HE said — SHE said

“Death is spelled in the names of those who allowed the importation of the substandard cement and steel.

The jolts, big and small, have sensitized the nation to pain and mourning, like we have yet to move on from the past physical sufferings brought by more destruction and deaths.

It is the neighbor, the brother, the kid.

From Batanes to Mindanao, all in one sweeping year, we’ve lost men, women and children.

Equal to the lives were the structures that formed our heritage as a people.

The churches of foreign oppression and then later, faith and submission.

The highways and bridges that fed corruption of government men and will feed them again, for sure.

The houses that made men and women toil for roofs and food. The sacrifices that went with them. Fathers who left their families for greener pastures abroad. Teachers who stooped so low to become maids in Hong Kong. Nurses who will never come back.

The disrupted education of our youth. Some of them will never return. Some of them will be forced to work for food. Or beg. Or die for it. Or just die. Of hunger.

One jolt and all these happen quick — the flash that nobody likes to witness.

Earthquakes do not kill. It is the buildings built poorly. The murderers are the houses formed weakly. It is the substandard cement that flooded the market, especially in Mindanao where a bag sold cheaply. It is the weak steel that come from the poor factories of deceit.

Blood is in the hands of those who signed the building permits. Death is spelled in the names of those who allowed the importation of the substandard cement and steel. They should be hanged at the plaza for the crows to feats on.

No, the hungry crows should be reserved for the lawmakers who spend time looking for ways to perpetuate themselves in power, while neglecting their roles and jobs, like making laws to strengthen the building code perhaps?

But it is not important for them. They do not care, actually.

We focus on rebuilding what had been destroyed by the series of earthquakes that hit Mindanao and elsewhere. But everything would soon come back to where it came from.

Nobody would run after the erring town and city engineers who allowed the construction of shaky buildings. They will remain there with their gait, because they know they could not be faulted.

Who would chase the corrupt personnel of the Bureau of Customs (BoC)? They, who let in the cement, actually just mud when mixed with sand and water to form what they pass off as mortar. It becomes dust when it dries. It crumbles when shaken.

Who will bang the heads of the merchants who sold the faulty steel? They do not sway with the earth’s movement. They just bend with the weight and topple down to kill a child whose knees are too shocked to jump for life.

President Rodrigo Duterte can drop his other work to put focus on these. If he can make miracles in other things, this is also an important matter needing one. Just one.

A signature to make our Congress scamper to work for a standard but stronger building code which will save lives in the future, even when the strongest quake comes like the anticipated Big One, is all the President has to make.

He holds the compelling power to make the syndicates that control an industry of bogus building materials disappear. Where is the “I’ll kill you!” when warnings are needed?

He can make the BoC go harder on the smugglers of these murderous materials.

Push this piece for him to read, because we do not need another death and destruction tomorrow.

After Pastor Apollo Quiboloy “told” one of the earthquakes to stop in Mindanao, another one rocked the region at a strong 6.9 Magnitude.

The quake stopping after Quiboloy declared “Hinto” may have been mere coincidence, but it sure made people think about these increasingly powerful quakes that have hit Mindanao, which are causing many to wonder if an even stronger one is coming along.

If so, one would need a horde of Quiboloys to stop the disaster.

For a disaster it would be should “big ones” really hit parts of our archipelago, which lies in the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Decades of environmental damage causing the effects of climate change make the occurrence of increasingly dangerous natural calamities almost certain.

We don’t know for sure when these dreaded calamities may happen, but what we can be sure of is what we can do today to lessen the damage and casualties when the time comes.

Lately, for example, pockets of damages were reported, as the Magnitude 6.9 tremor hit several parts of Mindanao at 2:11 p.m. on Sunday.

The earthquake caused major damages to some bridges and commercial establishments. It damaged houses and, unfortunately, killed four people.

Also somehow disturbing were news of condominium developments getting new cracks after serious ones caused it to be condemned following the series of quakes in the region last October.

Our eyes turn to the high-rises and similar developments in Metro Manila, where some are dreading a so-called Big One because of the questionable structural integrity of many buildings.

Not only that, preparation and responsiveness are attached to the issue, as we have been learning as a nation through all the natural calamities we have continued to experience.

During the time of Dinky Soliman as head of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), controversies of rotting stocks of food meant for calamity victims drew public ire.

While inefficiency may have been a culprit in the inability to deliver the goods to those who needed it most, there were also questions on infrastructure and even corruption.

It seems Duterte’s new DSWD chief is more effective. Assistance and aid had come quicker than ever to affected citizens.

Some P1.1 million worth of assistance were disbursed to the displaced families of the latest earthquake. Reports say the assistance “consisted of 1,145 family food packs, 1,200 laminated sacks and eight family tents,” directly given to the victims.

The region 11 division of DSWD also reported it still has “a total of P6 million standby funds for disaster assistance.”

It cannot be emphasized enough how important local leadership is when it comes to disaster management. In Mindanao, where the concentration of earthquakes seems to have been serving up a series of warnings recently, “community-based frontline emergency responders” had been created in cases of earthquakes and other disasters.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles in a report in this paper, stated: “Each sitio (sub-village), or each barangay nationwide, should have well-trained emergency responders and all communities should be taught on how to properly respond during all type of disasters and emergencies.”

Nograles and all our public officials, for that matter, should also pay attention to the follow-through.

It is not enough to evacuate families prior to a predicted calamity. It is not enough to build the structures for them to evacuate to, or even gather all the equipment and necessities when the calamity strikes.

What happens afterwards is also a major consideration. The victims of the typhoon “Tisoy,” for example, remain displaced a week later. It should be made clear that while DSWD augments resources, it is the main responsibility of LGU to lead and oversee” disaster preparedness, mitigation and response.”

Of course, it should go without saying, that the Filipino bayanihan spirit should spring forth in such times.