Seniang
I woke up two minutes past midnight from a loud thud. It was pitch-dark. Only when a lightning struck I saw the treetops wildly shaking in the storm. The noise of the rain on the roof was frightening. Slanting rain struck the window in the north, later turning to west and after a break it came even stronger from the south. I realized that Olango was in the eye of a typhoon.
Next morning I saw a Giant Ipil-ipil tree lying on my small chicken house which was broken in twain. Eight other trees were uprooted.
I read the headline of The FREEMAN of December 31, 2014: The Surprise that was Seniang. Indeed the typhoon struck unannounced: No warning, no evacuation call, no signal, no cellphone message.
One Freeman columnist his piece “Caught with their pants down,” alluding to the officers of the Disaster Risk and Reduction Management Councils who had failed to assign at least one person to be on duty just in case the forming low-pressure area in the Pacific would gain strength and come our way.
This year I read in the newspapers that President Duterte has issued a memorandum circular that those government employees working in agencies involving delivery of basic health services including preparedness/response to disasters and calamities are to continue their operations and render necessary services.
Lesson learnt eventually!
Reverting to Seniang: It was a mini-typhoon compared to super-typhoon Ruping that devastated Cebu City in 1990 or mega-typhoon Yolanda that struck the north of Cebu province in November 2013. However the final count in Central Visayas was 71 deaths. About half of them occurred in the hillsides of Ronda where several jeepneys were pushed off the road and down the abyss by landslides.
In my opinion in order to guarantee a zero victim outcome genuine evacuation shelters must be built. Multi-purpose sports complexes should be provided with temporary walls to keep wind and rain out.
Yearly evacuation exercises must be held. Every single Filipino living in hazardous houses or areas should be assigned a numbered place in his or her evacuation shelter. Instead of those feckless 9-volt megaphones, powerful sirens on the Barangay Halls should call for evacuation.
Erich Wannemacher
Lapu-Lapu City
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