Contributing in our own little way to help relieves anxieties. It should, right? But still whatever help we did feels so little and are not enough when we see on television what happened to our brothers and sisters just an hour or two hours drive away from our residence. Even the first floor of my father-in-law's house in Bulacan was submerged in water. They are safe now. My husband and my sister-in-law helped clean the house yesterday.
In the midst of all these, realization sets in that we are not in any way prepared. We do not even have contingencies at home. Nobody is taking note. We do not want another disaster like Ondoy, no. But we do not want to be caught unaware. We would like to take some measures which could come in handy, which could help us, if not us, the people in our community or elsewhere, or our relatives who might be needing them. (By 'we' and 'our' I keep on mentioning in the above paragraphs, I am referring to me and my family.)
1. Important documents are in a storage place easily accessible for us. This has always been the case but I became more conscious about it now.
2. Extra batteries for emergency lamps and flashlights. These we do not have so they are added in our grocery list.
3. Food, we do the groceries weekly but we need to buy more food that are ready to eat - bread, crackers, cup noodles (oh yes, we can eat the raw noodles).
4. We always have stock of 2 five gallons of distilled water good for four days but maybe I will add 2 more.
5. Put some clothes and towels for each of us inside a bag kept in a closet in an area easy to grab.
6. Charge, charge, charge cell phones. Have extra batteries. Take note where we keep our candles and matches. I have forgotten where until the brownout last Saturday.
7. Do I put in a plastic bag every night the school things of my daughter? Just a thought. Maybe only if it's raining too hard.
8. Secure laptop and pictures (put the pictures in one box instead of all of them on top of our cabinets). These aren't priorities but it won't hurt if they are safe when emergency calls for us to evacuate.
9. First aid kit or health kit including sanitary napkins. Oh yes, I just have to say that lest we are forgetting.
10. Reduce, reuse, recycle. I don't know any project in our community about trash segregation. I can start at home.
New media rocks. I'm trying my best going about my usual business but my social networking accounts are open for real time updates. It's like looking after one another reposting in Facebook, retweeting relevant messages about relief and rescue operations for the victims of "Ondoy". I sincerely hope those posts helped a soul or two.
The importance of communication cannot be discounted in normal situations much more during calamities. This made me realize that it has been 15 years since our PLDT landline goes dead whenever there are power outages. I remember I emailed about this concern four or five years ago and the reply I got was that the batteries on their main box(?) will be replaced. I did not follow up but this morning we did. Yes, we followed up after 4 or 5 years. It seems the batteries were not replaced as we continue to have dead phone lines during brownouts. "Ondoy" has to happen to make us remember this concern.
We emailed the customer care of PLDT this morning about this fifteen year old issue. We hope to have a working phone line even during brownouts. We cannot contact 173 or 171 so the next option was to email. A generic answer won't do. I hope they act on the matter quickly.
My Bayantel DSL (dis)connection issue seemed trivial with the latest problem the nation is now facing but I just have to say we are still having intermittent connection, running on its third week now. I will refrain from discussing it here further since we already emailed their customer support again as we cannot get through their landline.
For now, let me focus on the more important things I need to do. Help in whatever way we can. Clothes for donation are sorted. Will do groceries later. Attend church activity tonight. Count our blessings and pray for a quick recovery and for a safer, more prepared Philippines. God bless this country!
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