Unprepared for calamities

What happened in the city of Bogo and the municipalities of San Remigio, Medellin, Daanbantayan, Sogod, and even Tabuelan and other nooks and crannies in northern Cebu should be reminding us all over again that we really need to be more prepared, to be better organized, and to be more coordinated in all our efforts to respond, rescue, and extend assistance to the beleaguered people. Not just in Cebu but all over the Philippines.

This same scenario has taken place every time our country and its provinces and cities are hit by calamities and disasters. But we seem to never have learned at all. Super Typhoonn Yolanda hit Leyte, Samar, and all the surrounding eastern Visayan areas in 2013 causing deaths, massive destruction, and too much damage. We never learned. Super Typhoon Pablo also hit the Philippines in 2012 causing so much suffering among our people. We never learned. Super Typhoon Thelma (Uring) devastated our country in 1991 also causing tremendous losses in lives, properties, and livelihoods. We never learned.

The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a global think tank on preparedness for calamities and disasters has made a candid but sad assessment of both the Philippine government and its people The Philippines has been judged as extremely unprepared and the people are perennially poised to suffer every time a calamity or disaster would hit us. Both our government and people have failed to learn from all our tragic experiences. We are very reactive people and ours are a bunch of very sloppy, neglectful government officials. We never learned to plan, strategize, and put our acts together. We seem to have surrendered our fates to calamities and disasters.

Typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes are not new phenomena or unprecedented occurrences. We have gone through the worst of times including two world wars and a series of revolutions, rebellions, and national political and social upheavals. We have gone through pandemics and epidemics, pestilence, famines, and extreme tribulations that beleaguered our people. We were subjugated by Spain for 377 years, colonized by the Americans for 45 years, invaded and devastated by Japan for three years and oppressed by martial law for more than 10 years. We never learned.

Both calamities and disasters refer to events beyond the control of man, which often cause death, destruction, and sufferings among the people, most specifically the unprepared, unprotected, and more vulnerable poor and marginalized masses in the peripheries of the socio-economic strata of the country. A disaster may be caused by natural events but the exacerbation of their consequences are driven by the government officials' carelessness, negligence, and bad judgment, and further complicated by individuals' lack of foresight and cluelessness on the serious implications and consequences.

The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative conducted a scientific research on the Philippines' degree of preparedness by, among other processes, conducting a survey among a random sampling among targeted and categorized sectors, involving a total of 4,368 individual Filipinos across the geographic, generational, age, gender, as well as socio-economic and political divides. The research yielded some sad and worrisome findings that should forewarn our political and economic leaders. Only 36% among those surveyed feel that they are prepared for 20 or more typhoons every year. Only 17% have life, health, and property insurance coverage.

More than 50% are completely nonchalant and rely only on destiny or the will of God. That means that a great bulk of our people are just waiting for government assistance, aid, and relief emanating from external and domestic sources. Local government units are almost totally incompetent in the handling of disaster preparedness and disaster relief and rescue operations. There is too much reliance on the central government, which in turn, is also not totally ready or sufficiently prepared with enough knowledge, skills, and resources.

There should be a National Disaster Summit where global and national experts should serve as resource persons. In that summit, we should be able to formulate a National Disaster Preparedness Strategy and every province, city, municipality, barangay, village, and household should also prepare their own plans. Politicians should be banned from talking in that summit. They should only listen, plan, and do what is right and what is necessary. We should start learning preparedness. Or perish in the next calamity and disaster.