The Filipinos' Character in the Face of Disaster

The world has seen the admirable traits of the Japanese in the aftermath of the recent 9.0 magnitude earthquake which generated a tsunami that left widespread destruction to certain areas of Japan.  Images from live feeds in CNN, Fox News, Aljazeera, BBC and NHK showed faces of the Japanese gripped with varied emotions, viz; horror, anguish and anxiety, as the raging ten meters high floodwaters wrought enormous damage to everything along its path.
 

After the danger passed, the authorities immediately sent out many search and rescue teams as well as surveyed the disaster areas for corresponding corrective measures.  The Japanese survivors struggled to go on with their lives with quiet dignity and calm without hysterical recrimination or angry tirades on their government officials or for any imagined fault or what not.

Indeed, we, Filipinos, are a world apart from and can never hold a candle to the exceptional character of the Japanese in times of disaster.  As my true to life experience during "Ondoy" where my wife and I almost lost our life when we had to brave the twenty feet raging floodwaters engulfing Provident Villages in Marikina City in seeking refuge in a neighbor's sturdier house.  Of course, we were very thankful for our able-bodied neighbors who skillfully guided us to safety since we were both non-swimmers.certain to die for drowning. 

The Sunday after "Ondoy", I decided to wade along the ankle-deep mud sidewalk of St. Mary Avenue planning to buy some food for the family.  There were so many people going in and out of the village for whatever purpose they had.  Many of them walked ogling at the houses caked with mud or picking up some usable articles floating along the way.  At the end of St. Mary Avenue, many people were milling about and talking endlessly.  There was no policemen accosting some enterprising persons bringing out household items.

A whole week after "Ondoy", looters came in force from everywhere to salvage everything with value from houses abandoned by owners.  Even our rented apartment unit lost several items to looters like a heavy folding bed of cast-iron which was impossible to float away during the height of the onrushing floodwaters.  Only when many complaints reached the city government that army soldiers were enlisted to stop the frenzied looting in our village.

While looting was absent from the areas ravaged by the tsunami in Japan, looters had a fiesta-like raiding galore in our Provident Village.  That was a shameful display of the bad side of Filipinos during "Ondoy's" devastation where the ensuing Filipino "bayanihan" spirit became the sole saving grace which mitigated the pain and sufferings of the flood victims.  The present generation has the difficult task of discarding such vulture-like trait of many Filipinos and emulating the noble Japanese character in times of disaster.