WITH the eruption of Taal Volcano in the province of Batangas that caused residents to leave their homes and seek shelter in public buildings like gymnasiums and cockpits, we hope this will open the eyes of our public officials towards disaster preparedness and protect their residents.
Our country also has typhoons and other calamities occurring every year that endanger residents in their homes, but volcanic eruption is more dangerous because it comes with earthquake, brimstone and fire that can instantly kill people, as well as destroy crops and burn down homes.
We also have peace and order problems like what happened to Marawi in recent years that caused an entire city to be destroyed by war. We annihilated a few dozen rebels but destroyed an entire city to the ground by cannon fire and bombs.
We won the war but we lost the city and its people and left them with shuttered hopes and dreams, and many of them are still unable to rebuild their homes.
Now, what is happening to Batangas after the eruption of Taal Volcano in the province appears like a wrath of nature coming from God that is angry at us.
It caused the inhabitants of nearby towns to abandon their homes and take shelter at stronger structures like public gyms and cockpits. The problem now is their food supply every day since they cannot cook their meals for lack of facilities where they stay, and so they depend on handouts and line up to receive food from kind donors. How long can they subsist this way?
Well, we are happy that Taal’s fury has died down and we hope that they can return to their homes very soon.
We noted that the Philippines is a calamity-prone country and is always hit by typhoons or earthquakes as we see what happened also to Mindanao and the typhoon that recently hit Western Visayas. That is why we believe that we should always prepare our barangays for such emergencies and disasters.
We have our public schools in our barangays and some of them have roofed gyms for their sports activities. They can provide shelter for our residents in case of typhoons or other calamities. What could we do is add a group kitchen with two or three comfort rooms with funds raised from residents. We believe that the good principal or head teacher can explain this. They are usually looked up to in of the barangay or community where they serve.
Preparedness in our barangays, can we do it?
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Dinagyang
Valiant players of the drum,
From faithless lands you come,
Dunes to the Sage of Silence run,
To play before God’s only Son!
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For comments or re-actions, please e-mail to jnoveracompany@yahoo.com./PN
