‘You are a Romualdez, and the President is an Aquino’

That, according to Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez, was what Interior and Local Government secretary Mar Roxas told him two days after super typhoon devastated his city and he was asking the national government for troops to keep order and undertake rescue and relief operations.

Those were chilling words made in the midst of a crisis when thousands of bodies were all over the city and thousands of the living were needing rescue, food and water.