Lets look at some statistics about the most
recent natural disaster that has taken place, known as Typhoon Haiyan. The Philippine typhoon that hit November
8 has racked up a current death toll of almost 6,166, while 1,785 have still
not been found. Adding to this,
almost 29,000 people have suffered injuries from the typhoon, 4 million people
have been displaced from their homes, and 14 million Filipinos were impacted in
some way. The Philippine
government has said that it is feeding 1.4 million people a day.
Although the government is being lauded for
not doing more, it is still difficult to find blame when it comes to natural
disasters of this level. When it
comes down to it, there is no one that can be directly blamed when people die
in this manner, there is only so much anyone can do except try to prepare for
an event of this kind. The number
of deaths that are being caused by these natural disasters are frightening.
Eight weeks after their death, the victims
of Super Typhoon Haiyan are just now being buried because, as Tacloban City
authorities put it, there has been a lack of technical personnel as well as bad
weather in the form of non-stop rain.
This has greatly slowed down their ability to identify bodies. The burial process is expected to take
about five days more because of this, and still many of the bodies have not
been claimed or identified by any family members.
As Filipino-American columnist for the
Guardian Juanita Salvador-Burris also pointed out, it hasn’t helped that old
rules created by the United States Congress back in the 1950’s has drawn out the
process of getting extremely necessary humanitarian aid relief over to millions
of desperate Filipinos. These
outdated laws and regulations have the potential to cause real harm and perhaps
even cause unnecessary death. With
4 million people having lost their homes because of the typhoon, the columnist
is right in saying that there is no excuse for any amount of red tape when it
comes to responding to a disaster such as this. This is when red tape should be cut and thrown in the
wastebasket with haste. Anything
less than such a reaction should be seen as careless.
If this were a natural disaster that had
occurred in the United States, there would be no questions asked and protocol would
be thrown to the wayside if it were becoming an obstacle. As citizens of the world all sharing one
globe, the same thing should be done for citizens of any country irrespective
of any other factors. These
are the most important times to show our mutual respect to one another, when
others are facing times of crisis.
Perhaps the often recited but not as often practiced saying “Do unto
others as you would have them do to you” should be put into practice in this
case. The saying is
appropriately the foundation of many of the ethical systems that societies are
built upon. The United States is allegedly
one of these societies, so it seems that there is no better time like the
present for the U.S. to dust off this proverb and transform it from an
antiquated and empty saying that has been left in the past into one that can be
practically applied today.
