The Deluge

Watching the news last week, hearing of the thousands who’d either lost their homes or suffered damages to their properties (including more than a few friends and colleagues) from typhoon “Ondoy”, you must have been completely oblivious and insensitive to the situation to do nothing. Instead, millions opened their wallets, opened their closets, and opened their hearts to giving whatever they could to help the victims.

As early as Saturday afternoon, word had been filtering through the Web that the National Disaster Coordinating Council and the MMDA were overwhelmed by the disasters. TV news programs eerily lacked any substantial footage of the seriously affected areas, indicating that respective news crews were unable to get to them because of the floods. For a long time, Facebook and – to some extent – AM radio were the only means of getting any idea of who needed help, and where. Calls for volunteers were sent out from the Philippine National Red Cross, Ateneo, De La Salle, Megatent, Whitespace, and countless other relief centers while communities from all over the country and even from abroad sent money, food, clothes, and medicines.

By Tuesday, I’d had enough of just texting another donation to Red Cross and instead asked The Philippine STAR’s Motoring Editor Dong Magsajo if there was anything we could organize to help out, as relief centers kept sending out requests for transportation. As a matter of fact, he had the same thing in mind, and several phone calls and text messages later we had a modest fleet of vehicles and manpower with which to bring goods to evacuation centers all over the metropolis. For our first day, without much of a plan other than to 1) Go to a relief center, 2) Load up, and 3) Deliver, then 4) Repeat as necessary, our motley crew consisted of Dong, Ayvi Nicolas, Carina Roncesvalles and myself from The Philippine STAR; Ardie Lopez and Ene Lagunzad from Auto Extreme; Eggay Quesada from Stoplight TV; The Kid, Tina Ryan, Slyde, MigZ with a Z, Koji Morales and Cleo Caliente from 99.5 RT; Danny Alcantara from Mitsubishi Motors; and our super friends Belle Ramos and Jane Tagabuan. For transportation, we were able to borrow one Nissan Navara and two Urvans from Universal Motors, one Ford Ranger Wildtrak from Ford Group Philippines, one Mitsubishi Montero Sport from Mitsubishi Motors, and Dong’s personal Isuzu D-MAX.

For our first foray into the world of volunteerism, we decided to head off to the Megatent in Ortigas and play it by ear. As it turned out, the Megatent effort had come about in much the same manner as our ad hoc transport team did: a bunch of friends decided to Do Something, sent out some text messages and calls, and pretty soon a rather large operation was in effect. After registering and introducing ourselves to the head of logistics – Dom Hernandez – we got started on several days and night’s worth of deliveries to affected communities in Pasig, Malabon, Montalban, Fairview, and Pateros.

Hundreds of volunteers came every day and stayed through the night, receiving goods from donors, repacking food, clothes, and medicines into thousands of packs, and forming human chains to transfer the packs onto the delivery vehicles. It was a beautiful sight, the spirit of “bayanihan” in action. For all the romantics out there, it was tedious and unglamorous work, and we didn’t feel like we were “saving the world”. We just wanted to help in any way we could, trusting the organizer that we were really deploying to communities that needed help even if the net result was to provide a meal for a day for several hundred families. Even with the thousands of relief packs produced, many thousands more were in need. To give you an idea, on my first night we escorted a food truck with around 350 packs to the distribution center in Pateros. A blackboard indicated there were more than 3,700 families in need, and would be so for the next few weeks. Our delivery – and subsequent ones – was just a drop in the bucket. Not very “heroic” there.

Still, I consider it a privilege to have been able to serve, and I think all of the volunteers feel the same way. During the typhoon, the worst I had to deal with was climbing onto the roof of our home and patching up a few leaks. In exchange we signed up for several days and nights loading and unloading the vehicles, running on coffee and sandwiches, figuring out how to get around hopelessly flooded areas and preventing potential mob scenes, then doing it all over again for the next deployment.

Not being a night owl, I have to admit it was the energy of the team that kept me going at 2 in the morning, plus constant reminders that while all I had to worry about was a leaky roof, the people we were going to still had water in their homes. By my count, we were deployed 16 times to 12 sites and helped deliver several thousand relief packs, boxes and boxes of clothes, and even gave a ride to 10 Marines on their way to the Ever Gotesco command center. And still the donations kept coming in. Every time we returned to the Megatent, several small hills of relief packs were once again ready for loading. The work seemed endless.

As I write this, it’s the start of a new week, some semblance of normality is returning, and the majority of the volunteers have to get back to their daily lives. I may have lost faith in this government’s ability to deal with disaster (or much of anything else, for that matter), but have an even stronger belief that, when put to the test, the Filipino can. Would we do this all over again if the need arose? Pray that, next time, we’ll be more prepared. Pray that, next time, the government won’t need the help of the civilian community to cover for its failings. But yes, if the situation required it, Yes We Would.

Lester Dizon’s post-Ondoy rants from last week garnered a few thumbs up. Here are a couple of them…

Congressmen/Mayor/Barangay officials’ pockets was the direct destination and where majority of taxes go. Disturbance in the metro is nothing to these thickfaced individuals. After this tragedy, more squatters will mushroom in the metropolis which will cause clogging in the waterways and drainage canals again. All coddled by politicians. – Luke Skywalker (Thanks for your comments, Luke Skywalker. May the force be with you…)

Where did our taxes go? As if you did not know… where else! – Incredulous

Keep them comments coming! Remember, this is your column as much as it is ours. We are all Backseat Drivers…