Category: disasters

reliefPH.com

consolidated information from govt sites, gmanews7 / abs-cbn2 / abc5 / rappler, facebook and twitter, google (crowdsourced) docs, and the emergency broadcast of Jam 88.3 that happened from 6pm on august 7 to 6am on august 8.

organized by place, and then by need: relief goods, cash donations, help hospitals, contact, hotlines, etc etc.

click on a place to find out where you might volunteer, or bring relief goods, or cash donations. click on any of the tags for particular needs or concerns you might have, i.e., emergency numbers, hotlines, rescue, help hospitals, etc.

reliefPH.com

 

sendong & the president

finally read the looong statement of the president in tagalog, then too the english version, and i’ve been sitting here since, trying to figure out why it doesn’t work for me, why it’s too much and too little at the same time.  i suppose because not all the carefully worded promises and reminders, not the most efficient task force looking into the why’s and who’s and how’s, will better equip us (not soon enough, anyway) in this age of climate change to prevent a sendong or an ondoy from again and again wreaking wanton disaster and death anywhere on these our widely populated but environmentally degraded and deforested islands.

“hearing” the president wondering why illegal logging hasn’t stopped despite his order, why people won’t evacuate despite warnings, why people even build and live in risky areas, why rescuers have to risk their own lives to save people who refused to heed warnings — these do not inspire confidence that the president despite his super-powers is anywhere near to coming up with ways of mitigating the devastating effects of future sendongs.

the 70 percent who approve of his presidency are quick to make excuses for him, of course.  it’s a humongous problem, the roots of which go back to previous presidencies and policies before his time.  he cannot be blamed for the sorry state of the environment, much less of the messed up values that govern our lives.  and, yeah, he should not be criticized for christmas-partying with the psg that provides security for him and his sisters.

and totoo naman, okay lang mag-party ang presidente nuong sunday, if only on saturday, the moment he was informed of the magnitude of the disaster, he had come out on nationwide tv with a simple presidential message, of grief and mourning, assuring us of his concern and exhorting us all to work with government in addressing the needs of the victims.  as it turned out, we didn’t need exhorting to help out, but we did need to see, to know, that our president was with us.

karma daw

nakarma daw ang japan for past war atrocities, say some chinese bloggers (and some pinoy commenters in pinoyexchange.com), to the dismay of the chinese government.   read China’s official sympathy for Japan’s woes undermined by blogger’s glee.

read too The State Hornet’s Editorial: Disaster in Japan is not ‘karma’ with which i tend to agree.   kung tutuusin pinagbayaran na ng japan lahat ng iyon when the u.s. dropped atomic bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki in 1945 killing 150,000 to 240,000 people  (which is not to condone that heinous act of revenge, it was totally uncalled for, tokyo was negotiating na for surrender).

if i’m thinking karma at all, it’s in the sense of, umm, knowing this area of the world to be earthquake prone, why are we all still here?   why did our ancestors not have the sense to move away to safer places?   i suppose because earthquakes didn’t happen that often, and never killed off entire populations?

in japan’s case, they got very smart about building earthquake proof buildings, but were not smart enough to stay out of coastlines, never imagining that tsunamis could come so instantly?   and they just weren’t careful enough pala about upgrading safety features of old model nuclear plants, read Glenn E. Sjoden’s Why nuclear power is a necessity

dito sa pinas, if a big one hits metro manila, and estimates of widespread devastation prove true, because many of our buildings are poorly weakly constructed, and many of them are built on top of a major fault line, yan, yan ang karma.

earthshaking, heartshaking

i can’t blame PUP for sending students home after calls from panicky parents and guardians, never mind that the radiation scare being relayed via texts and twitter are said to be baseless because the wind is moving away from us, or so ricky carandang says.   but what if the wind changes course, as is known to happen occasionally.

in times like these, of devastating earthquakes and damaged nuclear facilities in japan, and it’s impossible to know exactly what is happening and there’s a sense that we aren’t being told everything, parents are well within their rights to want their kids home with them, just in case.   not that home would be absolutely safer than school, but being together in scary times is less aggravating than being apart.

and really, i doubt that parents are panicking just over the radiation scare.   it’s only one layer on top of deeper fears of a long-overdue earthquake striking here, where we’ve been building on top of the marikina valley fault that runs through metromanila, when we’re so unprepared and can only think as far as emergency kits, if we have the money for it.   the only thing going for us, we now see, is that we don’t have a functioning nuclear plant, consuelo de bobo.