Typhoon Santi, was 'a well behaved Typhoon' - or so says the weather bureau. It was labelled as such because it followed the predicted path and pretty much acted as forecast. Just a pity that along its way Santi caused more flooding in areas that were already under water, took out at least one major bridge and cut off numerous roads, destroyed a number of houses, injured a few hundred people, caused the evacuation of thousands of others and killed at least 12. (But at least Santi was well behaved!)Already under water and battling rising morbidity rates as a result of water borne disease the last thing these communities needed was more rain - more misery and more uncertainty.
You may recall I visited Santa Cruz last week, (blog below) and this morning I received this comment:
rizza said...I'm from the town you've visited (Santa Cruz, Laguna). It's just so sad that when we are just starting to recover from typhoon Ondoy, typhoon Santi ravaged our town again and rendered most of the town inaccessible because of still high flood waters. I'm just sad that most of the people in our town will not be able to celebrate Christmas in our homes.
What do you say to people like Rizza? You deliver a food parcel and that will help their stomachs for a while. You give them medicines and that may stop them getting sick. You give them a bed mat and a blanket, but where do they lay it out and sleep - on the roof? You write about their plight, try and explain the hurt and confusion, but what help is that when they watch their belongings float by in the dirty smelly water.
Sometimes what we do seems so futile. And yet we do it - and we will conintue to do it because there is little else we can do. We do it because we can't do nothing. We do it because we must do something.
