Siftings
Two typhoons, an earthquake and a tsunami
This past week has been a blast. Two typhoons wreaking great havoc on the Philippines, and almost at the same time elsewhere in Southeast Asia, an earthquake of great intensity claiming many lives and property, and a tsunami coming in for its own quota of material loss and human lives. One is again faced with the question that has now become a mantra: What is our world coming to?
That is no longer the question we should ask ourselves. Rather, it should be, What have we done to our world that it is beginning to punish us so with calamities that are claiming lives and property with increasing frequency and intensity? All in a matter of days, too, in our region of the world: floods induced by torrential rains whose aftermath is still underfoot, so to speak, and whose victims are still counting; howling winds that blow off roofs and uproot trees and cut cable lines and electric wires. Leaving nothing short of total devastation for some of our less fortunate brothers and sisters. Is this the start of Armageddon by water, when the polar snows altogether melt down due to global warming, inundating whole continents and turning Earth into a water world?
There was once a movie which starred Kevin Costner entitled “Waterworld.” What was depicted there wasn’t pretty: a vast expanse of brown-gray water, a gray muddy sky, here and there an island of meager greenery, and a few survivors fighting to death for the meager resources available to them. Is that scenario about to happen in this century?
Meanwhile, TV screens pommel our consciousness with graphic images of rampaging floodwaters, torrential rains, even a fire raging in the midst of the storm; people wading chest deep in flooded streets, calling for help from their rooftops in flooded subdivisions, crowding evacuation centers, schoolhouses, covered courts, etc.–the normal tenor of their lives interrupted, put on hold or brutally cut short by outright death. Sometimes the grim scenario is softened by the almost comical sight of cars grotesquely upended or crunched against each other by the strong current; or by a brief glimpse of a dog on a rooftop with a woebegone look on its face; or by a close-up of a child sitting in his mother’s lap in one corner of an evacuation center, sucking his thumb probably to dull his hunger, looking at the crowd of people around him with the blank gaze of utter bewilderment.
Meanwhile too, the relief operations go on as of this writing, and donations keep coming in by the thousands, by the millions. One is buoyed up by hopes that the millions of cash for the typhoon victims do not find their way into the bank accounts of greedy individuals. On a minor scale, there are already reports that some people, whether victims or non-victims, have lined up for days at relief centers to get goods that are piling up in their homes, enough goods to enable them to set up a sari-sari store. We won’t mind too much if they are real victims of Ondoy, but we do mind if they are opportunists, no less than sharkers and thieves who ruthlessly take the food out of those hungry victims’ mouths! Is this being Filipino, being generous, hospitable, kind, helpful? Is this the Filipino that Ninoy said was worth dying for? Nakakahiya.
Meanwhile, again, our government officials’ mettle are being tried and tested. At first strike of Ondoy, GMA and Defense Secretary Teodoro looked helpless, caught off guard by the sight of rampaging waters and helpless people shown on TV screens in vivid colors. One remembers that in her last SONA address, GMA had declared: “I did not become president to be popular but to work.” So, I told myself, let’s see how she works, now that her image makers seem to have been put off guard too by the calamity before them. Not so strangely, it was showbiz people from the two rival TV networks, that showed the most commitment and devotion at handing out relief goods to victims in evacuation centers. Even saving lives too. Clearly, showbiz has its uses. Its way of showing its gratitude to the people who make up their audiences and enable them to lead lives of ease and luxury.
As usual in disasters and such, stories of heroism and selfless sacrifice surface to bring tears of gratitude to our eyes. People losing their lives to rescue others: a young boy,a soldier, some Cafgus. But their families are left with this reality: after the medals and citations of heroism,what can replace the loss of their loved one? Of course, when a disaster of this caliber strikes, one can only be thankful with what is left behind. When disaster does not discriminate between the rich and the poor, who are we to complain? The nurse who had to do a doctor’s job of delivering a baby deserves praise, but she was just doing what she had to do at the time. Maybe, beyond the heroism is the idea that we all have to do what is best at the moment of need.
And I can’t help thinking that now, NOW, is the moment of greatest NEED in answering the call to save the environment. To save the world as it is now. To save the world from becoming a water world where everything that Humankind has ever accomplished is washed away, drowned and effaced from the surface of the Earth. And this we have to do by taking steps to control the global pollution emanating from well-known but tacitly unvoiced toxic depredations of a civilization gone haywire from Human Greed.