As of this writing, it has been more than a week since typhoon Haiyan made landfall in Central Philippines leaving, in her wake, a massive scale of devastation for which no one could have ever FULLY prepared.
I am writing to you not as a Filipino citizen who sits around all day, finding reasons to complain, mock, whine or criticize your administration.
I am, rather, writing to you as a Filipino citizen, living far, far away from Haiyan's mess, hoping you could open your mind to how it is to be on the outside looking in.
Mr. President, you see, unless we are one of the typhoon's victims, we are never really completely in the know of how they prepared for the storm, how they were in the middle of it, how they tried to flee to safety, how they got injured in the process, how they had no choice but to leave their possessions and worse, their loved ones, how they saw their properties - their houses, their cars, their livelihood - flattened and torn apart.
Unless we are one of the survivors, we could only surmise as to how it must have been to walk - or limp - for hours expecting help where they thought they could find it, only to end up seeing that there's no local government unit (LGU) that could help anymore. And this probably was not because they were ill-prepared. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt as much as I would like to give your leadership the benefit of the doubt. It's just that the typhoon was so strong that there's only so much muscle they possess.
I don't know how you would have felt had you been in the shoes of Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez. No, Mr. President. I would not go to discussing the politics that surrounds your family's relationship with the Romualdezes and the Marcoses. Such is the last thing the victims need. But going back to Mayor Romualdez, consider being pushed against the ceiling by raging waters and finding no choice but to punch a hole on the ceiling just so you could survive.
What I'm pointing out here, Mr. President is that the LGUs are also composed of people who have families who are every bit a victim as anyone else in the typhoon path. As such, I would not tell you to stop blaming them. I would ask you to show more compassion for them.
And then let's head back to the affected residents. While any country would agree that help doesn't come easy for a disaster of this scale, for the victims, minutes can easily turn into hours, and hours can turn into days.
But I guess you already have the knowledge of said fact. I do, too. For anyone who has, at one point in their lives, experienced a tragedy, such is undeniable. For several times in my life, I experienced how slow it felt for help to come when my mom and my dad turned for the worse in their hospital beds. I pleaded. I screamed. I cried. Every time, I thought, help never came fast enough.
At this point, it'd be unfair to expect the victims to understand the abovementioned fact. While true and reasonable, the last thing an aggrieved person would want to hear is that relief operations take time and careful planning. That feature article about that woman whose husband died of an infection due to a badly wounded leg? In order for her husband to survive, his leg needed to be amputated. But the antibiotics just came in too late. Way too late. I hope you don't turn a blind eye on this and merely treat this as "all in a day's job"; that it was, maybe, his time to die. I don't know how you are affected by this, I'm sure you are, in some degree, but having known that my husband could have been saved if his much-needed antibiotics had arrived a little earlier, say, even just a few hours earlier, I might have as well died on the day my husband perished had I been in that woman's shoes.
Mr. President, I couldn't emphasize enough how even just as little as a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
On the day Asiana Airlines crash landed in SFO in July of this year, I was in the middle of my shift as a passenger service agent for an international airline. With the call to evacuate the severely damaged aircraft only announced 90 seconds after the crash, the speed of which is still severely criticized and being investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration, many things could be emphasized and asked here:
- While it is understandable for the crew members, themselves, to be in so much state of shock that there's a temporary absence of laudable and required quick thinking, many people would still have ended up asking what if evacuation was announced 85, 80, 70 seconds earlier? After all, the first group of emergency responders arrived on the scene a full minute before evacuation was announced.
- I can't resist mentioning that when a Cebu Pacific aircraft crash landed in Davao a month prior to above incident, the rescue team arrived after 15 minutes. Thankfully, everyone onboard survived.
See, Mr. President, while one would surely be quick to argue that my little example is, by no means, any relevant to what happened in the Visayan Region, I hope that you and your administration are fully aware of how countries like the US and Japan conduct constant auditing of emergency responders' awareness of procedures and their skill in implementing such. Why, even bank employees are required to pass yearly auditing involving security processes!
