Not because the recent spate of earthquakes in Japan and Ecuador has triggered local fears of a Big One here at home, but because we need a coherent view and understanding of how natural disasters truly impact our country and our people, we call attention today to the paramount need to upgrade and modernize the nation’s mechanism and system for disaster management and emergency response.

Supertyphoon Yolanda is now two and a half years past (it made landfall in our country on November 8, 2013), but the scars and lessons of incompetence and mismanagement remain.