FOR several years now, Filipinos’ joyful anticipation of the Christmas season has been challenges by the wrath of Mother Nature that seemed to have been unleashed just before the holiday season. This year has not been different.
After praying for and commiserating once again with our kababayans back home who had been victims of the fury of Typhoon Ruby, Filipinos in California had our own share of the battle with powerful storms before the Yuletide season. Around Thanksgiving, California had been drenched with days of heavy downpour, causing mudslides especially in the southern part of the state.
A week after Typhoon Ruby, the most powerful storm in ten years pummeled the San Francisco Bay Area with heavy rain and strong winds, causing floods, power outages, fallen trees, damaged homes and properties, collapsed roof, traffic accidents.
The same storm headed south to devastate many parts of Southern California, leading to more floods and mudslides and soil erosion, wreaking havoc to many families and businesses.
In all of these challenges with Mother Nature, we Filipinos have time and again proven our faith and resiliency, a “never say die” attitude in the way we deal with difficulties, tests and turmoil head on. We pray and smile through them all, and start each new day after the storm with even stronger faith and optimism that things will get better.
My mother has been following the news coverage of the storm with me and has been amazed about how America takes the weather seriously. We are bombarded with information about the storm, we talk about amongst ourselves, we seriously and urgently prepare for it like it is a matter of life and death.
She, like many of us, is a bit perplexed, though, because the biggest storm in ten years that just passed seemed like tropical storm compared to the “SUPER” bagyo recently experienced in the Philippines — the howling wind, the non-stop rains, the flooding that covers homes to the roof, flattened neighborhoods, damaged crops.
According to the Philippine weather bureau PAGASA, around 19 tropical cyclones or storms enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility in a typical year and of these usually 6 to 9 make landfall. Have we somehow been used to the wrath of Mother Nature?
Thankfully not, it seems, because after the tragic storms and just last year, Super Typhoon Yolanda, it seems the Filipino people have started to prepare for the inevitable storms a lot better than before. The proactive action of the government and the cooperation of the people have mitigated the loss of lives and damage to properties that storm Ruby could have caused.
“Nasa Diyos and awa, nasa tao ang gawa,” goes an old adage. Now we are finally getting it.
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
