By Jay Valleser
WHY is it that after a tragic event, we always end up pointing fingers? Isn’t it painful enough that victims of these tragedies are still suffering and yet, we lose our focus to help because of our tendency to promote our own, maybe, personal agenda?
People in Bohol are yet to get back on their feet. They have no way of knowing when a big quake will strike again. Cebuanos are still licking their wounds. Leyte folks are still in shock and don’t know what to do. The eyes of people all over the planet are on us. And yet for every rhetoric, one can read messages between the lines that “it’s him to blame and I am your hero.”
This is a form of disrespect toward those who died during the calamities. For the injured, this is an insult given the suffering they went through. For those orphaned, widowed, who lost their livelihood and displaced, the blame game is a big joke. We may indulge in our tendency to blame others but this will not promote the sympathy from the world to help us. Instead, this would make us a laughing stock.
Our finger-pointing boils down to the fact that Leyte, Bohol or Cebu were not prepared enough. But who could have prepared enough?
Authorities themselves say that earthquake was beyond the present technology to predict. Experts on vertical construction could not tell what buildings may collapse or crumble during a strong typhoon or earthquake. Pundits with all their knowledge combined could not tell us when this generation would be gone.
President PNoy, in his most presidential pose, is pointing his fingers on the local officials. I have no sympathy for the Marcoses or the Romualdezes. But I think the President is off (not out of his mind).
Leyte will be in that sad state for long. It is will be a dead city for decades, maybe, because of Yolanda.
If the local government was unprepared, what about the national government? Does it have a plan on how to react when a typhoon of such magnitude hits us? If it has such contingency, what held them from sharing the same with the local governments? We might as well join in this blame game.
The Pagasa told us it was a super typhoon. It did tell us that there was a “possibility” of a storm surge. But how did that agency explain what a storm surge is? I understand what it means but I didn ]t think it would bring so much havoc and result in so much damage! Just because Pagasa said it doesn’t mean it should not share some of the blame. If only Pagasa said that a storm surge is “mura kini og tidal wave nga lisod masukod hangtud moabut sa baybayon… Ang storm surge mora kini og ka pader sa tubig nga modasmag, lahi sa tidal wave nga usa ka dakung balod… Ang kusog niini mopahapla sa bisan unsa nga anaa sa agianan. Pagbalik sa tubig ngadto sa dagat, daw daku kini nga sulog nga moanud ngadto sa lawom sa tanan nga anaa sa dalan niini. Busa, gitambagan ang tanan nga molalin ngadto sa bukid nga adunay gihabugon nga dili mominos og 300 ka metros aron dili ma malumos. Samtang atua sa bukid, pangahoy mong daan kay mawala ang kuryente, pagkalot mo sa atabay kay mawala ang tubig. Dayon pag gabas mo sa kahoy daan kay mawala ang inyong mga pinuy-anan.”
The President and his cabinet members were clearly lost as to what to do. They failed to get their acts together. They were not prepared to see the whole city stripped naked, of corpses lying on every part of the city, of all means of transportation rendered immobile, of the total population dazed and confused and worst, mourning over the casualties. The national government was not prepared to get ready with food supplies. Or else, if it was ready as the President would like us to understand, there should have been supplies on the site and no looting would have occurred.
There was a complete collapse of the local government structure as expected in a tragic event in the magnitude that hit Tacloban. It would have been abnormal to expect them holding a session inside city hall while the moaning and the mourning goes wild outside. How could a city effectively respond when the responders were in need of responding themselves? How could the policemen come to police the ensuing chaos when they could not even police the policemen themselves?
Admittedly, there was a collapse. But isn’t it the role of the national government to come in where the vacuum is? It should not get credit for helping Tacloban. The solutions that Tacloban and Leyte need do not include the matter on who is to blame. The victims surely do not need their leaders to be blaming each other. Every time the national government continues to insinuate that blame should be put on the local government, it reveals every time its own weaknesses that widen every time it blames others!
Email: tabletalkgsd@yahoo.com