Remembering The Tragedy
BIMBO CABIDOG
The tragedy and extreme ordeal that north-eastern Leyte
suffered when Super-Typhoon Yolanda lashed five years ago have nothing compared
in historical memory. Part of the non-comparison is the fact that today, November
8, surviving families in Tacloban, Palo and Tanauan – ground zero of the
disaster, are observing 8,000 plus death anniversaries of relatives and loved
ones at the same time.
Why did such a mind-boggling number of people all perished
in less than an hour? More mind-boggling perhaps is the regretful answer:
despite the dire warnings of a most severe calamity, the communities along the
forecast path of ST Yoianda just threw caution to the wind. The people did
not heed the order and pleadings to go to a safe place. They dared the
oncoming storm. Some taunted it.
In the tragedy that came with ST Yolanda, lessons have been
learned. But perhaps the gravest lesson paid for with thousands of lives is the
outlook that disaster is not the product of a hazard event, no matter how
severe. It is the function of the vulnerability of the exposed elements, most
especially the populace. Had the people strengthened their defenses by fleeing
to higher grounds, that is, beyond the reach of the storm surge, deaths could
have been minimized or prevented.
The remembrance of Yolanda in a way affirms the value of
disaster risk reduction in the confrontation of expected hazard events. This means
diminishing the vulnerability of the people, their communities and assets to outbreaks
of hazards by being able to fully understand what is going to hit them, and
take the proper measure at avoiding impact at its most severe. Unfortunately, the
folks at ground zero in Leyte did not comprehend well the freak weather phenomenon internationally named Haiyan.
The Taclobanons in particular missed a model to gauge the
fury of a wind tagged by experts to be the world’s strongest in memory. Despite
the announcement of Public Storm Warning No. 5, the people did not see Yolanda
as something that should terrify and prompt them to run for their lives. They
had it wrong and paid dearly for the mistake.
Second, they did not pay much thought to the other hazard:
the storm surge. Meteorologists calculated the sea whipped by Yolanda to
inundate inland as high as 15 feet. The government made the people aware about
the deadly scenario. Again, there was no model to imagine the horrifying
underwater episode. The mayor of Tacloban himself didn't know what it was all about.
On hindsight, authorities now know that the scale of the
catastrophe brought by the supertyphoon was actually manageable. Loss in lives
and properties was well within human capability to minimize if not confine to
zero. This was if the affected communities have taken care to buffer vulnerability. Disaster risk reduction and management frameworks around the world of course says that areas along the course of expected hazard events must build resilience and
adaptive capacity.
As folks commemorate the tragedy and devastation that struck
them four years ago, there should be not only prayers for the dead. There
should also be earnest reflection for the living. One for thought is how such a magnitude of disaster can be avoided.
Fresh from the devastation of
Yolanda, survivors saw a land that was desolate, because it was stripped of the
usual sights over the past fifty years. It was made more desolate by the departure
into mass graves of thousands of folks, who just a couple of days ago were
still with the living. They could have continued to be, if their vulnerability
to the most devastating consequences of calamities has been rendered inoperative.
Let Yolanda teach the ones still around to never
underestimate the fury of nature especially at this time when mankind has so
destroyed the environment to interrupt its protective and life-preserving functions.
No comments:
Post a Comment