THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF THE TWO SUPER TYPHOONS

History revealed our country is experiencing at least 22 typhoons per year as flooding continues to plague the Philippines since time immemorial. With its predictable path, typhoons have become so visible even to bats that provided everyone considerable warnings before they even hit the country. Likewise, the scenes on television on how the victims themselves struggled to save their own lives truly awakened the government on the pattern of the flood disaster. We now have the experience which is the best source of knowledge.

We are going to compare how the Super Typhoon Yolanda was handled by Pnoy administration as against how PDU30 handled the Ompong super typhoon that just hit the country only on September 15, 2018.

In the Pnoy administration, it was Mar Roxas only who was sent by Pnoy to Tacloban as the overall in charge. When Yolanda hit Leyte, the place where Roxas spent the night, he was asleep and it was the Typhoon Yolanda that awakened him in his hotel. In the aftermath of the Yolanda where all the damaged areas were in ferment unrest, Mar Roxas was into a feud with Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez. Hence, all preparations crumbled in a domino effect: Donations from foreign countries in Billions and Billions of cash money were pocketed. The other donations like food packs, rice, personal hygiene kits, etcetera, were being profited from the officials’ cooperation. The disaster victims who were the ugliest of beings-- hungry and starving to death were like dogs waiting to be feed with leftovers. The death toll reached a record high of 10,000 people.

In the recent Super Typhoon Ompong, PDU30 put Francis Tolentino as the Point Man but PDU30 was on top of everything as he monitored the path of typhoon Ompong in every province that was hard hit. That’s why, everything that could be seen as the worse scenario in times of disaster turned into a fantastic one--always being able to find order in evacuation centers, like medicines, food, and shelter, and practically everything is there once and for all. Thank God, as of this writing, only almost 54 people were confirmed dead so far. 

Indeed, both Roxas and PDU30 choose their own outcome in their respective task from the different super typhoons Yolanda and Ompong. Roxas chose to be remiss of his duties and with it; he suffered the pain of being haunted by regret. In the case of PDU30, he chose to suffer the pain on the road to success drawing admiration from every corner of the world and be remembered with love and respect.