Offhand, I think the Filipino’s worst enemy is his way of thinking. If things went so wrong with Ondoy, it is because we thought such a tragedy could never happen to the Philippines. We forgot Murphy’s law that says “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Finger pointing will not help solve the problem on what to do with thousands displaced by the typhoon.
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We have to wrestle and defeat our uncaring attitude before we can be ready to make some very hard decisions. The first big decision is to make sure the victims do not return to the scenes of tragedy. But can the government, so weakened by relentless attacks from an array of critics from churchmen to ambitious senators wanting to become presidents in 2010, make such hard decisions? Take the case of the 400,000 squatters that line up the shores of the Laguna de Bay. The prospects are not very bright with reports that some of them are now trickling back without thinking that it is the houses they built that block drainage channels as if they had not learned their lesson.
From time to time, every time I visit Laguna I noticed the slow build up of squatters jutting out to the water, blocking the view of the bay.
Even then, there was no alarm at the squatters encroaching on the waters. At the time, so many looked at the problem more as defacement of a view and did not realize that what was building up through all those years was the tragedy of Ondoy. The flood will not recede because the water has nowhere to go, enclosed as it was by the slums that lined the bay. It would stay flooded up to five months if the situation not immediately dealt with.
The immediate solution is to dry up the land affected by flood. The water has to be freed up. But this cannot be freed up without removing the squatters, the debris and garbage that littered the wetlands (before and after Ondoy). That has to be done fast before disease sets in and we will have even more deaths. If the victims are to return to some degree of normalcy drying up the land should be a first task. In an interview by Agence France Presse Laguna Lake Development Authority chief Edgardo Manda said residents should be removed and prohibited from going back to the homes they had set up so dangerously. If necessary, the shores of Laguna de Bay should be barricaded and sentries posted to guard the areas to stop people from coming back.
With an election just a few months away the opposition, with the help of sectors of media and the church, would jump at any drastic action even if it means saving the squatters from themselves.
The first indication that there will be no let up from politicking despite the enormous tragedy that has befallen the Philippines has come from “reliable” pollster SWS who published that President GMA has become even more unpopular. She may have but is it the time to announce that when every hand is needed to tide so many to safety and that leadership is needed in an emergency situation? SWS is very “reliable” because it can be relied upon to use survey results at a time when the undivided attention of government authorities and the public should be on the tragedy and not on its “reliable” surveys at this time.
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Dr. Jacqueline Badcock, UN Resident Representative, said “the sense of national unity, from the highest levels of government to village communities, has been inspirational.”
The UN has made a Flash Appeal for the Philippines to generate about $74 million worth of assistance, in cash and in kind, from the international community.
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While we were coping with our own tragedy, little was known about another disaster, an earthquake in Indonesia that claimed more than a thousand lives. From the number of fatalities alone, our Indonesian neighbors had an even greater misfortune.
Here is an on the spot report from Humanitarian News. The author does not want to be called the author because as he says there are thousands of authors for all the articles he publishes. He wants to be called the collector. He collects information. He gives his name as Peter and you can check out The Road to the Horizon which is his personal blog. He met up with Veronica Pedrosa of Al-Jazeera in Padang, the site of the earthquake in Indonesia:
“I never imagined that I would be interviewed by an international news TV station. But there I was, on a live report from the field, with Al Jazeera asking me to tell the world what I’m seeing. They asked me about the rapid needs assessments that Mercy Corps conducted within 48 hours after the massive earthquake hit Padang, West Sumatra.
I must admit that I was bit nervous and less confident — in part because I’d missed my morning shower due to the lack of water all over Padang. But I went to meet Al Jazeera’s crews, who were ready and standing by in front of the fatally-damaged Ambacang Hotel, where hundreds of hotel guests were trapped under the collapsed building and buried alive there.
I was very surprised to know that I would be interviewed by Veronica Pedrosa, the reporter that I often saw on TV, updating news from all over the world. It made me feel quite edgy. The cry for help from the survivors who had lost their family members, the view of the children who were sleeping under the tent in open areas, and the family members who tried to search for things in the ruins — all those things suddenly gave me my confidence back.
And that morning, live from the field, I was finally able to spread the message to the world that there are thousands of survivors who need immediate help. They need clean water and food. They need hygiene kits. They need recovery kits to clean up debris. And most of all, they need to have the world know about what happened to them.
It was only a ten-minute interview, but I hope the world got my message.
I remembered the famous quote from Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in this world.”