FROM Saturday morning till Monday evening, typhoon Ruby whipped various parts of the country before exiting to the South China/West Philippine Sea en route to Vietnam. Despite the big media hype that preceded its arrival, it proved to be less lethal and devastating than last year’s super typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan, which flattened Tacloban and disabled Guiuan, Samar, and other parts of Eastern Visayas.

To their credit, the weather bureau proved more alert and precise, and the local government units tried to be a few steps ahead of the storm. They moved people out of their homes to evacuation centers before the typhoon struck. The province of Albay, for one, declared a state of calamity long before the storm landed; which somehow reminded me of my early youth in Catanduanes, the original typhoon belt, where the first thing the provincial government usually did was to send a typhoon damage report to Malacañang as soon as the first typhoon signal went up.

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