Disaster prevention 101, Dingdong’s version
‘Resilience is not built when disaster arrives. It is cultivated long before the first drop of rainfalls.’
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‘Resilience is not built when disaster arrives. It is cultivated long before the first drop of rainfalls.’
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At the First Stormwater Summit, Family Feud Philippines game show host Dingdong Dantes shared the result of a survey about what ordinary people think when they see the word “flood.” The top six answers, he said, were water, traffic, garbage, brownout, evacuation and erosion.
For the actor, TV host and director, flood is about being resilient in a different way.
“Resilience is not simply the ability to recover. Resilience, I think, is the courage to adapt. The discipline to prepare, the humility to work together, and the determination to keep moving forward even when life may never return to what it once was,” Dantes said.
He added, “We cannot prevent disasters. But we can lessen the impact by planning better, by building better, by preparing better, and above all, by working together. Because resilience is not built when disaster arrives. It is cultivated long before the first drop of rainfalls.”
As the ambassador of the Office of Civil Defense, the actor is promoting this new definition of resilience through OCD’s Panatag Pilipinas Campaign (PPC). The PPC uses educational bite-sized videos to make disaster preparedness simple with the goal of making it practical, accessible, relatable, and part of everyday life.
“Preparedness isn’t about living in fear. It’s about living with confidence,” he said.
As a Philippine Navy reservist, one of the many lessons and values that Dantes learned in the military is “preparedness is a way of life.”
“We train relentlessly, not because we know exactly what will happen, but because we know that sooner or later, we will be called upon to respond. As I said, nobody trains while the emergency is already unfolding. So, these are habits that we cultivate, habits that shape the choices we make long before they are needed.”
“My hope is that one day, when the future generations look back at us, they will not simply say, they were resilient because they were, they always recovered. Instead, I hope they say, they were resilient because they chose to prepare. They chose to act,” he said.
