The Urgent Need for an Online List of Evacuees from Typhoon Ondoy

UPDATE: Just got an email reply from NDCC. I understand their predicament, but hope come next time something could be done.

"good afternoon attorney, we are more than thankful for your offer but unfortunately, due to the scale and sheer difficulty of consolidating these lists will take significant effort to acquire. Rest assured that your offer will be considered should we have this list already in place. We hope you understand. Again, thank you for volunteering, and we wish you well especially in this moment."

OP: Two days after Ondoy ("Ketsana") struck us, and many many Filipinos remain worried about loved ones & friends in affected areas who have yet to surface or make contact. The radio & TV stations, the Facebook updates and the Twitter feeds are full of requests for news about this individual or that family. There are several reasons for the loss of contact. The popular cellphone service providers have had spotty reception because of flood damage to their reception. Many of the rescued individuals have lost their own cellphones and are now in evacuation centers where they are unable to make known their safety.

The NDCC is in charge of coordinating rescue & safety operations in times of disaster, and ostensibly has a supervisory role over evacuation centers. It is very conceivable for them to have a plan to collate the list of those successfully evacuated or rescued, and publish such list online for the perusal of relatives and friends unaware of their loved one's plight. It is conceivable that NDCC personnel at evacuation centers gather the names of those in the evacuation centers, type them up on laptops at the site, then forward the list to a central post which can then upload them at the NDCC website.

I'll concede this is easier said than done. Unfortunately, it appears that the NDCC had, and has no plans of doing this public service so needed by us. A friend of mine was able to contact the NDCC at 9122665, and she was told that the NDCC does not have a list of evacuees, only a list of affected areas. The call had been made in the hope that the NDCC would supply the list to private individuals who could help out by encoding and posting such list online. Without such a list, that task is impossible.

I have no idea if it is too late to still implement such a plan, but at the very least, this experience should enlighten the NDCC to establish such a system come the next disaster.

This entire experience has made it quite easy to wail and rage about the failure of government, and the absence of an NDCC list of evacuees compounds to the anger. Still, for as long as help remains needed, it remains more helpful to try make government work, instead of carping at its failings. And if the government that is within reach of fixing is that "of the sovereign people", and not necessarily that which we elected, then so be it.