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.