Covering disasters has never been easy; in fact, it is nerve-wracking, emotion-filled, and stressful as you grapple not only with the travails of others, but also your own as you empathize and sympathize with the survivors and their families.
Of late, even the wealthy, powerful First World countries have not been spared. Hurricane Milton, touted to be the strongest since Hurricane Andrew in the US, very recently wreaked havoc in Florida, coming close on the heels of a similar calamity, Hurricane Helene, in some parts of the US in just a couple of weeks. Countries that have been generally spared from such calamities and where heavy flooding is unheard of likewise experienced nature’s wrath in varying degrees.
It would be well to look back and recall how media covered two back-to-back calamities that happened in the Visayas. It has been exactly 11 years ago today when the Visayas had just come out of two calamities – the October 15, 2013 earthquake and super-typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan as its international name) on November 8, 2013.
When Cebu Daily News editor-in-chief and Marshall McLuhan Awardee in Responsible Media, Eileen Mangubat, came for a visit to Dumaguete just seven months after the twin disasters, she confessed that “she was still in a daze because like many media workers, she was coping with sleep deprivation after typhoon Yolanda and absorbing a barrage of post-storm reports.”
At that time, as Mangubat expounded, “One was a complete surprise, sending sporadic aftershocks weeks later to remind us that one can never predict when an earthquake will occur, while the other had advance warning, but exceeded our worst expectations,” she recalled.
Then and now, in the same intensity of recent strong typhoons affecting many parts of the country, including our very own Negros Island, the same questions are asked: Why is emergency response slow? Could we have moved faster? With so much aid and assistance coming in, why can’t it get out to the victims fast enough? How long and how much does it take to get back on our feet? We can add another question, a thought-provoking one – has everyone turned into an instant donor?
“I don’t have all the answers to these questions, even why so much suffering has visited this part of the islands. But, the back-to-back calamities exposed many shortcomings in preparation and response,” she posed.
For media to be responsive to such coverage of disasters, Mangubat said media should have a reality check – to report the facts of damage and loss, and to give a sense of why it happened. The community itself can also be rallied to help one another and the immense show of support or the so-called bayanihan spirit says it all. Not all were favorable, though, as some desperate sectors, especially in Tacloban, dashed off and scrambled to the nearest business establishment to get some goods and even appliances that had no use, after all, because of the absence of electricity.
Rumors usually abound when disasters strike, thus, it is incumbent upon media to dispel such and “zap” it before it gets out of hand. A case in point was the text or social media message that went viral because of reports of another much stronger earthquake to hit the Visayas after the October 15 tremor. But, no one can actually predict when an earthquake would strike although PHIVOLCS Negros Oriental head, Engr. Jose Antonio Molas, has informed that earthquakes do happen every day, albeit in differing magnitude and intensity.
One favorable thing that happened as a result of the twin calamities was media partnering with peers. Mangubat shared that in the community press, although they do compete fiercely for readership, when Yolanda happened, they were all bound for a common cause. A joint project of Cebu’s three daily newspapers – Cebu Daily News, Sun-Star Daily, and The Freeman – together with the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. is the #Relieftracker, a database of relief operations reported by private groups, the province of Cebu, and any enterprise or individual who wants to disclose their donations.
Posted online, the aim, said Mangubat, was to minimize the overlapping of relief efforts and to guide donors who want to reach underserved areas. In Dumaguete City, certain sectors’ relief efforts have likewise been institutionalized with the emergence of the so-called Continuing Calamity Response and Rehabilitation Program, whose records of donations have also been made available online.
These efforts are both inspiring and heart-tugging as people have now become more vigilant and, hopefully, more prepared for any eventuality. | NWI
