For the tremendous physical and emotional damage it has wrought, “Sendong” is one for the books.
But there will be time enough for blame after the dead are buried and the missing are found, whether breathing or rendered extinct, in the storm-stricken areas of Mindanao. For now, let sorrow and the ceremony of mourning take their course. Let those suddenly bereft of loved ones and earthly possessions find the strength to come to grips with their loss and, though inconceivable for the moment, to go on with life.
There will be time enough for account-taking when the collective grief mellows, like a wound that in time produces a scab. For now, let the corpses be gathered from the muck and the unforgiving sea, and the survivors be afforded a faint hope of closure. Let the bodies be laid to rest with a modicum of dignity, now a seeming privilege in communities so devastated that even the barest necessities have become rare.
For now, let the government apply itself and its formidable resources to meet the crying need of the hour: assistance for both the living and the dead. There will be time enough for a thorough review of geo-hazard maps and appropriate land use after the survivors are helped to regain their bearings. The government network of support agencies is called upon to display capability from its end; after all, hardly had Sendong made its exit than the zeal of local and international humanitarian groups and the vaunted kindness of strangers came swiftly to the fore.
There will be time enough to hammer home the lessons that should have been learned after the living reclaim themselves from the depths of despair. There is no sense in attempting to educate the bereaved on the correctness of being prepared for catastrophe when it is all they can do to come to terms with the loss of spouse, child, parent or sibling, or to overcome feelings of guilt over being alive when everyone beloved has perished, in so brutal a manner, within minutes.
(It is truly unfortunate that some men cannot cry. And television allows the observer to see one so battered by the mighty flood that it put him on crutches, to hear him speak haltingly of the wife and children who slipped from his grasp and of the utter senselessness of being alive when they are dead, and to watch him struggle with grief made raw by his inability to weep. The dimensions of this tragedy move one to cast about for occasions of similar anguish, when life becomes undesirable in the face of death’s selective embrace. One finds resonance in Jean-Dominique Bauby, since deceased, author of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and former editor of French Elle, who at 43 suffered a massive stroke that left him completely and permanently paralyzed ― a victim of the so-called “locked-in syndrome.” Bauby wrote, or more to the point, dictated, by sheer force of will: “Once I gave up my seat for Jean-Paul K., who at that time had not yet been taken hostage by the Hezbollah. He would spend several years in a darkened Beirut dungeon, endlessly reciting the wines of the Bordeaux classification of 1855 to keep from going mad … I was very fond of Jean-Paul, but I never saw him again after his release from Beirut. I suppose I was ashamed of playing at being editor-in-chief in the frothy world of fashion magazines while he wrestled with life on its most brutal terms. Now I am the prisoner and he the free man.”)
This is not the first time a tragedy of Sendong’s proportions has been visited on this country, except that the body count is one of the highest in memory. With the heightening global warming, countries in the developed parts of the world have also come under such an onslaught, as recall the effects of “Katrina” in Louisiana, USA.
There as here, it is to the government that citizens look for succor apart from their own initiatives. There should be time enough to reexamine the appalling rate of deforestation, the dire effects of mining and other extractive industries, and the skills and capability of our weathermen after the unthinkable deaths of infants and children have sunk in. And perhaps time enough for residents of even the most weather-perfect provinces to come to terms with the idea that no one is safe, it’s later than we think
