Typhoon Ondoy

By this time, there could have been a lot of stories on what happened last Saturday to thousands of Metro Manila residents and nearby provinces that were directly hit by the typhoon. Up to this time, several areas and subdivisions are still submerged with flood waters caused by the typhoon. What can we do? We can help through donations or volunteer work. ABSCBN and GMA 7 are asking donations and volunteers and we can help by participating in their relief efforts.

What happened is definitely nature showing us that no matter how advanced our technology is, in the end nature will still prevail. What we can do is take care of our environment and pray that we can recover quickly from natural calamities. If we watched the news for the past 2 days, one can observe that flood waters are usually brown in color. These waters are from the mountains near Rizal, Bulacan, Tarlac and Pampanga. The Sierra Madre mountain range starts in Northern Luzon and ends in Rizal and Laguna. Brown waters came down from the mountains collecting silt and mud. The flood water we see around Pasig and Marikina are heavily silted which only means water came from the mountains going to the river and causing it to everflow. Silt turns into mud which makes rivers turn shallow and clog areas in addition to the garbage thrown by residents near river areas. What causes silt and mud to go to the rivers? Soil is loosened because of heavy logging, mining and irresponsible actions we do to our mountains. Can we say now that nature is responsible to the calmity we experienced for the past 2 days? Definitely not. Nature is there to remind us. It is just unfortunate that we still have to learn our lesson after so many deaths and properties damaged.

Maybe after we donate and do volunteer work, we should think long term and consider the situation very well. Please join efforts in reforestation and tree planting so we can make a difference to the generations ahead us. Please spread information that beyond the natural calamity and heavy rainfall we experienced, we still need to spread the information in preserving our environment. Join forest conservation efforts now and make a difference in the future.