Milenyo paralyzes Manila

Manila has not experienced a bad typhoon for more than a decade. It was obvious that when Milenyo struck with winds of 130 kilometers per hour, the experience would be something new to the present generation residing and/or working in the metropolis. Most people did not know what preventive measures to take to lessen the damage that the typhoon would cause. As a result there was a lot of damage that could have been prevented. The people had been warned that a typhoon was coming. Dangerous billboards should have been taken down. Most of the casualties, however, were the trees. It is obviously that that they will have to be replaced. What was surprising was the wall that collapsed that segregates Forbes Park from EDSA. That wall survived stronger typhoons. It is clear, therefore, that it was not properly maintained.

It will take weeks just to clear up the trees that were blown down by Milenyo. In the village where I live – Dasmariñas – many streets are now impassable. Fallen trees block the streets. The worse part is that the fallen trees served to also bring down the electric wires. Magnified, this perhaps explains why we have a total blackout in Luzon.

We hope that the Milenyo experience serves to alert all of Metro Manila on the great need to take preventive measures against disasters. We have no doubt that many trees could have been spared if people had taken the bother to trim them before the rainy season came. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. Manila has had no bad earthquakes for a long time. This makes it obvious that one is long overdue. Metro Manila is part of the Pacific Rim of Fire. Little is being done to let people know just what preventive measures they should take at home, in the streets, in the office and public places not if but when an earthquake takes place.

When one reads or hears the news, one cannot escape the feeling that we have been very lucky. We have had no major disasters. Look at New Orleans, it was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. What is Milenyo compared to Katrina. We, of course, have also had more than our share of disasters. Manila was the second most destroyed city in the world in World War II.

What we must do now is to replace the trees that were blown down by Milenyo. We should have a program for this and it should involve every household in every barangay. We would also like to see the day when the place where the squatters were removed along the railroad tracks are converted into kilometers long forest. That would certainly enhance that part of Makati. Imagine a forest blooming with flame trees. It would make Makati not only the financial center of Metro Manila, but the most beautiful city in the whole metropolis. The kilometers long forest would make the high-rise buildings blend with nature. Samuel Taylor Coleridge defines nature as "The term in which we comprehend all things that are representable in the form of time and space, and subject to the relations of cause and effect." To which William Cowper "A name for an effect whose is cause is God." As for beauty, we go along with what Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "That which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes."