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Coping with Emergencies
by Art Umbac
Have you ever found yourself in emergency situations whether nature-induced or man-made? How did you cope? Did you panic? Were you immobilized not knowing what to do? Or were you able to rise above the crisis situation plus a lot of luck on your side?
I was in Manila when typhoon Frank roared across the city wreaking havoc and destruction on its wake. Earlier on that day – June 22, Sunday – at past 4:00 a.m., I took a taxi from the Boy Scouts Headquarters just across the SM-Manila for a 15-minute ride to the domestic airport. The wind and the rain were howling. Typhoon signal number 1 has been hoisted over Metro Manila.
When I reached the airport terminal I heard over the intercom announcements that the Bacolod and Cebu flights were being boarded and ready to depart. I was elated. My Dumaguete flight scheduled 7:10 will likewise be leaving soon. Or so I thought.
What happened next was simply chilling. The over-crowded predeparture area was bombarded with announcements that this and that flight will be delayed due to late arrival of aircrafts. By this time the weather condition had worsened. The rain bearing down on the terminal rooftops was like a neverending roar of a locomotive.
From announcements of delayed flights came announcements of cancellations. When flights for Zamboanga City and Tuguegarao were cancelled, I said to myself “This is it”. These destinations were too far away from the path of the typhoon their cancellation mean only one thing – with the worsening weather condition planes could not safely take off from Manila. All flights will have to be cancelled – as, it in fact, they were.
Having anticipated this, I rushed to the airline office outside and squeezed myself in to be number 77 in the rebooking for the next day’s flight to Dumaguete – same time. The flood water was continuously rising as the wind and the rain lashed out at the hapless multitude of people in and out of the terminal building. Understandably, tempers were high. Panic, chaos and disorder filled the area.
While the water level in the streets were still manageable and “navigable” a bold and daring taxi driver brought me and two others (who were on the same route as mine) to our destinations.
I was safely back at the Boy Scouts headquarters, thank God. Outside there were no streets to speak of. Simply water all around. The continuous heavy volume of rain plus the rising high tide conspired to flood the streets of Manila. With the high tide the water from the Pasig river, its canals and tributaries, could not be emptied into Manila Bay. Had I delayed I would not have made it back unless I swim.
Every now and then you and I are confronted with situations which would test our stability and our capacity to react boldly and positively. Some of us are very focused. When we check in hotels we always ask “where is the fire escape?” We are the kind who keep our cool and maintain our presence of mind. We keep focus on a worse case scenario always; always expecting the unexpected and making a dry-run in our minds on what to do – just in case.
It is not that we do not recognize fear, we all do. Except that we snap out of it when we are immobilized by fear. We take control of ourselves when panic threatens to take control over us.
In her article entitled How to Survive a Disaster (Time Magazine, June 23, 2008), Amanda Ripley cited Five Ways to Improve your “Disaster Personality” that we should teach ourselves “to be more proactive and avoid the victimization trap (“If it happens to me, there’s nothing I can do”).