Season of giving

DURING this holiday season, we are bombarded with advertisements about the latest and greatest deals on how we can celebrate Christmas with awesome gifts and welcome New Year with a bang. It is easy to get caught up in the hoopla of purchasing that perfect something, or scoring a sweet deal on the hottest items on the market. But this is supposed to be a season of giving, not getting.
It would do us well to take a minute to think about those who are struggling and those who are helping people recover from a natural disaster — and help in our own little ways.
President Benigno Aquino III on Tuesday, declared a state of national calamity following his visit in Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, and Dumaguete City, areas hardest hit by tropical storm “Sendong.”
The death toll caused by the strong typhoon last Saturday in some parts of Visayas and Mindanao, breached the 1,00 mark, surpassing the 747 deaths during the onslaught of “Ondoy” in 2009.
National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said that 900 people remain unaccounted for, while the number of injured was pegged at 1,582, and the number of affected population from 260 villages in 30 towns and eight cities in 13 provinces is now 63,079 families or 338,415 people.
For those who have survived this tragic occurrence, they may be spending their Christmas and New Year inside evacuation centers.
For these people who have suffered the wrath of Sendong, it will always difficult to live through holidays in the aftermath of intense tragedy.
This Christmas season will be marked by pain and memories of anguish for victims and survivors. What, in the past, may have been a time for family gatherings and celebration, will be a time to miss loved ones and feel a sense of loss.
While the government will do its utmost to prevent a similar situation from happening again, and will make every effort to reconstruct the affected regions, we as individuals are reminded again by Mother Nature to put equal emphasis on environmental protection.
Evidently, lessons from Ondoy continue to be unlearned. Coping with climate change and disaster preparedness is like preparing for a war, this time it seems that we have lost yet again. The devastation caused by Sendong is just another rude reminder of the vulnerability that people face to climatic events and ensuing disasters.
The government, for its part, should continue to make efforts for strengthened disaster preparedness, to prevent such debilitating outcomes in the future. Implementing pecific policies and measures is critical in reducing the level of vulnerability in order to avoid a disproportionate scale of losses and damage.
A number of initiatives should be taken — both to overcome the impacts of the disaster, and to further prevent/mitigate the negative impacts of climatic events like that of Sendong.
This is also the time for everyone to take a more proactive approach to disaster management. By raising awareness, we can help establish and strengthen sustainable institutional mechanisms.
In times of disaster and tragedy, it really pays for the government and its people to live each day with piety and vigilance. Judging from the success of the collective preparations for “Typhoon Juan,” earlier this year, maybe the country will be better prepared to achieve the goal of “zero casualty.”
Before we celebrate the Yuletide season, let us lend our hand to our kababayans who will be spending their Christmas homeless and in grief. Any amount will do, and every donation will help. As Filipinos, let us all be responsible for helping our countrymen in rebuilding their lives.
(AJPress)