Kahandaan sa Sakuna’t Peligro Para sa Tunay na Pagbabago

Luck is a very thin wire between survival and death from a disaster, and not

many people can keep their balance on it. Disasters are events that are either an

accident or a natural catastrophe which can come anytime, anywhere, and can affect

anyone. Since 1990, the Philippines has been hit with over 565 natural disasters from

typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, which are among the more

common disasters that resulted in 70,000 deaths and a staggering 23 billion dollars in

damages. The Philippines is among the four countries which are considered the

highest risked places to be in Earth with INFORM rating the Philippines with 5.5 in a

scale of 1 to 10 for the level of risk in terms of humanitarian crises and disasters.

Almost 60 percent of the overall land areas of the Philippines is exposed to 1 or

multiple hazards and 74 percent of the populace being vulnerable to their impact. With

how the Philippines is given with a position that possesses this handful of risks from

disasters it would be clear that we are at the utmost readiness for the disasters that

we occasionally face but no, the Philippines is compounded with poor institutional and

societal capacity to manage respond, and recover from natural hazard events.

Disaster preparedness is just as important as eating, drinking, and sleeping for

the reason that it may be one of the factors that will keep you alive especially in your

everyday life which includes disasters being a part of the challenges to a person’s life.

An advantage of executing this manner is improving the safety of an individual, a

family, and a community where survival will prevail among them. Being prepared is

one of the recipes in safekeeping a person’s life and well-being for continued safe

living before and after problems and disasters. Homes, schools, every building and

even a person’s life can be damaged or destroyed by disasters because of the lack of
care and knowledge of a person to what is happening to his surroundings. We can

never deny that the damage of a disaster is inevitable to the affected but being disaster

prepared can provide reduced damage to the affected which would result to lesser

rebuilding costs and lesser recovery time.

In times of disasters one must be ready for the following dangers that it may

bring by moving not just during a disaster but most importantly before a disaster may

strike. One must be fully aware of what is happening to the world from incoming

typhoons to alarms of a volcanic eruptions because it might be one of the factors that

might be the decider in survival or death. From the smallest things to the more

observable things a person needs to be mindful of its condition and predict what

consequence that thing might bring say for example a tree or a car in times of a

disaster then be ready when its danger strikes with a disaster plan to have a guide

and make it easier for a person to make the right decisions during danger.

In times of danger it is better and recommended for people in a community to

work together, to have cooperation and willingness to help one another because

what’s the use of having others other than oneself if everyone won’t help one another.

People weren’t born to be enemies to other people instead were born to coexist and

make peace with each other. When all else about a person fails, it is a life saver if you

have someone along oneself to help one another accomplish challenges not just

during a disaster but in life as a whole because fusing two minds is better than having

one stand-alone like in schools. A school is a place where children and adults alike all

are brought together to learn together and share everyone’s opinions and ideas for a

more concrete and better outcome. In times of disaster everyone in a school must

unite to confront a problem like a disaster when it hits for example an earthquake, to

have a united and safe evacuation, each individual must cooperate accordingly to what
the teacher or whoever is in charge to know where it is best to stay during the

earthquake because without cooperation and unity to see the greater idea, there would

be a dozen of ideas conflicting with one another making it a mess and confusing a

person leading to panic, accidents and havoc when it could all be avoided with a simple

willingness to cooperate to the greater idea.

In the aftermath of a disaster, there are always damages from minor to major

casualties on your house or any properties some taking a considerable amount of time

to fix but all can be mitigated if people are prepared enough for the impact of a certain

disaster. Disaster preparedness not only ensures the safety of an individual and a

community it also aims to reduce the damages brought about by the disaster for a

faster recovery for one’s life to return back to usual and also to ensure that the

consequences dealt by the disaster are well adapted in the structure of homes and

other buildings which will withstand the wrath of a disaster and also in order for

damages to be reduced.

Particularly here in the Philippines, disaster preparedness is lacking and is

challenged. Even though the nation experiences natural disasters every now and then,

disaster preparedness and response are still poor and almost everyone in the

community puts a lack of focus and awareness in the field of disaster management

and preparation. Although there are a lot of public and private institutions that have a

great involvement in this field, some public government officials see this field as a type

of business considering that the Philippine government is home to numerous selfish

employees making this field a type of bureaucratic competition where every political

actor desires to hold the most power and control over the money that flows within this

field which results to lack of budget and knowledge of the community on how they

would face a certain calamity. Because of the selfish desires of this kinds of political
actors, the aspects of the lives of many are affected from their businesses, security,

finance, and most importantly the education of the youth and adults alike. The lack of

preparedness from a local government to a public school institution leads to a greater

damage to school facilities that deprive students of a comfortable learning centre thus

affecting their learning capabilities and the extended amount of time of schools in

repairing damaged rooms makes the school focus more on repairing it rather than

focusing on the learning of every student which results in lack of learning time and

more on making their school to what it once was. But despite those who see the

nation’s politics as a source of income and business there are still some who have a

passion to help the nation for its betterment and thinking what they can still do to boost

the product of the future for their children and their children’s children. They are the

reasons why the level of impact is not as worse as it should have been if the nation

was led by corrupt individuals.

Being safe from a calamity is not an easy job but is a must for every human. A

person needs to not only have his or herself but will need the effort of everyone around

him/her because we need to lean on each other and help one another for everyone to

have a supporting column when they panic or can’t decide for themselves anymore.

Preparing is one of the most important tools in survival from being safe, to mitigating

damages and knowing what might happen, a person will be ready to face a challenge

knowing that he will know what to do and what to expect when the time comes that he

will be tested in forms of disasters. The future depends on the world today so we

should start right now in preparing the world for them, making it a world safer, more

caring and aware of the events that are happening to our surroundings because not

only will it tell us what to expect it will also tell us what to do, when to prepare, and

what to prepare. What we do now will reflect the outcome of the knowledge that the
future generation will have so we must start right now, making disaster preparedness

one of the most important lessons to teach a person in order for the start of more better

world where every human being knows how to keep safe and knows what to do in

times of disasters which will be passed down to the future making disaster

preparedness a common practice for the world knowing that our climate is changing

and calamities are getting stronger and more violent than ever before so we must be

all prepared to face the consequences that we had created to ourselves.

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