The cost of bullheadedness

Now known as one of the deadliest typhoons to hit the country, “Usman” rained over the holiday season and left a wake of deaths and damage to rival that of “Ompong.”

The death toll is currently at 75, which may still rise, says the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC).

The disaster management agency blamed the high casualty count on the failure to evacuate even after residents were given warnings before the storm hit.

Residents of mountainside villages were especially bullheaded about the call, apparently, leading the NDRRMC to resolve to focus on getting concerned citizens to heed its warnings and advisories.

The rains poured steadily for hours in parts of the Bicol region, causing floods and landslides. These, we know, are no longer surprising when calamities hit.

Still, the shock of hearing about 50 houses buried under landslides, such as the one in Sagñay, Camarines Sur, is still there. The victims were probably all together for the break because it was almost the New Year.

Landslides, too, snuffed out the lives of people in other parts of the region. It was also feared that mud would flow toward affected areas as Mayon Volcano was acting up before “Usman” swooped into town.

After the sky cleared, local governments faced the challenge of reaching remote areas, as landslides had blocked roads and the sea was still rough. This has been a problem faced almost every time disaster hits.

The recent typhoon buffeted Bicol, Eastern Visayas and Mimaropa. It left P343 million in agricultural damage in Bicol alone, the NDRRMC reported yesterday.

The country is acknowledged by all sorts of experts and agencies to have a “high vulnerability to natural hazards” due to its geographic position. It is, in fact, said to be “the fourth most disaster-prone country in the world,” according to a study conducted by the Geneva-based United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. The Philippines, it added, is “one of the top 10 countries with most number of people afflicted by such disasters — at a staggering 130 billion.”

It has been noted that an average of 20 storms batter the Philippines annually. Some of these wrought so much havoc and misery that we can never forget the names “Reming,” “Ondoy” and “Yolanda.” The latter, bringing the strongest winds on record, left 7,360 people dead or missing in coastal communities in November 2013.

The country reeled from that disaster and rehabilitation continues to this day. The effect on the people directly affected by it, however, is far less measurable.

The world being the way it is today and people still as thick-headed about their role in the scheme of things, a dedicated disaster management body, such as what some of our legislators had already recommended last year, will have a lot more to handle than is probably envisioned.

Making programs around what we already know is far easier than creating campaigns to urge people to act on their own — without the frustrating task of convincing residents to leave endangered areas when they need to, short of physically dragging them to safety.

And then, of course, there are the other issues tied into all of these things: illegal logging, which is among the main reasons for these deadly landslides and flooding; the lack of political will, which leads to developments in places that should never be touched for ecological reasons, and the greed that leads to such transgressions and the ignorance or apathy that allow them to happen.

Being stupidly stubborn about many things in life that we know were never for our own good anyway is one thing that we should think about shedding, once and for all, this 2019!