So how do emergency responders in the Philippines live up to what is expected of them? Sure, fire and earthquake drills are regularly held in schools and buildings but I am also sure that even with the lack or insufficiency of expensive high-tech machinery, we have the infrastructure to constantly audit and train our emergency responders and deploy them and ensure an implementation of procedures that is faithful by the second, minute, hour, day and week following a disaster.
Could we do just that, Mr. President? Could we get everyone in the administration, from the lowest ranking military officer and I dare say, up to you, yourself, to get down on your knees and dig using your own hands, just like what the Japanese did when a tsunami struck their country, in the absence of the right tools should another disaster happen? And even if your team did just so during Haiyan's aftermath (I saw that photo of admirable Filipino soldiers crossing a flooded landscape while carrying victims on their backs), would anyone be man enough to admit and apologize that there indeed was something, a procedure or a line of communication, that broke somewhere?
Because to the world who are on the outside looking in, to the Filipinos like me and my husband who are living abroad, even to the Filipinos who are safe and far away from the islands of Samar and Leyte, there is something truly amiss.
I would not apologize for seeing that CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper and his team did nothing wrong. If they seemingly focused on nothing but devastation when they arrived in Leyte and were, per that Time Magazine article of Harvard expert John Crowley, "scaremongering" and in the process, catastrophizing the relief efforts, I would be the first to gather my friends who were either in Leyte, themselves, or those who had relatives in the areas affected and have them validate the international news teams' reports.
Mr. President, a former co-worker's posts on Facebook was so powerful that I felt an all-too-real fear in my heart for her and her family members. She was at first asking for help to locate her brothers. It took two or three days for her to finally learn that they were safe but not without finding out that their once peaceful neighborhood had not just been flattened but overtaken as well with violence and rampant looting.
Yes, looting. One would think and expect that during disasters, people only took what they needed to survive. But no, Mr. President. Reports from credible news organizations, both local and international, indicate that even flatscreen televisions are being taken away from houses.
And then there's the issue involving crimes. As I am sure you are fully aware of reports of the New People's Army (NPA), being hungry and desperate, themselves, taking advantage of the chaos, and of reports of women being raped and videos of men fighting over a few sacks of rice, I could only hope that what you told that businessman who was held at gunpoint would never happen again.
I am sorry if I am rubbing it in but "But you did not die, right?" is in no way an appropriate response to anyone who was perhaps just calling for your attention and action. I would never claim to know what exactly transpired that day that you were reported and quoted saying such and if true, what exactly came over you to bypass compassion and let frustration overcome you.
Mr. President, I would never claim to be better than you. During the 2010 presidential elections, I had another candidate in mind for the highest post in the land. What could I do, though as even over big and small controversies prior to Haiyan that plagued the first half of your term, even if I always had a biting thing or two to say, back then, the believer in second chances in me had always thought it just fair to give you the "benefit of the doubt".
After Haiyan, I have never been as passionate over an issue involving my home country as much as I am now.
Why, you may want to ask.
It is because I am not the only one aghast over how divided the Filipinos are when it is during times like this that all the more we should be united.
It is because I agreed, however grimly, when a high school classmate assessed that Filipinos these days are divided into three groups:
- The Prayer Group;
- The "Ikaw, May Naitulong Ka Na Ba?" (You, Did You Contribute/Help Already?) Group; and
- The "Palpak ang Gobyerno" (The Government is a Failure) Group.
It is because I am apalled at the thought that those who help from other countries belong in just one group with nothing else in mind but to help.
As such, Mr. President, I am hoping that there's no more repeating of unfeeling responses like what you were quoted saying during that disaster briefing in Tacloban.
I am hoping that there's no more lambasting of international media if their reports could be validated by accounts of victims, themselves.
I am hoping that there's no more fingerpointing and blaming.
I am hoping that instead of such, when there is a breakdown in the line of communication and required action, the immediate response is to act on and implement contingency measures and secondary courses of action. When Plan A fails, there always has to be a Plan B, C, D and E, right?
I am hoping that there are no more evasive or defensive speeches and interviews. This disaster is more than enough to make anyone fall on his knees out of overwhelming grief and helplessness.
Show more compassion, Mr. President. If you say you have been doing so, express it some more.
Mr. President, don't further divide this nation. Its more than 7,100 islands make it fragmented enough.
Lead us. Unite us.
