MOTHER NATURE ISN’T JUST BEING CRANKY-OLD-BITCH MEAN
(…this time…she’s being downright abusive to her Filipino children…)

In our society today, parental abuse of children is not tolerated; and, when a case of it comes to light, Child Welfare Services are called to swarm in and “rescue” children from such parental abuse (well, that’s the intent anyway).

Unfortunately, when Mother Nature flips into one of her cranky-old-bitch fits there’s not much anyone can do about it, beyond trying to take cover and stay out of her way until that fit is over. In this particular instance, however, she isn’t just being cranky-old-bitch mean, this time, she’s being downright abusive to her Filipino children, piling up …tsunamis, earthquakes, torrential rains, and now this Hai Yan typhoon…all on top of each other. That’s no way for a mother to act, and we can’t help but now wonder if she deserves that benign label of –Mother-. to go with her – Nature-.

Our world is constantly subjected to these kinds of natural disasters, more frequently in some places than in others, and there’s little we puny earthlings can do about them. That’s just the way things are, here, on Planet Earth. We can only do the best we can to cope with them. The problem is that our human inadequacies and incompetence get in the way of doing that effectively, which is why the aftermaths of such events are always worse than the events themselves.

We’ve seen it with – Katrina-, with – Sandy-, in Haiti, at Fukushima, and now, in the Philippines…and that’s just a short list. No part of our Earth seems immune from such eventualities. Yet, there is a common thread in all of them, which is, the sheer size and extent of physical damage and destruction to local infrastructures, along with the near collapse of any kind of local organized authority, which makes outside incoming help  so difficult to deliver.

As we’re seeing right now in the Philippines, the world community is very good at mobilizing the collection of emergency supplies of food, water, medicines, and temporary shelter, aimed at stabilizing the surviving population of a disaster struck area…but not so good at actually getting all of that  distributed and delivered to it. There is a need for better emergency planning to overcome that problem, something that will have a clearer focus on search and rescue, and temporary stabilization, before anything else.

What this means is that with airfields, roadways, bridges, and related infrastructures made unusable by such events, mobilization of sufficient helicopter-type resources to deliver emergency relief should really be a priority of such aid and assistance efforts. Efforts aimed at systematically delivering core packages to set up local self-contained temporary facilities providing such essentials, including the setting up of a temporary local authority with a martial-law  mandate to help re-organize such populations into some semblance of normal society.

The massive delivery of supplies, piling up at major depots, waiting to be transported to forward locations of a disaster area, especially one as extensive as this one in the Philippines, while well meaning, isn’t much help to those that desperately need it. Stabilizing and securing the survivors of such disastrous events should be the overriding concern. Taking care of immediate needs is the key for doing that. Re-construction plans can come later.

There has to be a better way of coming to the aid of fellow human beings in dire straits after a disaster of such magnitude. Let’s not forget…it could be our own plight…next time.

CENTURION