While typhoon Caloy has claimed eight lives in Luzon and is still raging in some parts of
the country, Mount Merapi volcano in Indonesia is also spewing burning lava from its
crater, forcing thousands to evacuate.
As always, relocation sites could hardly accommodate the evacuees. Someone says, “He
who fails to prepare for the night, fails to prepare for the dawn.”
It is on the least expected moment that a potentially worst calamity would hit a community
and change the face of history.
For instance, the Mabini insecticide poisoning was something so strange to us. Before it
happened more than a year ago, weve never heard of anything like that, not only in the
history of our province but also in the history of the Philippines. And we were caught with
tremendous surprise – so shocking that most of us, especially the authorities who handled
the tragedy, can hardly figure out how to respond to the calamity.
But being unprepared for disaster can also be an issue even to the industrialized world.
Take the case of Katrina Hurricane in the U.S. The world was surprised upon learning that
America, with its image of being a superpower and being the king of search and rescue,
was at a loss of managerial skill, including pooling of resources, when the devastating
hurricane swept Florida last year. The U.S., the world had realized, was just like the rest of
the world:unprepared for the worst.
“Crime, disease, war, revolution, fire, flood, periodic financial collapse and famine are the
results of nature and the nature of man and unfortunately are not within the power of
