The lessons of Ondoy

It was a catastrophe of Biblical proportions. If it took 40 days of rain to set Noah’s Ark afloat, Typhoon Ondoy did the same job of floating fleets of luxury vehicles for less than a day. Houses were inundated. Homes wrecked. People were left wretched.



A year after Ondoy, which killed over 400 people and cost more than P20 billion in damages, many are still striving to bring back what the tragedy had taken from them- normalcy. People’s lives are never the same, especially those whose loved ones were swept away without a chance of returning.



For the destruction of expensive cars and houses could never compare to a single loss of life.



I find it outrageous though that a lot of people made elaborate preparations for the first anniversary of Ondoy. Some planted trees as others cleaned up clogged esteros and river banks to commemorate the worst flood ever to hit posh urban villages. So what’s the point?



Tree planing, clean-up drives and other “earth saving” activities should all be regular endeavors- Ondoy or no Ondoy. Such nearsightedness could lead to more tragedies in the future.



We need to go back and call to mind the lessons of Ondoy. It is quite sad that people tend to remember their misfortunes but not their causes. For it is not the rains that caused Ondoy’s floods but people’s apathy to calls for environmental protection.



If by commemorating Ondoy people tend to do the right thing, maybe we should commemorate it daily. It is only by correcting a previous mistake that we could prevent a tragedy from reoccuring. If we failed to do this, then we must brace for more disasters of the same proportion.



And make grand preparations to commemorate them as well.