Calamity a test of resiliency, not a showpiece for adversity
It will take a little time to measure the full extent of the damage that typhoon Karding and the southwest monsoon have inflicted on the country and thousands of our people.
Stunned by the scale and severity of the calamity, some have taken to comparing Karding to Ondoy, the tropical storm flood-dumper of 2009, which in the public imagination has become the threshold for a storm-and-flood calamity for this country.
That is, however, not the most sensible way to view a national disaster. Comparing the ferocity of Karding to Ondoy would be as inconclusive as measuring every typhoon that comes to the country against Supertyphoon Yolanda.
Every flooding calamity and typhoon tells its own story. The critical test is how people, communities and the government measure up against the challenge.
By many indications, this weekend’s calamity was severe and unremitting. The intense rainfall that started on Saturday and continued until Sunday justifiably triggered fears of another Ondoy-like calamity.
As citizens will recall, in September 2009, tropical storm Ondoy inundated Luzon with record rain. Ondoy dumped 455 mm of rainwater in 24 hours. The storm claimed more than 700 lives.
This time, the Manila Observatory reported that the amount of rain that soaked Metro Manila on Saturday was half the amount of rainfall heaped by Ondoy on the area. The highest accumulated rainfall was recorded in the Holy Spirit village in Quezon City at 236 millimeters. San Mateo town in Rizal got 220 mm, while Marikina had 215 mm of rain.
Dozens of towns and villages were submerged after tropical storm Karding and the southwest monsoon unleashed torrential rain in Metro Manila and neighboring provinces.
In Metro Manila, 65 villages were flooded, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). Marikina was hardest hit as the city’s river overflowed, triggering evacuations. Some areas in Quezon City were submerged in chest-deep floodwater.
The NDRRMC said floods were also reported in Bulacan, Bataan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga and Tarlac provinces. The calamity forced thousands of families to leave their homes.
As of Monday afternoon, 10 have died, according to the NDRRMC, while the southwest monsoon continued to shower rainwater on several areas of Luzon, mostly in Metro Manila.
It is important for government and community agencies to continue to ensure the safety of those who remained in their homes and the families who have moved to evacuation centers.
While the torrential rains engorged dams in the middle of the typhoon, the concerned agencies must keep monitoring the dams closely, even with Karding now out of Philippine territory. That should be taken as a measure against forecasts by Pagasa that the southwest monsoon and another storm spotted outside the country will bring more rains. In 2009, it was the spillover of water from dams that caused the devastating floods.
The challenge of coping with this calamity will, therefore, continue. There is no respite yet from adversity. From the lessons of experience, of which we have plenty, what we do after the storm is almost as important as what we did during the storm.
The test that we must surmount is the test of resiliency. There may be a tendency in times like these for some of us to inflate the experience of adversity, angling for more assistance and attention.
But this is not who we, Filipinos, are in the face of calamity. We must remind ourselves, toughness for survival is part of our national DNA.
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