the howler and what we saw from Harvey compel us to imagine that Cebu City must improve on those woeful scenarios. The city leadership must be proactive. The city government has - if only to lessen the horrible impact of unprecedented disasters - to build a strong sanctuary.

I may not have been educated as an urban planner but I imagine that from the kind of haven I have in mind, all response teams can emanate and the most distressed among the victims be sheltered under.

The structure must necessarily be the command post of all units needed to respond to emergencies like search and rescue teams, firefighters, police, and health personnel. This enumeration is certainly not exclusive. Their equipment too have to be kept within grasp of the manpower. The point is to bring them under a roof to attain maximum coordination.There might be breakdowns in the usual form communication when disasters strike and so pooling response teams together minimizes confusion.

For this sanctuary to serve its objective of saving people from disasters, it is necessary to store food stuff and relief materials. Survivors have to be fed and warmly wrapped in order to address the very survival instinct that became the reason Yolanda victims looted some grocery shops in Tacloban City.

This idea is not really new. Government just have to move it from the drawing board to implementing stage before it is rather late.