Everytime it rains for a day, somebody dies in this country.
A baby in an estero (sewer), children in collapsed plywood houses, informal dwellers on a river bank, vagrants scavenging at a bayside, an entire barrio at a foothill buried by a giant mudslide. In this instance, entire barrios near Mayon buried by the mud from the ashes spewed by the volcano months ago.
When the fatalities reach a hundred, government says tragedy and appeals for unity.
All efforts and attention should be aimed now at rescue, retrieval, rehabilitation; those buried alive have only seconds and minutes of air to live; and all talk and exchange are useless in the face of gasping and dying; the authorities, those who have the means to rescue must know the urgency of the work and those who watch should give whatever help, even pressuring the authorities to move quickly, helps. At some point after the rescue and retrieval, the mourning and the gnashing, someone should ask: What happened to the budget for the landmapping project, where each barangay nationwide is informed and educated of where the mudslide-prone areas are, assign tanods (watch/ guards) who would monitor the signs of an impending mudflow, devise a barangay-wide emergency signal system that works, and point to elevated areas where the residents could be evacuated before the rains and mud start crashing. There was such a plan submitted by the NDCC then under Secretary Nonong Cruz but no budget was given for it. Apparently, no budget was ever given for it.
Later.
We can talk about it after the rescue.
(When you sit at home or in you office or in a pub, while it rains the whole day, know that someone in some plywood shanty in this country is drowning.)
