Indifference to disaster

By RODRIGO S. VICTORIA, PIA 8
January 19, 2011

Only when lives are lost and properties are damaged due to disaster that our thoughts are disturbed what really caused in all these things from happening.

Disasters are recurring as well as our search for answers that we end facing a blank wall of whose to find fault and whose to put the blame in these sufferings brought  by what we considered as “the wrath of nature” to mankind.

We never learned our lessons from mistakes committed in the past as we still continue to travel the same road ahead without looking back on what should be done to correct the past.

One of the factors that point us Filipinos from being indifferent in times of disaster is our insensitive culture toward it.

We demonstrated it by taking for granted things like building homes, offices and other structures in hazardous and disaster prone areas. No matter how scary the warning may be, but still we continue to risk our lives and properties in living in high risk places which are considered geohazardous zones.

Another sad picture that adds to our being indifferent to disaster is the lack of political will and absence of resolve governance of some local government leaders. Instead of looking after for the welfare and safety of the constituents, we often hear and see elected government officials evading their responsibility in saving the lives and properties of the constituents in exchange for one’s political survival.

That reality happening in local governance is aggravated by the lack of plan and vision of local leaders to map out a long term plan on disaster risk reduction and management so that the loss of lives and properties will be minimized if not be avoided.

The values of taking notice only to disaster when considerable number of lives and properties are already gone and when hapless people are crying and craving for one’s shoulder to cry on that we realize to extend our hands for help.

What is there to help when houses are already swept by flashfloods and when people are buried in mudslides? What else can we offer but our grief from the misfortunes they suffered or if there is a remaining one that is a little offering of prayers and flowers for the untimely death of our Filipino brothers and sisters.

These indifferences recur simultaneously with natural calamities and disasters and the only best way to prevent it from happening or perhaps putting and end to it is to do what should and must be done.