Issues and Concerns on Disasters: Working with Government

Every private individual or private sector group that engages in response during disaster cooperates and coordinates very closely with the public sector. Both the printed and the unwritten rule is always that the Philippines' National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) is the chief agency on the ground during calamity.

Therefore, when operations are retarded and stunted, during sub-normal operating conditions, always the blame will go to the public sector.

The severe delay in responding to the devastated Leyte, Samar, Cebu and other areas left hundreds of thousands to millions hungry. As citizens themselves reported during the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), people were walking the streets like zombies, hungry and totally disoriented, many days following the ravaging by the calamity and yet no aid was forthcoming.

The worst of the worst experience was becoming aware of how too many handicapped, or persons with disabilities (PWDs) were the foremost victims simply because in raging waters any PWD would certainly be at the receiving end of the power of the cyclone and its accompanying storm surge.

Few PWDs in the path of that disaster wrought by Haiyan (Yolanda) survived and some of those that did were even shunted by those giving out relief for not being able to go back "home" to their own respective barangay (village): an anachronism because in many areas hit by Yolanda, there were no more barangays still standing to speak of.

Reconstruction and Recovery

The World Bank says that timely reconstruction will help lessen the impact of super typhoon Yolanda. Before we digest these words, it is also significant to look back into the past.

There was a time in fairly recent past when NBC news anchor Brian Williams sounded like a broken record repeating the words over and over again that: Aviation in the United States of America is dying.

This is now true with Philippine air line companies and selected several other businesses in the Philippines right at this very moment.

During the post-Yolanda period, only at least one air line company that very enterprisingly lowered its passenger rates (presumably including for cargo) per seat-mile, notwithstanding that the Philippine government ordered that a number of fees and charges being levied in the aviation sector will be waived, among other behests in order to lessen the burden for victims of the calamity and those that had to fly to ground zero to participate in disaster relief and recovery operations. It is not difficult to hear a wisecrack such as: this suddenly successful air line company must have entered into a conspiracy with Yolanda just to boost its sales.

Dire is a weak description for the situation that a select number of businesses in the Philippines are in right now. More > >