Several months have passed since my hometown was devastated by typhoon “Frank” (international code name: Fengshen). Now people have resumed their normal lives. Every trace of dirt and grime brought by the terrible deluge has been patiently scrubbed away by the determination of the Ilonggos to put their lives back on track. All that remain are a generation’s worth of lessons that we never learned and we need to learn.

I can remember vividly the events of that fateful day of June 21, 2008 as if someone jammed a movie inside my head and the movie just kept playing on and on. Think of eating a plateful of onion-flavored pizza. No matter how many times you gargle, the stink remains in your mouth and you remember what you ate yesterday.

I cannot forget being rudely awakened from sleep by the frightened screams of my nephews and nieces. When I got out of bed the house was already waist deep in mud and floodwaters. In the next few days, I had to report for work to an office, which had no electricity or hot water for coffee, so that my co-workers and I could keep the government in working order.

I can also recall throwing away some precious items because they were no longer worth the effort of trying to clean them.

The images get blurry sometimes so that I miss some of the details but I’m still thankful that after the lives of Ilonggos were ripped apart by Mother Nature’s wrath, we still got a chance to live one more day.

Until now the essential question of who was really to blame for that disaster, which cost so many lives and properties, continues to bother me a lot. But unlike before, I think I have found the answer. There are a lot of things we can point our fingers at.

To begin with, the blame should be on us. We did not prepare for disaster until it was too late. We Filipinos seem to have an innate tendency to be complacent and we have never developed the habit of preparing for events and things that will become problems later.

Take a look at our approach to development as a whole. We build our cities and communities on low-lying plains and seismic areas. We never give a thought to the possibility that when disaster strikes, our communities could be blown back to the Stone Age.

My own room is a firetrap. It has windows but there’s no way out if a fire strikes. I suppose that just like the rest of us, I never gave safety considerations a serious thought. By the way, ask your fellow employees if they know how to use the medical kit or the fire extinguisher that is now rotting on the office wall.

But the government should also share the blame. In this disaster-prone country of ours, disaster risk management does not have a high priority. You can bore me with lectures on PD 1566 or the Philippine Disaster Management System, but the fact remains that the government has never bridged the yawning gulf between theory and practice. It’s a sad fact but national and local leaders envision disaster risk management as little more than the distribution of relief goods. Very few government officials talk, much less carry out, disaster risk mitigation programs, which are the keystone of disaster risk management in Western countries.

But Frank came as some kind of a blessing too. As the saying goes, it is through adversity that one’s real character is revealed. The typhoon revealed the heroes and unmasked the villains in our society.

Politicians have the rare gift of smelling opportunities for self-aggrandizement or winning votes. “Frank” was a perfect opportunity for them. Thus, every relief effort evolved into an early election campaign with the names and faces of local and national politicians plastered on every pack of noodles and every can of sardines.

Worse was that the disasters became another opportunity to pauperize the poor and illiterate some more. I cannot forget the images of hungry and desperate folks holding up food coupons and lining up in front of officials who were trying to promote themselves as messiahs.

But some real heroes also emerged during the disaster. People in my hometown have not grown tired of telling stories about how neighbors and strangers risked their lives to bring others to safety. (One amusing tale concerns a flood victim who hung on to a pig until they were both rescued by townsfolk—a story of animal heroism, right there.)

In our own house, there were little heroes, too. My young nephews picked up my slippers as floodwaters rose inside our house thinking it was expensive and I might rue their loss. Our neighbors helped us evacuate the house when it became necessary.

But to me the worst villains were those who took advantage of the situation to loot abandoned homes, knowing they could get away with it.

(Sherwin Bering, 29, works as a civil defense coordinator in the local government of Alimodian, Iloilo.)