They heeded the warnings, and survived

photo from abs-cbnnews.com

Albay Governor Joey Salceda echoes Pnoy's call on LGUs to take warnings seriously and adopt other measures in preparing for future calamities. He says zero casualty should be the target.

Amid the squabbling in the Yolanda aftermath, we hear good news of entire communities that survived or suffered very minimal casualties.

Situated along the Yolanda's destructive path, these small communities heeded the warnings and survived.

Tulong Diot's and Manicani's small size maybe helped in their survival. Perhaps the folks heeded their leaders' warnings because they reached them soon enough (they evacuated 2 days before the storm). And perhaps they realize that because of their isolation (they are islands kilometers off the main city), when the worst happens (and it did) help would be a long time coming. People in city centers tend to have the false security that everything is near and easy to get.

The next time the storm surges come, we will be definitely prepared. We learn the hard way. Ondoy struck us so bad, that when Habagat'12 came we were prepared.

The Pag-asa came up with color coded rainfall forecasts to warn us of impending rain levels. I'm sure they will next devise some graphic way of warning about storm surge heights. There must be a better way of warning about 5 meter surges, like maybe, sustained waves that reach the second floor of a building.

This should also be a learning experience for the government. If they are uneasy calling storm surges as tsunami because technically they are not, what's stopping them from vividly describing them as tsunami-like? It's better than fudging the death count.