Amidst our ongoing recovery from Typhoons Kristine and Leon, we commemorate the 11th anniversary of Typhoon Yolanda.
Our ongoing crucibles remind us that the powerful lessons brought by the strongest typhoon in history should not be lost with the passage of time.
Heeding these is the best way to honor the lives lost.
As the most disaster-prone country in the world, we cannot do otherwise. We do not have the luxury of ignorance, inaction, and complacency.
Thus, we must intensify our efforts to mitigate and adapt to the challenges of climate change and urgently abate our vulnerability to disasters.
We must empower our communities and strengthen our local government units, who both comprise our first line of defense against calamities.
We must guarantee the speedy delivery of relief and aid to all those who may need it.
And after making sure that the communities brace better against typhoons, that they can build back better after, by making them more resilient than before.
Calamities are teaching moments, and every one that came after Yolanda delivered a payload of lessons that instructed us how to improve our response.
Since then, we have strengthened institutional bulwarks against calamities, which our countrymen have matched with increasing care and compassion for those affected.
It is also because of this bayanihan of our race that the pain of victims is assuaged and the rebuilding of homes and livelihoods is accelerated.
On this day, we remember the kindness of the international community, whose outpouring of support helped us heal fast.
Their response reaffirmed a tenet civilization must uphold when one nation faces an emergency or an existential threat—that no man is an island, indeed.
All unfulfilled commitments made in the past for Yolanda rehabilitation are responsibilities we fully assume.
Though no singular fault of anyone, many of these pledges remain unredeemed, and we shall see to it that what the state owed to impacted people and places will be satisfactorily settled.
PRESIDENT FERDINAND R. MARCOS JR.
