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Schadenfreude is defined by Merriam-Webster as enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others. This is probably what Christopher Lao suspected...
It has happened too many times: Even without a storm signal, heavy rains and sudden flooding force authorities to suspend...
Thank goodness for Facebook, which has alerted people to every little irregularity, anomaly and failure in taste that publicity-hungry politicos are guilty of. Latest, very distasteful case in point: calamity campaigning.
Rescue teams, police and hospital workers went above and beyond the call of duty to come to the aid of those in need, logging in long hours and setting aside their own comforts and event safety to serve other people. Volunteers wasted no time, springing to action even as the disaster was still unfolding. They braved the strong rain and the flooded streets to get to relief centers, to cook meals, to pack goods, to get people to safety, to let the hapless know they weren’t forgotten. Those who couldn’t leave their homes raided their closets and pantries for things they could donate and used the Internet to disseminate important information. Donations have been given and pledges have been made even by people outside the country. We wish we had all their names so we could honor them. They are all heroes.
Last week’s heavy monsoon rains revived memories of “Ondoy” in 2009, which had broken records, with a month’s worth of rain falling in just six hours.
Following the recent floods, the Department of Health has warned against the outbreak of certain diseases. One of those which people have to watch out for, aside from respiratory ailments, is diarrhea, especially among children.
They were two children, a girl and her younger brother, expert swimmers. Their house was destroyed when cataclysmic floods struck Iligan City in Mindanao last December. Their parents perished, along with two other siblings.
In the days of flooding that paralyzed Metro Manila and Luzon, young people lost no time in using the power of visual communication and graphic design to help those severely affected by the calamity. Their works here rally the people to help.
Thanks to its innocence, a child seems able to blind itself blissfully to the ugliness of tragedy and disaster, whether it’s a war, as shown in the award-winning Italian film with that precise title, or the more familiar experience of storms and their inevitable consequence—floods.
A major worry for people during the rainy season, especially if floodwaters get inside their homes, is damage to appliances.
