EDITORIAL - Cebu can do it again

At about this time 20 years ago, a supertyphoon similar to Juan (Category 5) struck Cebu and barreled through with such devastating force that it brought the province to its knees. That supertyphoon was Ruping, which came howling on November 12, 1990 with 285 kph peak winds.

 For those too young to remember, consider this: 33 ships sank or capsized at the Cebu port where they sought shelter; the Mandaue-Mactan Bridge was damaged and closed to traffic for more than a month after it got struck by a wayward ocean freighter that broke its thick moorings.

 Power was down for a month; water, which depends on power to extract, was also lost; more than close to 800 people were killed and destruction to property was estimated at the time to be around P400 million.

 So destructive was supertyphoon Ruping that the Philippine government decided to retire the name, so it can never be used again. Agreeing with the Philippine assessment, the world's meteorological organizations similarly decided to retire Ruping's international code name, Mike.

 But there is always truth to the saying that behind the storm clouds, there is a silver lining. And that silver lining came in the form of the great Cebu reconstruction effort that came afterward.

 First came the help. Never in Cebu's contemporary history has anyone seen such a touching display of national solidarity and assistance. Volunteers poured in from all over -- miners from Baguio, engineers from Clark, electricians from Davao, etc -- to help Cebu back on its feet.

 Then the Cebuanos themselves started picking up the pieces and began what was to become one of the greatest reconstruction efforts seen in these parts, a mightly struggle to overcome that culminated in what came to be known as the great Cebu boom, or Ceboom.

 Cebu must therefore never forget. Television footages have shown the great devastation wrought by supertyphoon Juan in Northern Luzon. Cebuanos must do what they can to pitch in and help in the relief and reconstruction of that battered region.

 Cebu has done it before, when it became the first province to come and mobilize aid for Ormoc just one year later (November 5, 1991) after killer floods hit that Leyte city and killed more than 3,000 people. Cebu and the Cebuanos can do it again for Northern Luzon.