Two weeks from now, we will be commemorating the destructive visit of the strongest typhoon in the history of the world—Typhoon ‘‘Yolanda’’ (internationally known as Haiyan). It killed close to 10,000 Filipinos, most of them in Leyte and Samar. It devastated the beautiful and historic city of Tacloban, in a scale reminiscent, if not worse than how Manila was ravaged by the liberators during the Pacific War.
Up until now, many of the survivors of that catastrophe are still living, nay, existing, in makeshift bunkhouses and shelters. Two years after, normalcy eludes the seminal lives of thousands in Tacloban, Tanauan, Tolosa and other parts of Leyte, as in Guiuan, Basey and other parts of Samar, not to mention livelihoods displaced as far as Bantayan and Panay.
Last week, a less powerful typhoon hit Northern Philippines, bringing with it a deluge of rainfall that caused mudslides and flooding in Northeastern and Central Luzon. As of this writing, 58, (perhaps more) lives were counted as lost. Damage to the country’s rice bowl has been extensive, as most of Nueva Ecija, Pampanga and Bulacan’s ricefields have been flooded, not just by tons of water, but tons of mud.
“Dumapa ang palay na aanihin na sana,” a farmer in Nueva Ecija tearfully told media. Casiguran in Aurora is flattened, as much as Tacloban was in Yolanda’s wrath.
Government has announced plans to augment its stock of imported rice, because estimates of the current rice crop lost would reach a million tons at least. I recall that in 2011, Typhoon ‘‘Pepeng’’ also hit Nueva Ecija, Sept. 26, to be exact. And in one single day and night of cascading waters from the Sierra Madre, 980,000 metric tons were lost.
In Yolanda, tall and sturdy coconut trees were shattered to pieces, which will take years to recover. Victims of such calamities, mostly subsistence farmers, just have to bear the brunt of nature’s wrath, pick up the pieces, and cling to the hope that the heavens will show some mercy.
To make things worse, the drought has already begun in Mindanao. And soon, the entire country will suffer from what is supposed to be the worst El Niño in six decades. We experienced a terrible drought during the last year of Ramos, and well into the first year of Estrada’s aborted rule. Happenstance it may be, but the El Niño cycle somehow hits us, mild or strong, every time there is a national election.
The impact of a prolonged El Niño will be felt even more severely in our food production next year, and in the supply of water for residents of Mega Manila. The next president, whoever he or she may be, will have his hands full dealing with a major, major crisis right on Day One of his administration.
It is not as if no one tried to warn the present government about the inevitability of natural calamities and the need to pro-act in a permanent “crisis” footing, given the seemingly irreversible effects of climate change in our lives, reversible only if the whole world takes concerted and sustained action.
Right after Yolanda devastated his hometown and district, along with neighboring areas, Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez authored House Bill 3486, which provided, among others, for the creation of a Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, to plan, pro-act, and oversee not just relief efforts but implement measures that would minimize loss of lives and property on account of natural calamities.
The “hugot,” as most Filipinos use a fashionable descriptive, stared all of us right before our eyes: the tragedy in Tacloban on Nov. 8, 2013. Even CNN broadcast the “miserable” relief efforts for all the world to see, with its on-field reporter wondering where government was.
Now Lando came, and again, in a few hours of nature’s wrath, Casiguran upon picturesque Aurora province was flattened. The only consolation, if at all, was that their mayor had ordered earlier evacuation. But the homes of those inhabitants of a marginal economy on the coastline of the mighty Pacific were almost totally shattered.
Romualdez’ bill gathers dust in the House of Representatives. I hope it is really because government reorganization is always a tedious task, and not because the author bears a surname that the powers-that-be dislike, memorably etched in the words of a presidential candidate who was in charge, and on the ground in Tacloban when Yolanda struck.
There is so much about our bureaucracy that needs to be re-engineered. There is so much “ad-hocracy” in our reaction to events, no matter how predictable, that on the ground, when disaster strikes, response is often—well, “crazy.”
The benighted land faces so many problems, many a result of our past leaders’ inaction over the right and prescient things, or their over-action on things that matter little.
Climate change, which has resulted in weird patterns of weather and almost irreversible damage to our environment, is one of those things which matter most, but, save for conferences here and there, is largely unnoticed.
Which is one of many reasons why citizens these days wonder if the choices for the elections next year present them with any alternative for change. The choices present little hope for real and meaningful change.
One promises “continuity.” Another promises a return to the bad old days, which it claims is better than continuing the “ineffectual.” Still another promises a “new beginning,” harking to the promises of an adoptive father who, may he rest in peace, had never begun anything in public service. And one more whose self-proclaimed debilitating illness she now proclaims to be miraculously gone, as in will over science.
What a country!