There was a time when resilience was a virtue.
Many Filipinos prided themselves in being resilient in the face of adversity. Despite upheavals in politics, or the economy, and most visibly in the environment, being a Filipino meant being able to rise above it all and putting on a grin-and-bear-it face.
On Saturday, tropical storm “Karding” enhanced the southwest monsoon and brought more than half of the rainfall expected for August in just one day. The resulting flooding put residents of Metro Manila and of adjacent areas in resilient mode again.
Photos and videos seen on traditional and social media showed, for instance, showed a man smiling as he waded in chest-deep floodwater. Or a bride pushing through with her wedding in a flooded church. Or families huddled in evacuation centers. These images remind us that it takes more than a disaster to curtail Filipinos’ penchant to be thankful for small mercies.
But that disasters are a common, anticipated occurrence in our calamity-prone country should not make us any less forgiving of errant officials. It is their job to know exactly what the risks are, how to mitigate these risks, and what steps to follow in the event of a disaster. More importantly, the law mandates them to ensure that old problems are addressed such that communities are able to cope better and recover faster.
President Rodrigo Duterte, in his State of the Nation Address last month, called on Congress to create the Department of Disaster Management. “Our people’s safety requirements cannot wait,” he said. We agree, and we hope lawmakers take heed.
Local government units across the country take their disaster management responsibilities differently. Certainly, there are pockets of success.Some learn from experience and becoming more thoughtful about their constituents’ needs. Others, however, equate disaster management to merely providing packaged goods and distributing them in evacuation centers without pondering long-term action like improving structure and establishing better garbage collection practices.
Disasters are a reality that will strike, not as a matter of if but of when. Filipinos should not dwell on their resilience too much. It may just become a vice—an excuse for the ineptitude of their leaders. The challenge is not to have the same smiling-in-spite-of-the-flood photos. We cannot control when and how disasters will come, but we—aided largely by the government—can certainly do something about how we anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from them.
