When Mother Nature Strikes Back….

If there was one thing I realized this last few weeks….it is that when nature decides she’s had enough of our man-handling she strikes back and she does so with a vengence. And in the end we humans, turn out to be the losers in this game…

We had barely recovered from Ondoy’s wrath when earthquake struck the Southern part of the country; then Pepeng came along and while this typhoon didn’t hit Metro Manila head on it brought devastation in Northern and Central Luzon and in fact affected the country in a much larger scale as it damaged crops, especially rice which is a staple food in the country.

I guess it’s really about time we stop and think what we’re doing to our natural resources. We Filipinos seem to think we’re immune from it all. While the rest of the world had been making efforts to ‘go green’ we just brush it off, shrug our shoulders and think that tragedy will never get to us. But it did, and it was a good wake up call too before it was too late.

It is true that Ondoy brought so much rain; it is true that Pepeng took three landfalls…but would all the landslide happen if we took better care of our mountains? would it have flooded so much if we didn’t clog the drainages with trash? would there we so much flooding in Baguio if the trees were there? I mean just look at the area of PMA, it was almost untouched by the typhoon. And why? Because the trees and the mountains in that area was protected and so the trees provided them protection.

I am saddened by all that we have lost – people, properties…but I believe it’s also about time we realized that all these things are also due to our neglect and carelessness.

If there was one good thing that all these devastation brought forth, it was that we saw the country united once again. This time around people came together to help…why can’t we be more like this everyday? Why do we always wait for a calamity to happen before we turn to lend a helping hand to our neighbors? Why?