Thank you

Over the next few days, what could be the biggest relief operation ever will unfold in the islands devastated by the super typhoon.

International response to this huge calamity has been overwhelming. For the first time since the Battle for Leyte Gulf, the area will be crammed with sea vessels of every sort.

The aircraft carrier USS George Washington and her cruiser and destroyer escorts steamed in from Hong Kong, redeployed from its scheduled port leave. Ahead of that, her helicopters, C-130s and MV-22 Ospreys rotor planes have landed to help move the flood of relief goods.

Australia is sending her HMAS Tobruk landing ship to the area in addition to C-130 Hercules cargo planes already in operation. South Korea sent in two C-130 planes to assist in the massive logistical challenge of bringing relief to the estimated 6 million people in dire need. Thailand and Indonesia are sending their C-130s over. Malaysia is organizing relief flights.

Japan is ready to send up to a thousand troops, three naval vessels and aircraft to help in the relief effort. They will bring in $10 million worth of emergency shelter so direly needed by those whose homes were wiped out by the storm surges.

France is flying in emergency equipment. Swedish planes are on their way, carrying complete base camps for those engaged in the relief effort. New Zealand, too, is sending cargo planes over.

The UN sent out a flash appeal for $301 million in emergency aid. The International Labor Organization (ILO) is preparing a program for emergency employment for the affected communities. Countries as diverse as Norway, Vietnam and Kuwait have pledged millions of dollars in cash assistance.

In addition to the support flowing in from foreign governments, international civil society organizations have joined in the urgent effort to save lives. Groups in the UK, rallied by the BBC, have raised the equivalent of a billion pesos in a matter of a few days. The group Doctors Without Borders are coming in with medical volunteers and 8 planeloads of medicines and vaccines.

In the US, the NBA donated a million dollars and the players a million more. Filipino communities abroad are organizing scores of fundraising activities.

The international response is no less than overwhelming. Global interest in the devastated areas was helped by the intensive coverage of the international news networks, even as their reporting might not have been too pleasant for our politicians.

We can never thank the international community enough for their humanitarian support. The fact is, the calamity is simply too large and our state institutions simply too weak to match the challenge.

If our leaders could not bring themselves to say it, let me do it for them: Thank you, dear friends. We could not manage without your invaluable help. The best we can do to match your overwhelming generosity is to do all we can to help our countrymen in direst need.

Unprepared

No one could ever be fully prepared for a storm as ferocious as Yolanda. Yet, we now know, our authorities were particularly unprepared.

For some reason, our own weather agency understated the power of the storm in the days before it hit us. PAGASA put wind speeds at 240 kph while most other foreign meteorological agencies estimated wind speeds at well over 320 kph.

While our authorities did warn of possible storm surges, proper appreciation of the storm’s wind speeds should have merited wholesale evacuation of all the coastal communities. That was an almost impossible challenge and it is easy to suspect bureaucratic inertia took over: what could not be done is better not anticipated. Simply hope the weather event will not be as bad as the scientific instruments predict it will.

There is an additional problem attributable to this administration’s propensity to try and get by with sheer propaganda.

The President must realize it is not enough to deliver a nationwide address and warn the people. The warning must have been followed by orders for marine vessels to move away from the storm’s path, for coastal communities (including big cities) to evacuate to higher ground, for the entire armed forces to be put on full alert and mobilized for immediate deployment, for radio relay systems to be installed in anticipation of communications failure, and a hundred other little things to be done before the storm hit us.

The authorities tried, before the storm, to impress us by saying relief items have been “pre-positioned.” After the deluge, we now know these items were seriously deficient and we were not ready with a plan for a mass casualty event.

When the President visited Tacloban, photographed handing out bottled water, he was irked by an underling reporting that the city was “90% devastated.” Even that was an understatement. The city, we now know, is completely devastated.

With its obsessive propaganda-consciousness, this administration tends to be quick in grabbing credit and even quicker in passing blame.

When the international media began criticizing the speed and efficiency of government response, the President and those who spoke on his behalf continued suggesting the response was bogged down by the failures of local leaders. The international media and the global audience saw through this alibi and scored our government for being incompetent in the face of crisis.

With international relief flowing in, the best this government could do is to improve coordination on the ground. Take out the conflicted politicians with their dubious agenda. Put in the real experts in disaster management.

It is not yet too late to redeem ourselves.