Anatomy of the Metro Manila Flood Part II: What It taught Us

From Saturday evening, when flood waters rose to many low lying areas of Metro Manila, the entire city was caught unprepared. Rescue efforts started only several hours after frantic calls for help have reverberated to all media and government outlets. Only after people cling to their precious lives on rooftops.

Ondoy's teaching #I: Be prepared for any kind storm, no matter how small or how far. Be prepared as a community (rescue mission members organized and equipped and instructions on roles and responsibilities) and as a family or inidividual.

Ondoy's teaching #II Precautionary approach to disaster is better than rescue missions. Anticipate and let us not wait for disaster to happen before we act.

Ondoy's teaching #III Locally organized rescue and relief missions are better placed to handle disasters than nationally coordinated ones. This is true both for rescue and relief and mopping up operations. National coordination should simply provide necessary support and logistics to the local missions. This would prevent small areas from being left out.

SOME LESSONS LEARNED TOO
1. Evacuation Centers - i could understand the use of school buildings as immediate solutions to locate victims but when such things happen in cities like metro Manila, the best place would be the Sports Complex like Rizal Colliseum, Amang Rodrigues Sports Center. Big churches could also be used. Sports complexes could handle more people, our problem with toilet facilities would be lessened, accomodate more people and more importantly, free the schools for the students to get back to school. In short, these structures were built to handle lots of people and therefore have more facilities than schhools have.

Evacuation centers need not be the immediate areas especially where conditions are not optimal. Moreover, sports complexes have gates that entry of people could be managed, thus eliminating a lot of non-calamity victims.

2. When disaster strikes, the first thing that develop countries do is call in the national guards to prevent looting. Had the police and military been immediately deployed, it would be easier to evacuate people because they will fell safer that their properties will not be stolen.

3. Again, in disaster activities, rescue and relief would be a lot more simple if we have an easy documentation system. But this is impossible when we do not have a 1) national ID, nor a 2) well documented list of addresses. Imagine the difficulty for a rescuer (particularly those new to the area) in locating an address and where all street names are under water. The numbering of houses are chaotic in many areas, and in places where we have illegal settlers, an individual identity card would go a long way under such circumstances.

WE, as a nation responded well and our generosity, volunteerism is very much alive within our hearts as Filipinos. But we could even be much much better, save more lives, if only we have the proper plan, infrastructure to support us.